It is nearly impossible to escape data in pretty much every walk of life. This is not a bad thing -- data tells store owners what merchandise to stock, data tells non-profit agencies which populations to serve, and data tells school administrators how many teachers to hire.
I love data. It is important and useful. But it often does not tell the whole story -- hence why the standardization movement in education is harmful -- because often, data cannot measure everything. Yet people in charge of school reform seem to forget this fact. And with something as complex as a school system, which serves and employs thousands of people, we cannot make decisions based solely upon the data that has been gathered. Data can and must be a tool to inform our decisions, but we must be careful to not have it be the only tool. Herein lies the problem with the modern education movement.
Test scores, as we know, are the driving force behind the determination over whether or not a teacher is "good." But that is unfair, as there is so much you cannot measure that determines whether or not a teacher is successful. In fact, this article does a succinct job of explaining the important factors that determine if a teacher is "bad." We could, I suppose, come up with some sort of test to measure these five criteria, but why? Education should become more humanistic, not more robotic. Perhaps the most important outcome of education -- that of a student's later success -- is unmeasurable. But is that necessary a bad thing?
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