This is my last contribution for the day. Work calls. David Shemano writes: > I don't see how you can say that test scores are meaningless. It was on this > very point that the LA union lost credibility among the general public when > the LA Times published test scores by teacher recently.<
I'll let the issue of the value of standardized test scores go and address other issues. (Luckily, my son is _very_ good at taking standardized tests. Otherwise, he likely never would have graduated from high school, since he has special needs.) With _which_ public was it that the LA union lost credibility? all of the people in LA? or just the upper-middle class and rich ones? the one that David Shemano talks to? which one? By the way, following the precedent set by the LA TIMES, all of the bar exams scores of all of the lawyers in California should be posted on line, along with how many times they had to repeat the exam before passing it, their ranks in their law-school graduating class, their salaries, their win/loss record in court, their number of publications in law journals (and the quality rankings of those journals), their accusations of malfeasance, etc., etc. To make information-processing more manageable, the state should give all lawyers a rating (based on a weighted average of merit measures such as those I just listed, using eminently objective weights) which should be also published on line. It should be like the signs that the Los Angeles Health Department makes restaurants post in their windows: each lawyer should be graded with an A, a B, or a C (based on a 100-point score), while those who get lower grades would be shut down. Just as diners should know if their restaurants are unhealthy, the lawyers' potential customers should know, too. After all, a lawyer might be able to hurt you much more than a restaurant can: you share private information, etc. If teachers don't have privacy rights (so that their personnel records are made public), why should lawyers have them? -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
