Reply #8: A significant part of the problems is QUANTIFICATION exclusive of QUALIFICATION. [View All]

[patrice]

As you observe, "... efforts to quantify teacher performance are typically destructive ...", hence "measurements" are ALL about counting things and what things are counted are determined/defined also primarily by counting.

Not that counting is NECESSARILY bad (it IS useful) but when counting becomes the source and the object of the system, the system becomes circular, self-referential, bereft of authentic memes, other than numbers, meme-less.

What is needed is to honor the qualities of individual learning. There should be more than just counting; phenomena, individual and group, should be authentically described by means of their unique qualities and those qualities should be included not only in evaluations but also in assessments at equal weight with the numbers.

This is sometimes referred to as authentic assessment and it would probably need to be implemented by means of multi-media resources.