"...I believe that high-stakes testing, in its current manifestation, is a serious threat to excellence and national standards. Unchecked, it will choke the life out of many excellent schools and drive gifted teachers out of classrooms. Unchecked, it will lead to debased and unnecessarily low standards.
"...A more rational approach is broad-based assessment, which involves multiple measures of what a student has learned. Assessment relies on teacher-made tests, teacher evaluations, student demonstrations, etc. all over an extended period of time, instead of one score on a single, largely machine-scored tests (even if it includes a writing test). Unfortunately, the supporters of high-stakes testing have more faith in machines than they do in teachers."
-- John Merrow
Choosing Excellence (Scarecrow Education, 2001)
Wow! I love this! In thinking about how our students are assessed for state-level assessments, I think of how awful it is for a student who comes to school regardless of not feeling well. I think of the student who found out on the morning of testing that their family pet had been run over. In either of these situations, how could a student truly show what they know/know how to do? To truly assess what a student knows, multiple assessments are supposed to be done over a period of time, rather than a week-long block of test, test, test. Whenever I've given an assessment to students, I walk around, I clarify questions, and I modify for individuality. How state-run assessments are administered is completely different than how most teachers would run an assessment in their classroom. Does this provide the best opportunity for students to show what they know?
I went to a George Tucker seminar earlier this year on formative assessment. One of his quotes has stuck with me, "If you're not going to use the data to drive and influence your instruction, then why assess?" The NECAP released items are great to see the misconception areas, the NWEA's tell you what strand students are really struggling with, but none of them are fully effective in helping us teach those current students those skills. Most of it is to improve your teaching and the future students' test scores. I think that we can find a better way to show accountability and prove that we are effecitvely education students. We don't teach or informally assess our students the way the standardized tests do, so should we change or should they change? I vote them.
ReplyDeleteFor a totally different take on the direction we are headed with high-stakes testing, a pending national curriculum, and "real" learning by students...see my latest post about the article on creativity in the July 19th issue of Newsweek.
ReplyDeleteJulie...you are right on the ball with this...and all of us have to get much more aggressive about what we should be doing.