Edustange

xkcd almost always makes me laugh. Check back through the archives for his cartoon thread on the dangers of Raptors some time. My mind is usually numbed by sports commentary but in this case I felt a resonance between the message and our discourse on standardized test results.Perhaps that is only because I glanced at the cartoon directly after shuffling through the pile of papers and booklets related to Mathematics Assessment I need to administer (in two scripted parts) to my fifth grade students within the next week. We can reflect on the results of these tests so earnestly. Then we build a narrative that either reconciles the discrepancies between the test results and our lived experience with the students, or reject one or the other sources of data. I imagine teacher’s tend to reject the test data if they have any confidence in their own assessment. I fear the Ministry has no other option than to puzzle through the collected data of their tests and believe a reliable narrative about education in this province can be built from the weighted numbers.

I’ll be blunt…

I would rather no information – no data – nothing! than the grossly misleading and misused data that is extracted from standardized testing.

There is absolutely nothing I can extract from standardized testing that I can’t find out better on my own.

Nothing.

There is a package of grade 5 math tests sitting on my desk right now. I have to administer the two-part test tomorrow and next week. I could mark the results myself if I wanted a timely evaluation of the results, otherwise the package will be mailed off to the Ministry of Education. Some time next year the results will come back to me. A snapshot of how well my former students did on a a single day. With luck, this six-month old data will find its way to the various classrooms my students have migrated to.

The real “value” is the thoughtful analysis I am supposed to do. I am to learn where I need to adjust my instruction for the next group of students in my classroom. The test is supposed to help me identify a trend in my teaching that I have clearly not noticed over a series of years. “Oh! I don’t teach fractions very well!” Naturally, the results of my last class both reflect the year’s learning and predict the group of young people coming into my room in September (okay, August, but let’s not dwell on that!).

The test is strong in as much as it is Provincially developed and correlates to our Western Canada Protocol. I honestly don’t think it contributes significantly to my understanding of my students. I have other more reliable assessment data. Its real purpose is to help the Ministry understand where mathematics learning at grade five is in this province. They don’t trust my data. They fervently believe learning can be standardized.

I’m afraid this is true of me. Wikipedia, in particular, has become my encyclopaedia of choice. Its at my side watching TV and movies on my Netbook. Its in my pocket every waking minute. Young people are like this too. I suppose that is why many of them simply don’t understand the requirement to accumulate curricular content. Its not that they won’t accumulate their own encyclopaedia of facts. Its that it will be theirs.

Another reflective look at integrating technology into learning environments.

Failure is one of the best teachers. Most of what I learned about home maintenance I learned from my mistakes. The military understands the benefits of failure and actually gives soldiers tasks that they know will lead to failure at some point as a part of their training. Similarly, pilots are trained on simulators and given a variety of emergency situations until they fail.

But instead of using failure as a valuable teaching tool, education discourages it as, well, a sign of failure. A student is measured at various points along a course on how well they have mastered the material. Since each assignment is graded based on its proximity to success, and the final grade is determined by the aggregate of each individual grade, failure is preserved and carried with the student throughout the course. The result is that students become failure-adverse, demoralized by failure, and focused more on the grade than the education.

One commenter on this post remarked, ” This is a great thought. But the limits of the thought are at assessment time for the college, the student in the world, the teacher in the classroom. Once students leave our classrooms they are not allowed to fail. The consequences, for workers in the middle of the company, of failure are termination – divorce – unemployment – humiliation. This is especially true in primary and secondary education. Teachers may not fail to raise scores every year, students may not fail at any high stakes test, teachers may not fail to prepare students for high stakes testing. Then students come to college, having been raised in the anxiety producing atmosphere that is education today, and of course they’re averse to taking a risk.”

I keep hearing about the dire consequences of failure in the workplace and how students in primary and secondary school should be either trained to avoid failure or “toughened” to the shock they will inevitably face. Who has not failed in the workplace and how often have we observed people correct their mistakes independently or with assistance. The reality is failure is a part of our personal and public lives. Most failures are correctable and are not significantly penalized. Too much is misrepresented to students about the world of work I think. There is a degree of hypocrisy in this penalty for failure message to young people. Spectacular examples of failure given a generous do-over abound in our society. Banks, auto manufacturers, government promises and programs, athletes, and the list goes on. Our real message to students might be, “You’re neither powerful enough, nor deemed important enough to be punished for your failure. I’m an adult and your teacher. I self-manage my teaching and management failures in the classroom. Your learning management failures cannot be corrected.”

I took a Physics class and struggled with it. I couldn’t ever seem to “get it” and I finally dropped the class. I knew that I would take it the next semester, so I routinely went to the homework binder that the teacher would leave in the computer lab to look at the answers to the homework, even after I dropped the class. The next semester, I got an A in Physics. Did I cheat? I don’t believe I did, because the homework taught me how to solve the problems and it also taught me the one little piece of the course that I had apparently missed the first time, which shed light on the rest for me.

Of course, this college experience was different from a student’s experience in high school. I was graded only on my performance on summative tests, which I had no way of examining ahead of time. Most students in today’s high schools are graded on their formative work, as well.

Assessing a student’s mastery of a subject should be our only concern.

Sometimes we get so lost in the routines and the traditions that we never take a step back and ask ourselves “what is the point of this assignment?”

The process of learning how to learn is far more valuable than teaching a student how to comply.

I am very sympathetic to Elaine Plybon’s message in her article “Why Cruel Shoes?” John Spencer focussed my attention on summative assessment last night in a tweet. He was curious about how disruptive the intrusion of standardized tests impacted my classroom. That was hard to answer in a series of tweets. My province and school division makes fewer demands on me than other teachers across North America seem to experience. This year I only had six tests to administer to my students. