assessing assessment

From reading Zhao's article "Playing 'Catch-Up' with Developing Nations Makes No Sense for the U.S.", I was left with some important thoughts about assessing the state of assessment in our country. I have always struggled with the ideas behind NCLB and all students "college-ready", and reading this article helped crystallize some of my feelings into more coherent thoughts.

Zhao says "There is a tendency to try to reduce something complex, like education, to something simple like a test score, and then use it to rank people and institutions." We definitely see this in our public school systems. How do we assess school effectiveness? Through AYP, based on SAT or state test scores. How do we rank students? By GPA, largely based on classroom tests, and SAT scores. Are these true measures of the school and student education? I believe not.

Even at its most basic, looking at a school's mission statement shows that there is much more involved in education than is testable. At my school, we focus on academics, but also civic and social expectations. We expect our students to learn how to set and reach goals, have civic responsibility, contribute to community, and work both collaboratively and independently. Are these testable? Can we have really successful education that doesn't show up on assessments? I believe so.

What this emphasis on testing and ranking leads to, as Zhao highlighted in China, is a lack of non-core curricular focuses. Chinese schools don't have art, music, or performing arts programs. Chinese students don't do much beyond reading and rote memorization. Our schools in this country might not measure up on tests simply because we include different programs and elective studies - does this mean we should measure up by getting rid of art and music? This question is being addressed in my school beginning with getting rid of advisory to provide more class time, since we continue to not meet standards. But, in the big picture, are students benefiting from increased focus on assessment and the loss of programs and opportunities - I believe not.

Zhao speaks, as few can, about comparing education in different countries. He begins by discussing what it was like growing up in China. There was such a competition for educational advancement, it was all about the test. While education was assessment-driven, other needed aspirations were highly underrepresented. He says "China has an overproduction of college students and it needs more students with vocational-technical skills." He even says that while he is valuable here in our country, they type of knowledge he has would get him nowhere back home - he knows nothing useful, when it comes to living in China.

Is this what is happening due to NCLB? We are trying to make all students college-ready, but is that appropriate? Don't we need other types of adults in our future communities? Some students really need life skills, or basic survival as an independent adult instruction. Some students need programs that address vocational-technical skills. I feel very lucky to work in a district that has a technical school option, but what about smaller districts that do not have those opportunities for kids? We are pushing students to be college-ready but not world-ready.

I see this in my district as well. We are a multi-high school district, and one of our schools is a coastal, Downeast, struggling high school. Their population is small, and the community is very vocational, especially with the fishing industry. Students and teachers, as well as the surrounding community, struggle with the federal and state legislation imposed on them because it simply is not appropriate. As Zhao says, what we should be doing is "stimulate local innovations and identify different models hat would work in different situations." For students in this community, it would be much more appropriate to be learning material that will prepare them for what they are really going to be doing - in many cases, this is fishing. Most won't go to college - or will attend community college - is that such a bad thing? Of course, going down this road brings up many questions - college-ready doesn't necessarily mean they have to go to college, does it? What about those students who want to pursue higher education? Should they be tracked? How can a small district afford to diversify? And so forth.

Needless to say, I do have problems with the high-stakes testing for both students and schools. As an educator, I feel it ties my hands and keeps me from teaching more, and teaching better, because we are focused on the test. As a parent, I worry - what if my child is a poor test-taker? She's only three, but if she can't measure up on paper, does that mean she is doomed to remedial studies despite being very intelligent? Is that what this heavy emphasis on testing is doing to our kids? Will she begin to feel dumb if she doesn't assess well? I think Zhao makes a great argument for the United States to begin looking at what we do well, instead of trying to test how we measure up. China, a developing nation, is trying to move away from their current assessment-drive model in many cases, so why are we, a developed nation, moving towards that model? It is backward - let's start assessing the true meaning and power of assessment.

20 minute assignment - definition of curriculum

20 Minute Assignment - Google Curriculum

We were asked to spend approximately 20 minutes online looking at curriculum and definitions of it. Below, you will see the various definitions I found. After reviewing them, many began by initially focusing only on the list of courses. Others went further to specify that it was courses as well as their content. However, the ones I liked the most talked about curriculum being a learning plan, consisting of what students must know but also what they must be able to do. This mimics language I am familiar with, and is how I am used to thinking about curriculum. The learning process cannot be separated from the content, in my opinion.

- Wikipedia * In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard.
- WiseGeek * Curriculum has numerous definitions, which can be slightly confusing. In its broadest sense a curriculum may refer to all courses offered at a school. This is particularly true of schools at the university level, where the diversity of a curriculum might be an attractive point to a potential student. A curriculum may also refer to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in order to pass a certain level of education. For example, an elementary school might discuss how its curriculum, or its entire sum of lessons and teachings, is designed to improve national testing scores or help students learn the basics. An individual teacher might also refer to his or her curriculum, meaning all the subjects that will be taught during a school year.
- Merriam-Webster * 1: the courses offered by an educational institution
2: a set of courses constituting an area of specialization
- Definitions of curriculum on the Web:
course of study: an integrated course of academic studies; "he was admitted to a new program at the university"
In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults.
- curricular - Of, relating to, or following a curriculum
en.
- A program of courses to be taken in pursuit of a degree or other objective.
- Structured teaching plan for a course.

- A complete program of learning which includes the following components
- The coherent set of courses that make up a degree program or departmental offerings on a subject.
- refers to both the content (the material to be learned), and process of learning (the actions and resources involved in teaching and learning).

- is the content of the components or modules which the learner will follow.
- Contents of a course or program.
- means the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives.


Irony

Our curriculum readings this week have focused on innovation versus doing what's always been done, and in this mindset, I came across an article this week that pins it down to a point - a very small point - indeed, a period.

