Why haven't schools created a unified data system that tracks student progress through multiple subjects and the individual components that make up the content that we teach?
I am envisioning a system where student results are automatically included and accessible by all who interact with this student. This system goes beyond grades. It combines the Khan academy model, with the School of One model, and gives students freedom to pursue concepts and skills at their own pace, rather than the pace of the teacher. Students are tested through adaptive means that help to pinpoint exactly where they are. Teachers enter assignment data for things that computer cannot grade into the system as well. This would be more of a grade like portion, but it would have clearly defined parameters similar to rubrics.
Why don't we have this yet? What is stopping us?
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Smarter Tests Make for Smarter Schools
Our current standardized, high stakes tests do a disservice to our students. They don't measure student growth and they penalize students who develop at a rate other than what society deems to be the norm. We should get rid of those tests and replace them with a testing system that actually measures student progress from year to year rather than measuring if schools can meet basic minimum thresholds.
A testing system that measures progress would help to better identify teachers and practices that have value. It would also help students see how their learning builds from year to year. It would provide relevant and meaningful feedback for teachers. In short, it would provide better data from which students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the greater community could make better decisions.
I like one particular option that creates a testing system similar to that of the GRE. It would be computerized and would work to locate the level of the students knowledge by adjusting the difficulty of questions and concepts based on student responses. To do this the test would need to take the skills necessary for success in a discipline and break them down into their component parts. Those parts would then have to be categorized in terms of difficulty from the first testing year up until the last testing year. For example, all the math concepts taught from say second grade through twelfth grade would be included. Multiple question types would need to be created for each concept and then all of them would be compiled into the program. Students would take the test from the same program every year.
Right now, the current tests don't measure student growth for smart students very accurately so we don't have a picture of how much they actually learned from their teacher. Because each test given each year is different, you can not measure student growth from year to year with much accuracy. By giving the same test, year after year, you start to get a picture of students learning growth.
I am looking forward to the day that education starts getting smarter about how it collects data.
A testing system that measures progress would help to better identify teachers and practices that have value. It would also help students see how their learning builds from year to year. It would provide relevant and meaningful feedback for teachers. In short, it would provide better data from which students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the greater community could make better decisions.
I like one particular option that creates a testing system similar to that of the GRE. It would be computerized and would work to locate the level of the students knowledge by adjusting the difficulty of questions and concepts based on student responses. To do this the test would need to take the skills necessary for success in a discipline and break them down into their component parts. Those parts would then have to be categorized in terms of difficulty from the first testing year up until the last testing year. For example, all the math concepts taught from say second grade through twelfth grade would be included. Multiple question types would need to be created for each concept and then all of them would be compiled into the program. Students would take the test from the same program every year.
Right now, the current tests don't measure student growth for smart students very accurately so we don't have a picture of how much they actually learned from their teacher. Because each test given each year is different, you can not measure student growth from year to year with much accuracy. By giving the same test, year after year, you start to get a picture of students learning growth.
I am looking forward to the day that education starts getting smarter about how it collects data.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Teacher Pay Is Not Linked with Student Achievement
How irritated would you be to know that teachers are paid based on a standard that has no correlation to student performance as measured by standardized tests in math and reading?
What I mean is that teachers are paid based on a combination of years of experience and educational level attained. The more years you teach and the more college credits you earn, the more money you make. Yet no connection has been made in research demonstrating that someone with a masters degree is definitely going to be a better teacher than someone with a bachelors degree. Some research has shown that teachers do show some improvement in teaching performance between the first year and fifth year of teaching; however, research has been unable to demonstrate meaningful improvement after the fifth year in teacher quality. Teachers are paid based on standards that have little to do with student performance.
I mention all this because I saw that the Manhattan Institute for Policy research released a paper on a recent study supporting these findings. The key measure that they used to demonstrate student achievement were standardized test scores. A quick glance at the standardized tests used in Florida, the state covered by the study, finds that they only use multiple choice questions. Multiple choice questions cannot effectively measure skills like creativity and the ability to create new material, both of which are considered higher order thinking skills.
So that leads me to this question, are these research findings actually telling us years of teaching experience and college credits are worthless when it comes to predicting teacher performance or is it telling us that they are worthless when it comes to predicting student performance on imperfect multiple choice tests?
What I mean is that teachers are paid based on a combination of years of experience and educational level attained. The more years you teach and the more college credits you earn, the more money you make. Yet no connection has been made in research demonstrating that someone with a masters degree is definitely going to be a better teacher than someone with a bachelors degree. Some research has shown that teachers do show some improvement in teaching performance between the first year and fifth year of teaching; however, research has been unable to demonstrate meaningful improvement after the fifth year in teacher quality. Teachers are paid based on standards that have little to do with student performance.
I mention all this because I saw that the Manhattan Institute for Policy research released a paper on a recent study supporting these findings. The key measure that they used to demonstrate student achievement were standardized test scores. A quick glance at the standardized tests used in Florida, the state covered by the study, finds that they only use multiple choice questions. Multiple choice questions cannot effectively measure skills like creativity and the ability to create new material, both of which are considered higher order thinking skills.
So that leads me to this question, are these research findings actually telling us years of teaching experience and college credits are worthless when it comes to predicting teacher performance or is it telling us that they are worthless when it comes to predicting student performance on imperfect multiple choice tests?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
History Sacrificed on Altar of Math and Reading
The National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) released the history testing information today. As a history lover and teacher it made me sad. For those not associated with the education world, NAEP provides some of the best data for analyzing school performance because of the way they go about testing. Some highlights from the eighth grade results:
What do you think about the results? I appreciate that you took time to read my post.
- Only 17 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above the proficient level
- 31 percent of eighth grade students scored below basic
- Interestingly, males did slightly better at the extremes than females. That is a greater percentage of females scored below basic and a greater percentage of males scored proficient or better. The differences between the genders were only a few percentage points.
- Not surprisingly, family income was a strong predictor of scores. Fifty percent of free lunch students scored below basic while only 19 percent of those students not eligible for free lunch scored below basic.
- I can not back this statement up from the NAEP data, but NBC News commented tonight that the reason for these disappointing numbers is that reading and math get ten times as much instructional time as history does.
What do you think about the results? I appreciate that you took time to read my post.
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