Assessing Progress

1
Assessing Progress
Chapter Twelve

• The Importance of Social Class and Social Status

2
Rationale for Broadened Definitions of Assessment

• Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in
  1983, the debate about how well our children are
  learning has become both ubiquitous and
  emotional.
• This is the case despite the fact that the
  assessment of student progress has always been of
  central importance to educators.

3
Accountability and the Educational Standards
Movement

• The movement emerged as a result of a large
  number of studies of schooling in the 1980s.
• President George H.W. Bush convened a national
  governors conference in1989.
• This group produced a document called Goals 2000,
  with suggestions for improving Americas schools
  in eight specific areas.

Continued
4

• The National Council on Education Standards and
  Testing, convened by Congress in 1992, concluded
  that creating national standards and assessments
  was both feasible and highly desirable.
• In1994, the goals from Goals 2000 were written
  into the Educate America Act, which awarded
  states additional money for education and gave
  them considerable flexibility in how the money
  could be spent.

Continued
5

• The Educate America Act was based on five
  principles
• All students can learn.
• Lasting improvements depend on school-based
  leadership.
• Simultaneous top-down and bottom-up reform is
  necessary.
• Strategies must be locally developed,
  comprehensive, and coordinated.
• The whole community must be involved in
  developing strategies for improvement.

Continued
6

• Central to the whole idea were several beliefs
• State and local districts should set high
  standards for achievement.
• Testing should be conducted to see how well
  students were achieving.
• Schools, teachers, and students should be held
  accountable for results.

7
The Case for Standardized Testing

• It is based on the belief that American students
  are not competing well with students from other
  industrialized nations.
• One argument for why this is so is that American
  schools are too child-centered and have too much
  variety in curriculum.
• A second argument is that poor, immigrant, and
  minority students are not being served well by
  American schools testing is perceived as a means
  to improve that service.

Continued
8

• The appeal of objective and standardized tests
  is strong among business and government leaders.
• The belief in standardized tests rests on a
  conviction that they actually measure learning.
• Requirements for the reporting of standardized
  test scores now include reporting scores by race
  and income.
• Reports are also required to indicate the gaps
  between and the progress of various subgroups.

9
The Case Against Standardized Testing

• Concerned educators and some well-informed
  politicians question the benefits of standardized
  tests based on
• A gap between the stated purpose of a test and
  what it actually measures
• A possibility of cultural bias in the questions
  on a given test
• Questionable uses of standardized tests
• The narrow approach and application of tests

Continued
10

• Critics also argue that standardized tests cannot
  measure complex thinking skills that they often
  neglect the context in which knowledge and skills
  can be used and that they cannot measure the
  ability to connect one idea to another.
• Two results are common
• Students dont recognize out-of-context
  questions.
• Thinking skills, the ability to solve problems,
  and the ability to synthesize information are not
  well tested.

11
The Case for Multiple Forms of Assessment

• ?Three ideas are central to the argument for
  multiple forms of assessment
• ?Students must leave schools with more than
  low-level basic knowledge.
• ?Young people must learn the skills of
  cooperation and collaboration for life in an
  interdependent world.
• ?Greater accuracy in assessment across cultural
  groups must be achieved.

Continued
12

• Proponents argue that teachers are most often the
  best judges of student performance.
• Teachers, however, must develop the skills
  necessary to make informed and accurate judgments
  in a variety of contexts and across a variety of
  groups.
• Comprehensive approaches and methods of
  assessment must be developed.

13
Characteristics of Classrooms that Use Multiple
Forms of Assessment

• It is important to distinguish between assessment
  and testing
• Assessment implies a comprehensive,
  individualized evaluation of a persons strengths
  and weaknesses it is formative, used as feedback
  for both teachers and students.
• Testing implies standardization it compares an
  individuals scores to others scores it tends
  to be summative, a final statement.

14
Pedagogies Old and New

• Teaching and learning activities are often
  project-based, open-ended, and ongoing.
• Students and teachers discuss progress on complex
  problems.
• There is an assumption that the entire community
  might have access to student work.

15
Roles Old and New

• Students have a substantial hand in determining
  their own work and evaluations.
• In the development of portfolios, teachers and
  students work together to select the elements of
  the students work that best demonstrate learning
  and/or mastery.
• Parents may become active in the evaluation
  process by reviewing their childs work and
  making comments or suggestions to the teacher.

16
Place of Content Knowledge Old and New

• In classrooms that use multiple forms of
  assessment, content knowledge is most often
  acquired in the pursuit of other, project-based
  goals.
• Effective teachers provide a context and
  environment in which students acquire knowledge
  that goes beyond their current experienceeven
  beyond any perceived need to know something.
• Student work may be used as content to teach
  others.

17
Assessment Old and New

• Often, teachers and students work together to
  arrive at acceptable standards for good work.
• Students are evaluated on their ability to solve
  problems, their ability to clearly demonstrate
  how thinking was done, or on how well they have
  collaborated with others.
• Time limits and criteria of acceptability are
  often broader or more flexible.
• Multiple conferences with parents are often an
  ongoing part of the assessment process.

18
Perspectives on Means for Assessing Student
Learning

• ?Among all the issues involved in assessment,
  several stand out as truly basic. Chief among
  these are the importance of criteria in any kind
  of assessment and the reasons for grading.

19
The Importance of Criteria

• Determining the specific criteria for
  satisfactory performance is critical because in
  alternative forms of assessment there may be more
  than one right answer.
• Educators must ask themselves
• What does it mean to master a specific ability or
  skill?
• What would a student who has mastered a concept
  or skill be able to do?

