Technology Assessments

I come with a business background, of over 20 years in different disciplines and a military background.  I have spent the last 7 year observing at the district, state and federal level the use of committees and assessments of students and educators to fix what is considered a major problem.  The major problem is performance of both educators and students in general with some exceptions.  The assessments that I took did not tell me anything new that my business and military assessments had not revealed to me before.  What all current and prior assessments have done is made me aware of what I need to work on to be successful in my endeavors.  The person being assessed needs to willing first of all to admit not being perfect and second the desire to change for the sake of a successful career. Millions of dollars are spent at different levels and then the reports are ignored due to budget restraints.  The need for smaller classes has been a fact for many years and the need to have a smaller teacher student ratio has been document for years.  In the business world you have as many supervisors as needed to complete the job properly because the assessments that have been done in the past dictate the amount of people required but when it comes to teaching there are never enough teachers to keep the ratio down.   There are thousands of certified teachers that taught less than three years before they gave up.  The learning curve is wasted on a huge number of administrators.  Some administrators say “they have to pay their due with the rough classes in their first years” is counterproductive and prone to having teachers change careers. Some have learned from exit assessments others have not.  Assessments are opinions based on previous results but if the information is not used for growth then it is just a waste of time and money.