Untrending in Education: The Next Big Thing

Education has been rife with fads over the years. By this, I mean strategies and services with minimal research to support their startup and minimal evidence of success. We've tried open classrooms, block scheduling, small schools, and more. In reality, there is no simple way to fix schools. Schools are complex institutions with communities of unique learners and diverse constituents. So why do we think that the Common Core will be the next fix when there's no evidence that standardized testing improves learning (Popham, 2005, http://www.edutopia.org/standardized-testing-evaluation-reform)

Decisions about curriculum, learning targets, instruction, classroom management, differentiation, and assessment are each exceedingly multifaceted. So how is it possible that one standardized curriculum and one standardized test will fix all the problems of education? There is no other profession where one written test determines proficiency. Could you imagine if your pilot or doctor only had to pass one test? So why, in education, have we become focused on that strategy? These assessments have one purpose- to rank schools and teachers. One example of this is Connecticut's new School Performance Index (https://state2.measinc.com/ct/micpi/) But, in reality, a variety of measures are necessary to support the multiple purposes of assessment: To inform teaching, identify progress, pinpoint gaps, and develop local and immediate responses.

It is far better to address learning from multiple perspectives and to use a range of assessments from content recall, to demonstrations of higher level thinking, to displays of real-world applications. Embedded assessment that informs teaching and learning is an improvement over one test at the end of learning.

So here are my recommendations for untrending:

• Balanced assessment systems that include formative, interim, and summative assessments:
• A range of assessment strategies from selected choice to authentic performances.
• Inclusion of large scale and classroom assessments to determine student's progress and needs.
• Instructionally useful, short term, formative assessment
• Multiple assessments that display a full range of student's abilities across all curricular areas

A balanced approach to assessment will provide multiple data points. Thoughtfully planned comprehensive assessment will benefit all constituents.

A Quiz on Standardized Testing

Answer the following questions and check your answers below.

 

1. According to the Pew Research Center, between 2001 and 2008 national spending on standardized testing rose from $423 million to (Pick one: $800 million, $1.1 billion, $2 billion).

         

2. According to the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois at Urbana, multiple choice tests can provide (Pick one: highly reliable, moderately reliable, slightly reliable) measures of student achievement.

          

3. A study by the Center on Education Policy  reported that between 2001 and 2009, 44% of school districts reduced the time spent on history and the arts by an average of (Pick one: 20, 50, 100) minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math.

          

4. American student’s scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking have (dropped or increased) between 1990 and 2011.

          

5. U.S. scores on the 2009 PISA, The Programme for International Student Assessment, place it at the (Pick One: 11th, 21st, 31^st) position globally, behind The Czech Republic and Slovenia.

          

6. Who said “Now, there’s nothing wrong with standardized testing just to give a baseline of where kids are at. Too often we’ve been using these tests to punish school. One thing I never want to see happen in schools is just teaching to the test.” (Pick One: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum)

 

Source: http://standardizedtests.procon.org

1. Answer: $1.1 billion. Source: www.pewresearch.org

2. Answer: highly reliable. Source: http://cte.illinois.edu/

3. Answer: 100 minutes. Source: http://www.cep-dc-org

4. Answer: Dropped. Source: www.wm.edu

5. Answer: 31^st. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/

6. Answer: Barack Obama. Source:  http://2012election.procon.org

No Regrets

2013 is the year for educators do their best work. It is the time to move education forward with systematic and selected strategies that have been proven to work. Sadly, the predictions I made for 2012 have not materialized (See Dec. 2012 entry). Maybe it’s because I’m an idealist rather than a pragmatist. I really believed that education would wrap its head around teaching the whole child not just the literacy and numeracy slices that the Common Core serves us. I also hoped that moving towards growth models of embedded assessment would take priority over lockstep common assessments.

If anything has changed this year, it is that the Common Core assessments have moved towards more selected choice and completion and away from authentic demonstrations of learning. As budgets have constricted the design of the tests have become more streamlined and the length of the tests have been shortened. At the same time, we are relying more heavily on these tests to evaluate teacher performance and hoping that this time this test will improve our student’s problem solving skills and global competitiveness. For now, I’m taking a wait and see approach.

So, let’s look ahead to 2013 with no regrets. Let’s find the fortitude to implement proven best practices. Let’s move forward with the belief that the decisions being made and the actions being taken are the best possible for today’s students. Let’s look to 2013 as the year of the whole and balanced child.