by Richard Kassissieh A student gazes at a mystery solution. Its contents are unknown. The student reaches into her toolkit, a set of known solutions, and one by one, combines them with a small portion of the mystery solution. One test changes the color to bright yellow. Another produces a milky, solid substance. Gradually, the...
does the fate of the nation rest on how well 9- and 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets? I don’t think so. Neither does British economist, S. J. Prais. We look at the test scores and worry about the nation’s economic performance. Prais looks at the economic performance and worries about the validity of the test...
… our school assessment lives primarily in the bottom left part of that graph … we rarely if ever get to the “immeasurable” stuff that resides toward the top right. To put it another way, we focus in schools on that which is quantifiable when, I think, our real value as places of learning rests...
TweetShareSharePinClipPocketIf you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to this blog via e-mail or my RSS feed. I also am on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!Here are two quotes from Diane Ravitch’s blog regarding ‘value-added’ measures of teacher quality. The second one would make me laugh if it weren’t also so sadly true… The crux...
Here are PISA scores for 15-year-olds as typically presented by politicians. When you see these, it’s easier for Americans to be more alarmist (oh no, others are ahead of us!). Average scores Percentage of high scorers But we also should look at the data another way. Number of high scorers Our size benefits...
The most likely scenario is that value-added will undermine the transition to Common Core. During the next two years, principals and teachers will be urged to abandon the primitive bubble-in mentality, but their jobs will be at risk if they don’t focus on rote instruction for high-stakes NCLB tests. For instance, my district is putting...
according to the American Psychological Association, a study of Texas middle school students found that healthy lungs and hearts could “predict” better scores on reading and math tests. Here’s another — from the UK but in the same vein — touting the conclusion that “daily exercise significantly improves pupils test scores.” And another finding that...
Suppose instead students were rewarded for cooperation. Not collaboration; this is just the school-level emulation of the creation of cliques and corporations. Cooperation, which is a common and ad hoc creation of interactions and exchanges for mutual value. Cooperative behaviours include exchanges of goods and services, agreement on open standards and protocols, sharing of resources...
The following table represents the responses in 2005 of representative samples of American adults, state legislators, school board members, and school superintendents. They were asked to rate the relative importance of 8 broad public school goals. Note the emphasis on things other than just basic knowledge and skills. I’m guessing that we would get similar...
We have become a nation of test-givers, assessing student performance and knowledge in a way that is largely exempt from any kind of real-life application. As important as standard assessments are, relevant and authentic assessments are even more vital. Educators must give assignments that engage students’ curiosity and imagination instead of those that hold little...