Accountability In Education
The cry of the public classroom teacher is heard throughout the United States and in many parts of the world. With all the testing performed to ensure accountability in our educational system, there are not enough hours in the day to teach. Teachers become constrained to “teach to the test,” thereby impeding certain modalities of transmitting information to students, reducing the number of hours that students can take part in “unnecessary” activities like art and music, and increasing the amount of homework to fill in the gaps. What is the answer to the conundrum of maintaining standards of excellence in education without creating inordinate stress for teachers and students? Further, what assurances do we have that testing amounts to something more than making clever comparisons across States and nations? Is there a methodology of testing that leads to results that can be efficiently translated into better education for our children?
The answer to these questions and more were considered at the International Symposium for Methodological Tools for Accountability Systems in Education at the Joint Research Center [JRC] from February 6-8 in Ispra Italy. Attended by 90 international experts from 20 countries, leading minds gathered to resolve academic disputes and identify a few solid robust statistical practices upon which the widest international consensus can be reached. The sponsor of the symposium, the Unit for Applied Statistics and Econometrics at JRC was mandated to bring together a diverse team of educators, social scientists, economists and statisticians in a multi-disciplinary approach to education research. “Our Unit builds scales for the knowledge society,” said Daniele Vidoni, one of the conference organizers, “and our ability to bring together all these experts in one room may well be the key to focusing what path educational testing will take and what role it will have in cultivating our children’s future.” “Statistical techniques which allow quality of education to be measured are available,” added Andrea Saltelli, Unit Head, “but not all countries have the same experience of their use in education and training.”
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