A colleague of mine came into my room the other day with an article she had read that she found interesting. It is called "Space Invaders" and was posted on Slate.com. In this article, the author wrote about writing conventions - is it correct to use a single space after a period or two? Historically, due to typesetting irregularities, two spaces was the convention as it indicated more fully the change in sentence. However, now that typesetting is much more regulated, and the majority of fonts (excluding courier) have accounted for the irregularities of some narrow letters like "l" and "i", the double space, the author argues, is no longer needed.

While this is a very small point, his article goes on to note that in asking people why they continue to double-space after a period, despite the change in writing conventions on a professional level (MLA and other writing guides were cited as now supporting a single-space) many people responded that it was what THEY had been taught, so it was what they continue to do. The one teacher interviewed confessed to knowing that the new convention was a single-space, but continuing to teach students to double-space because it was what she had been taught in school.

This shocked me. I was taught there were five kingdoms in Biology when I was in high school, but we now know there are not. I don't teach 5 kingdoms because that's what I was taught - I teach 3 domains and at LEAST 6 kingdoms, while also presenting students with the idea that by the time they graduate, pursue post-secondary studies, etc., there may be many more. One kingdom alone has been proposed to include over 30 discrete groups that should be separately categorized! I would be doing my students a disservice to teach only 5 kingdoms. Is the double-spacing teacher doing her students s disservice as well? Or, is there a difference between skills and conventions versus factual information?

So many of us entered teaching and drew immediately on what we had been taught in high school. To get away from that means that we need to continue to learn - we must truly be "life-long" learners in order to teach well. This means embedding today's technology in a realistic way, not simply as an additive piece, and also presenting current facts, skills, and conventions while instructing students that they too must continue to learn into their future - we live in a fast-changing world, and this necessitates life-long learning.

To conclude, I would like to point out that despite my argument, I double-spaced after each period in this article. Old habits die hard?

Link to VoiceThread introduction

https://voicethread.com/?#e1650870

Experience with Curriculum Thus Far

My experience with curriculum development thus far has been equivalent to a love-hate relationship. I love curricula, and enjoy the development and design process. When it is science-related, I truly feel that my creativity and enthusiasm are sparked by the process, and I relish the collaboration with my colleagues and the brainstorming process. Figuring out how to interest and engage students, deciding how to address difficult topics, and finding ways to tie the content to reality are always somewhat fun for me.

However, with that said, I do feel frustration when it comes to curriculum development and design. This has evolved over the years as new standards are constantly changed and updated, and so the work always has to be re-done. At first, when I held my initial teaching position at a high school in Georgia, I will admit to putting a great deal of effort and attention into aligning my teaching with the "Quality Core Curriculum" as outlined to me. All my content, activities, and assessments were linked directly to a standard, and I paid very careful attention to this. Things that I wanted to teach, I couldn't, because they were not part of the required curriculum. Things that I had no preparation to teach, however, had to be included. This was challenging for me, but I readily complied. I even made an incredibly huge matrix linking all activities in a spreadsheet to the different standards, to prove linkages existed for each lesson. This was an incredible dedication of both time and effort, and I felt that I was preparing myself for a much easier road in the future.

Then, the curriculum was re-written. Then I moved to Maine. Then the Learning Results were re-written. Then the National Standards were stressed. Then we got new textbooks. Then the Core Curriculum began to come up. SATs. Science Augmentation. The list goes on and on. It has been disheartening to say the least to constantly be re-doing the work instead of refining and perfecting. Adding in staff turnover, administrator turnover, and district focusing goals, it has been very frustrating to work on curriculum as I have gained teaching experience. While in many ways I have grown professionally (classroom management, professional development experiences, community connections, pursuance of a Master's Degree, leadership positions and committee membership) as far as curriculum development goes it always seems to feel like the first time - revision for newly developed standards.

I think in teaching, we constantly have to be on guard against the feeling that this, too, shall change. I believe it is this way with curriculum design. While it may be difficult to retain as much enthusiasm as I initially had, I need to remember that each time, it is as important to ensure that my lessons are tied to standards.

The other frustration I have is that I have no control over the writing of these curricular standards. From my point of view, some strangers have been locked in a meeting and have decided what is important for me to teach. I would love to have some control over the content that is offered, and it seems that I know what my students need more than these mystery people! For example, I know at my school there is a GREAT need for sex education. We have students each year having babies, and an incredible lack of knowledge about human anatomy and reproductive physiology. While it is part of the health curriculum, I cannot see why it isn't more stressed in the Biological Sciences! If I controlled the world, (ha ha) or at least my own curriculum, I would include a great deal more anatomy and physiology, and health concerns, and less of the biochemistry of photosynthesis and cellular respiration. It seems as if the people writing curriculum standards are out of touch with the general student population. From this point, I could spring-board into many directions (all students college-ready? high stakes testing? NCLB?) but I will restrain myself as I think I have already explored some tangents to the central question.

Besides writing curriculum I have been on a number of committees involved with curricular development and design. I was part of the CIA (Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment) Team that served as a liaison between the departments and the district curriculum coordinator. This was a fulfilling role as I was very much "in-the-know" but in the end I am not sure what we really accomplished. I have participated in numerous textbook selection committees, and have even designed new courses, like the AP Environmental Science program now offered at our high school.

I love designing lessons. I like investigating content and trying to find unique, insightful, creative ways to offer it. I enjoy traditional projects as well as novel approaches. I understand the need for some organization to ensure that all students get a basic level of education. However, I find the oversight and bureaucracy of the process frustrating, the high-stakes testing inappropriate for many students and an inadequate measure of teacher effectiveness, and the constant change tiresome. I am still an optimist though, and look forward to moving into administration to try to provide teachers with some clarity and focus in this regard, and perhaps even influence leadership in the community to promote positive changes in our school programming.