[jbooth]

I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Some amount of quantitative results measuring makes sense in any situation. But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of. Kloc, issue tickets, or standardized test scores. I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

[anamax]

> I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Why can't we say that? We did have a big downturn in education quality. If we don't know whether teachers are doing their job right, why should we pay them?

> But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of.

Absolutely.

Why the assumption that the majority of education is untestable?

> I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

Which reminds me - why the assumption that teachers are professionals? Yes, they're paid, but traditional professionals are liable.

What have teachers done to earn leeway?