School districts are under pressure from the federal government, foundations, and states to include value-added assessment as a part of a teacher’s evaluation to meet the widely supported policy goal of identifying the most effective and the least effective teachers in a school system. On its face, the argument for value-added models (VAM) seems to make sense. How well a student does after a year with a teacher should serve as an indicator of how effective that teacher was. But by what measures? How valid are those measures? If the student measure is a score on a standardized test, what evidence do we have to indicate the standardized test accurately measures teacher effectiveness? Which students are being compared?

by Howard Pitler, Ed.D.”The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” — Anatole France, French novelist, 1844-1924There is much discussion in education these days about teaching curiosity. From my observation as a teacher, administrator, and most importantly, a grandfather, I think we are looking at curiosity through the wrong lens. The question to me isn’t “How can we teach curiosity?” but rather, “What can we do in schools to stop killing curiosity?”This realization came to me recently while watching my two grandsons, ages 2 and 4. I bought a toy for the 4-year-old that was labeled for ages 5 and up. It was a small foam rocket that was to be put on a launcher tube and then launched by air pressure created by squeezing a bulb. The 4-year-old took the toy and experimented with different …