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Teacher Magazine: What Data-Driven Instruction Should Really Look Like
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It’s clear to me that the disconnect between those who create or mandate high-stakes assessments and those who are expected to use them needs attention at every level.
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I talked about the importance of taking a hard look at some of the negative consequences of the NCLB legislation in its use of a single, multiple-choice assessment as a tool for accountability. We now know that across the nation, many elementary schools have all but eliminated time for science, history, art, music, and physical education in favor of endless "benchmark" assessments in language arts and math. One result is that our students often arrive at middle school unfamiliar with basic science and history concepts. Further, in my district (and I suspect in many others), physical education in elementary schools has all but disappeared. Today’s generation of children grows ever more overweight. My own students are developing early signs of diabetes and heart disease by the age of ten. Kids need to move!
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Illinois joins school march toward national standards, test -- chicagotribune.com
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The two groups plan to start by deciding what skills every high school graduate needs to succeed in college or the workplace and then backtrack to create "fewer, clearer and higher" expectations for what's taught in each grade level, high school through elementary school. The details of what a common test might involve remain unclear.
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The discrepancy observed in Illinois is magnified nationally, said Michael Petrilli, a former top aide at the U.S. Education Department under President George W. Bush who now works with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
The Washington-based think tank published a study this month that recommends federal officials set up to 90 percent of learning standards and allow states to tailor the remaining 10 percent to their own needs. Schools in Florida, for instance, may study the Everglades in science courses, while children here focus more on the prairie.
Bridging Differences: Data-Driven Nonsense
Powerful.
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Regarding accountability, I am on board with your suspicion about the use and mis-use of high-stakes testing. One of the virtues of NAEP is that it is low stakes. I would even say that it is no-stakes. No child, student, or teacher has ever suffered the consequences of doing poorly because of NAEP because the assessment does not identify individual students, teachers, or schools. It gives results for the nation, states, and some cities (that volunteered).
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I think our society is in dangerous territory on this subject of accountability. The so-called "reformers," the guys (yes, guys) who call themselves the Education Equality Project, would have the world believe that accountability is the key to improving American education. They think it can be done fast, not incrementally. They think the key to improvement is punishing the bad students, the bad teachers, and the bad schools. Their latest formula, as enunciated by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is to close down 5,000 schools and re-open them. I wonder where he plans to find 5,000 new principals and thousands of new teachers, or does he just intend to reshuffle the deck?
This approach rests squarely on the high-stakes use of testing. One only wishes that the proponents of this mean-spirited approach might themselves be subjected to a high-stakes test about their understanding of children and education! I predict that every one of them would fail and be severely punished.
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Child Abuse: Juking the Stats
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Real teaching is also inhibited when teachers are asked to abandon the literature they love or mathematical investigations that involve time and the building of things for mass produced DCCAS test taking practice materials.
A newly minted graduate of Howard University called me recently. She is working as a long-term sub at a DCPS Public elementary school.
She was overwhelmed and jittery. Her 4th graders were badly behaved and could not focus on the materials she had been given to use for the three hour Language Arts block.
"What curriculum are you using?" I asked.
"Test taking skill stuff. You know, read a short passage and pick out the main idea. Or, underline the verb in the following ten sentences. Materials like that. We have been ordered to use them."
"For three hours a day? What about history and science?"
"We have been asked to not teach history and science for the time being because they are not subjects on the test."
“Who's your principal?”
“He is new,” she answered. “Hand picked by Michelle Rhee.”
Stephen Krashen Letter to Los Angeles Times: A Waste of Time and Money
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Recent research done by scholars at Indiana
University, UC Davis and
the University of Minnesota has shown that in
general state high
school exit exams do not lead to higher
employment, or higher earnings
by graduates, nor does the presence of high
school exit exams result
in improved academic achievement.
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