Continued
20

• Making judgments about the appropriateness of
  student responses and other work requires that
  teachers a) know the criteria well, and b) are
  able to see student work from a variety of
  angles.
• Communicating achievement to students and parents
  is also important.
• Conferences are useful, as are collections of
  work over time.
• Assigning a single grade, however, is often
  difficult, if not impossible.

21
The Issue of Grading

• Grading and reporting were virtually unknown
  until the middle of the 1800s for most of
  western history, students were questioned orally,
  in part to see where they needed more work.
• Grading emerged as school populations grew, and
  as new ideas of scientific measurement gained
  popularity the purpose of grading was to see a
  finish point in the students acquisition of
  knowledge.

Continued
22

• Grading may have multiple purposes
• Grading to sort, to categorize students into
  groups, sometimes for instruction and sometimes
  for promotion
• Grading to motivate, the idea that students will
  work harder to get a better grade
• Grading as feedback so that students can learn
  more effectively

Continued
23

• Questions to ask when thinking about grading
  (Kohn)
• Level I superficialhow to grade a students
  work the assumption is that everything a student
  does must have a grade
• Level II begins to question whether grading is
  really necessary or even useful
• Level III moves beyond a discussion of grading
  and begins to question the real purposes of
  evaluation

24
Perspectives on Social Class and Social Status

• Most Americans believe they live in a classless
  society.
• Upward mobility is clearly possible through hard
  work.
• Nevertheless, we know there are variations in
  economic standards of living, in status of
  different occupations, and in expectations or
  life chances among American citizens.

25
Definitions of Social Class

• Social class is one kind of a stratification
  system that layers the population in terms of
  worth or value.
• Assignment to one social class or another is
  often done by outside observers of the population.

Continued
26

• Traditional social class markers include
• Family income
• Prestige of ones fathers occupation
• Prestige of the neighborhood one lives in
• The power one has to achieve ones ends in times
  of conflict
• The level of schooling achieved by the familys
  head

Continued
27

• For purposes of analysis, American society can be
  divided into five social classes
• A very small upper class or social elite
• A somewhat larger upper middle classprofessionals
  , corporate managers, or leading scientists
• A large middle classwhite collar workers, small
  business owners, teachers, social workers,
  nurses, sales and clerical workers, etc.

Continued
28

• A somewhat smaller working classblue-collar
  workers, employees in low-paid service
  occupations, temporary employees, and those whose
  income level means relatively constant struggle
• A lower class, sometimes called the working
  poorthose who work at low-paying jobs, as well
  as those who may not work at all. The latter are
  sometimes called the underclass.

29
Social Class and Minority Group Membership

• The issue of class is complicated by a fairly
  large overlap among lower-middle class, working
  class, and lower class membership and membership
  in minority groups.
• The issue here is that it may not be individual
  initiative that results in lower class status,
  but structural oppression of particular groups of
  people.

30
The Working Poor

• Defined as those people who do work, but in jobs
  that are minimum wage or slightly above with no
  benefits and little job security
• Recent changes in welfare laws, while encouraging
  many to enter the workforce, may also account for
  the increased number of working people facing
  poverty.

31
Social Class and Child-Rearing Practices

• People who share similar socioeconomic status
  often share similar cultural knowledge,
  attitudes, and values.
• Parents from different class backgrounds
  emphasize different values when raising their
  children.
• Social class does not necessarily determine
  success in school (or in life) but, in general,
  there needs to be some other influence that
  strengthens a childs will to succeed and
  expectation of success.

32
Definitions of Social Status

• Social status refers to a hierarchical position
  in society (or ones social group) determined not
  by income but by prestige, social esteem, and/or
  honor.
• Ones status may differ from the viewpoints of
  different observers star athletes, for example,
  may be accorded different status by students and
  teachers.

33
The Importance of Teacher Expectations

• Teacher expectation refers to the attributions
  that teachers make about the future behavior or
  academic achievement of their students.
• When a teacher expects a student to do poorly (or
  well), and the student does in fact live up to
  that expectation, it is called a self-fulfilling
  prophecy.

34
Perspectives on Multiple Forms of Assessment
Demand vs. Support

• ?Kohn suggests that certain classroom
  orientations distinguish between what we expect
  (demand) students to do, and what we as educators
  can do to help (support) student learning.

Continued
35

• In the demand model
• Students are perceived as workers who are obliged
  to do a better job.
• Students who do not succeed are said to have
  chosen not to study or not to have earned a given
  grade.
• Responsibility is removed from the teacher and
  attention is deflected away from the curriculum
  and the context in which learning is supposed to
  occur.

Continued
36

• In the support model
• The assumption is that students are active
  contributors to the learning process.
• Teachers are responsible for guiding and
  stimulating students natural curiosity and
  desire to learn.
• Teaching and learning become child- or
  student-centered.
• The goal is to help students build on their
  desire to make sense of and become competent in
  their world.

37
Ethical Issues

• All assessment is inherently subjective, which
  may not be an entirely bad thing.
• When subjectivity becomes bias, however, ethical
  issues emerge
• Labeling of children for special education
  services, for example, may be necessary, but can
  also result in overrepresentation of ethnic and
  language minority students.
• Standardized testing often results in the
  assignment of inaccurate labels.

Continued
38

• Attributions made on the basis of any kind of
  assessment may, like attributions made in order
  to categorize anyone because of culture, or
  language, or disability, be flawed by prejudice.
• Any assessment should take into consideration the
  fact that children develop at different rates.
• Assessments made too quickly on insufficient data
  can also be inaccurate, misleading, and damaging.

39
Something to Think About

• In many ways, an individuals cultural
  experiences (defined broadly) determine the kinds
  of abilities that are important and are therefore
  learned, as well as the context and strategies in
  which they are expressed.