Edutopia - April/May 2008 - (Page 34)

“We are totally for accountability, but we’ve got the wrong metrics,” says John Bransford, a professor of education at Seattle’s University of Washington who studies learning and designs assessments. “These tests are the biggest bottleneck to education reform.” Hobbled by History Jennifer Simone, a ⇒fth-grade teacher at Deer⇒eld Elementary School, in Edgewood, Maryland, is acutely aware of the limitations of standardized tests. Her curriculum must emphasize subjects for which the state accountability test measures pro⇒ciency—math, reading, and science. Social studies? Though the subject is on her master schedule, if there is a shortened school day, it gets dropped. Moreover, Simone says, the test scores don’t truly re⇓ect her students’ abilities and are too vague to help her pinpoint individual needs. She longs for an assessment that relies on more than just written problems, that could capture the more diverse skills visible in her classroom and valued in the workplace, such as artistic talent, computer savvy, and the know-how to diagnose and ⇒x problems with mechanical devices. Simone asks, “If we differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of all the learners, why aren’t we differentiating the test?” The simple, but unsatisfying, answer is history and ef⇒ciency. The tests that states use to satisfy NCLB descended from a model created in the 1920s designed to divide students into ability groups for more ef⇒cient tracking. Eighty years, two world wars, and a technological revolution (or two) later, the tests remain structurally the same. Policy makers revere the seeming objectivity of these tests, but the truth is the exams are not adept at determining either how well teachers have taught or students have learned—and test makers themselves will tell you so. Stephen Dunbar, an author of the in⇓uential Iowa Test of Basic Skills, explains that these tests can help illuminate statewide edu- This ICT Literacy Test item asks students to write a program controlling the operation of a parking-garage gate. Tech Literacy, the British Way The British government has tackled head-on the need to cultivate one essential twenty-ﬁrst-century skill: computer literacy. This year, U.K. schools began using the ICT Literacy Test for students ages 11–14 to gauge not only their mastery of technical skills but also their readiness to apply these skills effectively in everyday life and work. Far beyond the simple keyboarding tests of old, this exam challenges students to create presentations with text and images, manipulate databases, and write simple computer programming, among other skills. Basic techniques such as saving information, using email, and doing simple searches are included, too. The test, taken entirely on a computer, embeds these assignments in practical tasks, all done in the virtual town of Pepford. Sue Walton, project director at the United Kingdom’s National Assessment Agency, an arm of the Qualiﬁcations and Curriculum Authority (QCA), explains that the emphasis is on students “actually being asked to do things.” To begin, a student might receive an email from the director of the local visitor center assigning him to design a tourist brochure, or from the Pepford High School principal requesting that she assess the effectiveness of a recent campaign to promote eating fruit instead of candy. Then the student would use information, charts, photographs, and other resources available within the virtual Pepford world to solve the problem. Test makers designed a full set of generic software—an email program, a Web browser, a database manager, and more—to avoid endorsing any one commercial brand or favoring students who are already familiar with certain programs. Students’ responses are scored dynamically, meaning that the computer captures the process they use to answer a question. For instance, if the test asks pupils to use a database to ﬁgure how many musicians play rock music, they could do this simply by counting or by using the ﬁlter, sort, or query tools. The computer gives students credit for a right answer while also evaluating their process and producing an instant report on how basic or advanced their skills are. By the end of 2008, a battery of ﬁfteen- to thirty-minute tasks will be available to teachers on demand, anytime. The test is not mandatory, but it’s free, and Walton expects most schools to use it to help tailor instruction. Creating a test like this demands investment of time and money: All told, the QCA put about $46 million into this six-year project. —GR 34 EDUTOPIA APRIL/MAY 2008 cational trends, but are too broad a brush for the detail at the school and classroom level that NCLB demands. Assessment tests might show the overall effectiveness of the ninthgrade curriculum, for instance, or indicate trends within large demographic groups in that grade. But Dunbar says that when you get down to measuring the ability of students at Dallas’s Woodrow Wilson High School, for example, where you’re comparing this year’s ninth graders to last year’s, accountability test scores are not very useful. “They might tell you more about idiosyncrasies in that combination of kids than the level of achievement or the quality of teaching and learning that’s going on,” Dunbar explains. In other words, state governments, at the behest of the feds, are using tests to measure something they actually don’t measure very well, and then penalizing schools— and in some cases, denying students diplomas—based on the results. “Most of these policy makers are dirt ignorant regarding what these tests should and should not be used for,” W. James Popham, professor emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles and former president of the American Educational Research Association, told PBS’s Frontline in 2001. “And the tragedy is that they set up a system in which the primary indicator of educational quality is simply wrong.” There are several reasons the tests are imprecise (see “Where Standardized Tests Fail,” page 37). Some are technical: an ambiguous question, a misjudgment in setting the dif⇒culty level, a scoring error. The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, at Boston College, has documented cases when scoring errors sentenced children to summer school or caused them to miss graduation before the mistakes were discovered. Some reasons are personal: Simone, whose school narrowly dodged state intervention last year, has seen ⇒fth graders arrive on testing day angry about personal matters; others struggled to sit still during the test or

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - April 2008

Edutopia - April 2008 Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of the Class Cool Schools Design Reinventing the Big test The Daring Dozen Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jack Prelutsky

Edutopia - April 2008

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