Assessing Progress

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Assessing Progress

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Title: Assessing Progress

1
Assessing Progress
Chapter Fourteen

The Quest to Improve Schools for All Children

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
2
The No Child Left Behind Act (2001)

The most far-reaching, controversial, and
potentially expensive effort to reform public
education, includes
Accountability provisions, mainly accomplished
through repeated testing of all students,
especially in reading and math
Uniform standards in all major content areas such
that accountability measures can be effective

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
3
Debate about the assessment focuses on

What kinds of assessment
What assessment actually means
How assessment should be implemented
How much time should be given to assessment
Who decides the answers to all of the above

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
4
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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
5
Accountability and the Educational Standards
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 in 1989
This group produced a document they called Goals
2000, with suggestions for improving Americas
schools in eight specific areas
cont.

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
6

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 legislation, the Educate America Act, which
awarded states additional money for education and
gave them considerable flexibility in how the
money could be spent
cont.

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
7

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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
8

Central to the whole idea were several beliefs
States 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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
9
Conflicting Assumptions about Standards (Meier)

Goals
Authority
Assessment
Enforcement
Equity
Effective Learning

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
10
Goals

Conventional View it is possible and desirable
to agree on a single definition of what
constitutes a well-educated 18-year-old
Alternative View In a democracy, there are
multiple, legitimate definitions of a good
education, and well-educated, and that
plurality is desirable

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
11
Authority

Conventional View the task of defining well
educated is best left to experts from the
industry and the major academic disciplines
Alternative View in fundamental questions of
education, experts should be subservient to
citizensincluding teachers, parents and other
family members, and community members

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
12
Assessment

Conventional View with a single definition in
place, it will be possible to compare individuals
and schools across communities
Alternative View standardized tests are too
simple and simpleminded for high-stakes
assessment of children and schools. Important
decisions about schooling should always be based
on multiple sources of data

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
13
Enforcement

Conventional View sanctions, too, need to be
standardized, removed from local, self-interested
parties
Alternative View sanctions should remain in the
hands of the local community, to be determined by
people who know the particulars of each child and
each situation

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
14
Equity

Conventional View expert-designed standards,
imposed through tests, are the best way to
achieve educational equity
Alternative View a fairer distribution of
resources is the principal means for achieving
educational equity

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
15
Effective Learning

Conventional View clear-cut expectations,
accompanied by automatic rewards and punishments
will produce greater effort, and effort is the
key to learning
Alternative View improved learning can best be
achieved by improved teaching and learning
relationships, by enlisting the energies of both
teachers and learners

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
16
The Case for Standardized Testing

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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
17
The Case for Standardized Testing

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 gaps
between and progress of various subgroups

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
18
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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
19
The Case against Standardized Testing

Critics also argue that standardized tests cannot
measure complex thinking skills that they often
neglect both 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 often dont recognize out-of-context
questions,
Students thinking skills, ability to solve
problems, and ability to synthesize are not well
tested

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
20
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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
21
The Case for Multiple Forms of Assessment

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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
22
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
to both teachers and students
Testing implies standardization it compares an
individuals scores to others scores it tends
to be summative, a final statement

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
23
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

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
24
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 those elements
of the students work that best demonstrates
learning and/or mastery
Parents may become active in the evaluation
process by being encouraged to review their
childs work and make comments or suggestions to
the teacher

(c) 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All
rights reserved. Cushner/McClelland/Safford,
Human Diversity in Education, 5/e
25
Place of Content Knowledge Old and New

In classrooms that use multiple forms of
assessment, content knowledge is most often
acquired in pursuit of other, project-based goals
Effective teachers provide the 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

Often, teachers and students work together to
arrive at acceptable standards for good work
Students are evaluated on their ability to solve
problems, 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

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 issue of the reasons for
grading.

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?

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

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

Grading may have multiple purposes
Grading to sort or to categorize students into
groups sometimes for instruction, 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

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

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

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

All assessment is inherently subjective, which
may not be an entirely bad thing
When subjectivity becomes biased, 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

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, may 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