Educators: If you could get rid of one thing next school year to make things less traumatic and more manageable during the pandemic, what is the one thing you'd get rid of and why would that one thing be state testing?
I’ve been trying to find what my Twitter friend Jennifer Binis describes as Black parents asking for standardized testing from a historical perspective. I will in good faith ask her, because I know she’s an educational historian and scholar. When she and I have had the conversation and exchange of ideas about the state standardized testing, created by Pearson and presumably based on Common Core Standards, all I have to offer are my own observational and test data: the test sucks. It’s biased, racist, and does not achieve the educational equity that may have been its original intent. If we go by intent versus impact, its impact is overwhelmingly damaging. During the COVID19 shut down, the testing was either cancelled outright or put on hold. It costs districts millions. It takes up weeks out of the 180 days of educational instruction time, and speaking for the ELA (reading/writing) uses dissected and random autopsies of texts for students to show their “skills” but never strategies, background or contextual knowledge. Teachers struggle to teach strategies, background or contextual knowledge because of this cursed assessment.
What would many of us like to see instead? Project-based learning based on cross-content disciplines, portfolios, etc. There are many other more authentic assessments, both formative and summative, that we can look toward.
John Hattie’s learning target and success criteria work may be misused or misguided, and I am constantly searching on ways to improve these concepts of purpose for students.
One of my personal professional challenges is to practice and pursue the best possible use of learning targets and success criteria. And it’s come to my attention that most educators have strong opinions on their use, prescribed wording, and how students employ them.
Effective vs. ineffective goal-setting. The aim is to ensure that students understand goals and how current activities support those goals. Ideally, then, the student has perspective and sees value in the work: they understand the why of the current work in order to find it more meaningful and to facilitate purposeful learning, and they have a touchstone for gauging progress (and thus use of time).
Think about any long meeting. We have an agenda not only to remind us of what we must accomplish but what action items should follow. Why is that useful to provide a written agenda at the start – and, importantly, keep referring to? Because we easily lose track of time or focus unwisely on less important matters than the goals require. In other words, an ongoing reminder of larger purpose (and a double-check on whether current talk is on-task and a good use of our time) is always wise, given human propensity to get lost in the moment. True for teachers as well as learners.Thus, the bottom line test of the effect of any school policy about goal posting is whether or not students learn better and have greater perspective because of it. For example, when asked, can students say why an activity is being done and why it matters and how it connects to prior work?
Alas, having hundreds of times asked students in class Why are you doing and learning this? I cay say that the results are not pretty. I dunno is the most common. (Older kids sometimes sullenly retort: I dunno; go ask the teacher.) And this is often in schools where there are posters on the wall or objectives on the board.
Continually trying to encourage students to read–and talk about ideas. Why is this so hard?
Back to Learning Maps. The author of the article, Azima Thakor, is a French teacher in Canada. She and her colleagues are practicing a gradeless classroom. When asked, her students say:
“Place yourself where you believe you’re doing in the class. The Learning Map helps with self-evaluation. The Learning Map helps communicate how you think you’re doing, the teacher checks in, then we can talk about relating that to a number. I like doing it because I know where I am so there are no surprises – I got what I deserved; I expect the result because I talked to the teacher about it; I know how I’m doing in class.”
Learning Targets are not ‘activities,’ but they are assessments. The trick is allowing students to understand and maintain agency in their success. This doesn’t mean a wild-west free-for-all, but allow the continuum of progress. In a robotic world, a student would parrot the LT/SC and “get it.” I like the idea of reframing the “I Can” statements:
If a standard calls for multiple independent actions (e.g., I can identify a dog. I can identify a cat.), split it up into multiple learning targets.
Make sure all learning targets are in student-friendly language, because we ultimately want students to be able to leverage these targets to drive their own learning through self-assessment (assessment as learning).
To promote inquiry, present each learning target in the form of a question. (“Can I…?” instead of “I can…”)
Just in time, during our ELL Endorsement class yesterday, we reviewed various assessment protocols and terms. They weren’t unfamiliar, but a timely reminder. Funny, that.
Two, at the top:
Reliable.
Valid.
As the man said, “Houston, we may have a problem.”
Is the SBA test, or Smarter Balanced Assessment, actually Smart, Balanced or a valid/reliable Assessment? Here are some resources for you to draw your own conclusion, with a dash of my own observations.
Ensures that vital information is provided to educators, families, students, and communities through annual statewide assessments that measure students’ progress toward those high standards.
Yelp. About that. I was told I was ‘teaching to the test’ when I offered my resources about the brief write rubrics so we could help students grow as writers, the resources I wanted to share did not find a forum in my building last year (or this year, either.) But okay–it’s still good stuff, and there are many ways that the Common Core and SBA have some challenging and rigorous questions. I just wish it wasn’t all at once, in secret, but little assessments over the course of the year (i-ready doesn’t count) that show growth.
Think about it: instead of a minimum of four days, with three-hour testing blocks during the month of May, there were smaller assessments, open, transparent, and available for PLC discussions, to show student growth? And what if—WHAT IF — Federal dollars weren’t tied to the scores? If accountability is the order of the day, I would wager most teachers have no issue with accountability as long as their professional judgment and expertise drive the assessment and continuing instructional decisions.
Plus sides (with caveats)
It is essentially a reading comprehension test, even for many of the math questions. If we continue to build strong literacy programs with this focus, that is a plus. However, literacy does not need to mean solely text: it should include multiple pathways and access points for all learners and abilities.
There has been a huge increase in the resources available for educators. Many of the questions are aligned with Common Core.
It’s expensive in terms of instructional time, financial, and stress for students, parents, and teachers. And administrators.
It may not be reliable or valid. It’s chock full of inaccuracies.
Educators may not be accurately helping students prepare for it. (And this could lead to further undermining of teachers as professionals, implementing more canned or scripted programs.)
It is not transparent. This goes against everything Hattie, et. al prescribe for student and teaching effectiveness: know the targets and criteria for success, and allow students to monitor and reflect. This style of summative, opaque assessment flies in the face of that research and best practices.
My own conclusions? More of a wish list, I suppose.
I wish…there are more collaboration instead of isolation about assessment.
I wish…there were alternative pathways for all students with varying abilities and needs to have access to assessment and instruction that challenges, celebrates and is based on growth.
I wish…much, much time and money were spent on this.
