Rahm Emanuel: Teaching to the Test

I could be persuaded, but currently, I simply do not understand why Rahm Emanuel, and even President Obama, think it is reasonable to judge inner city school teachers by the performance,( i.e. by the test scores) of their students.

If those students went home to secure, loving homes, where at least one parent greeted them, sat them down after a family dinner and went over their assignments with them, read to them at night, took them on excursions to parks and museums, shuttled them to soccer practice, swimming practice, lacrosse practice, baseball practice, took them on vacations to Europe and Asia where they got exposed to different worlds, fed them, nurtured them, cared for them and conveyed to them  success is important, well then, sure, you can judge those who attempt to teach those kids arithmetic, reading, writing, geography, algebra, geometry by the performance of those kids on standardized tests. 

But if those kids carry their books home past drug dealers, if those kids themselves miss school days because they are working as hoppers and touts on the corners of their neighborhoods, if those kids live in apartments without any functional adult presence, if those kids are sleeping under their beds at night because bullets are flying through their windows, if those kids consider a package of Fritos and a bottle of orange soda a good, nutritious lunch, if those kids are entering their twelfth or thirteenth year engaging in sex to prove they are real players in their own social world, trying to get pregnant or to impregnate, if their goals are to get a job at McDonalds or stocking shelves at Home Depot and if their world view encompasses no more than their own side of their own city, well then, I don't see how anything any teacher can do is going to change their test scores.

I know the study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, coming out of Harvard and Columbia says a really good teacher can have an impact on students as if they had gone to school for an extra "month or two." And with really bad teachers, the effect on test scores is equivalent to the child having missed 40% of the school year. (That part, the effect of poor teachers, I can believe. )

But, if just 3 % of black male ninth graders in the city of Chicago ever earn a degree from a four year college, can that really be the fault of some 8th grade math teacher?

I would pay inner city teachers not on the basis of the performance on standardized tests taken with number 2 pencils, but on the basis of:  1. The incidence of classroom wounds requiring a visit to the emergency room  2. The incidence of projectiles flying out of their classroom windows  3. Whether or not goals for penetrating wound avoidance was reached. In short, teachers ought to receive combat zone pay, and those in the inner city should be sent on Rest and Recreation breaks to Viet Nam or Thailand, just for a break.