20-fold increase in standardized testing coming with Gates Foundation's "Common Core":

[maggiesfarmer]

53. where did I say there were many ineffective teachers?

I am listening. carefully. let's continue rational debate with respect -- I never did suggest there were many ineffective teachers, I don't have data. your personal experience is interesting, but only your experience over a limited data set. I had two children I fathered through a combined (so far) 24 years of public K-12 education. i'd like to see about more than one of them on an action plan (firing as last resort, but acknowledging that doing a poor job of educating our youth is unacceptable).

I note that yearly testing gives a means of identifying high performing administrators also, a problem you identify (one I haven't considered, but makes sense intuitively).

I did say I thought the barrier of entry to the profession was too low -- and I stand by that. If you tell me there are effective means in place to weed out poor performers, great, but that still shouldn't prevent us from implementing a means of getting measurable trend data.

I'm not saying we can't fix socioeconomic issues, I said it's not within the scope of education to do so and that I didn't think that should be a distraction from continuous improvement in public education.