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.             

 

How Teacher Pay Scales Impact My Life

So I mentioned recently that teachers are paid based on years of experience and number of college credits earned.  I also mentioned that research has shown that these two categories have no correlation to student performance.  That means that a teacher with ten years of teaching experience and a bachelors degree could teach just as well or better than a teacher with 30 years of experience and a masters degree.

I am currently working with in this system to try and increase my pay.  I am taking the last class I need to hit the threshold for the next pay bump.  I do this because I see no other way to increase my earnings as a teacher.  I am not patient enough to wait for the yearly increases.   Particularly not early in my career where they are less frequent. 

That is another disappointment that I have with teacher pay.  My division's pay scale offers no raise for teachers in their 1, 2, or 3 years of teaching.  Yet research has shown that these are incredibly formative years for new teachers.  The first pay bump comes at the start of your fourth year, which here in Virginia, is when you earn your long term contract.

I am looking forward to the day when pay in education is a reflection of your worth as a teacher of students and not a reflection of your years in the profession and your level of formal education.  

Wealth is New

I am taking a class through the Foundation for Teaching Economics entitled "Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?"  One idea from the course for all of you to consider, poverty has been the norm throughout history while wealth has not.   

The idea of wealth being as widespread as it is today is rather new.  For a long, long time almost all of humanity lived in poverty.

Helps you appreciate what you do have.  

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?              

As the amount of information grows, so does our need for eachother

We consume a lot of information in the course of our day.  More so now then at any other time in the history of man.  We need each other more than ever to help make sense of it.  

A recent theme that has come out of my small group is the idea that the Bible must be interpreted and understood as a group of believers and not as individuals.  I tend to agree with that sentiment because I gain a far deeper and nuanced understanding of stories and passages after hearing the perspective of others.  I think this same idea applies when exploring and trying to learn from the volumes of information that bombards us today. 

While watching West Wing the other night President Bartlet quoted Ephesians 5: 21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." This presents the idea that we should be serving one another or putting the needs of others before our own.  Again, I think this is very important today because so much information is out there.  We need to find the areas of knowledge that we care about and are knowledgeable in and we need to share our insights in those areas with others who are willing to do the same.  As Seth Godin puts it, we need to find a tribe.     

Couple this with a comment posted by an acquaintance from William and Mary.  He was asking if their is evidence supporting the idea that education can enhance the ability of the human mind to process information.  I think the enhancement comes from learning together.  Yes you can learn on your own, but I don't think you do it as well as when you do it in a group. That to me is the true value of education in a public context.  We provide each other with experiences and ideas that we would not otherwise interact with.  By learning together we learn more.   

If we take the idea of approaching learning in groups, connect that with the idea of serving one another found in Ephesians, and then share that learning with each other publicly in our areas of expertise we make all of us better.  

That is why I appreciate it when friends share items on their Google reader feeds, post articles on Facebook, and blog about their experiences.  I plan to keep doing the same.  Will you join me?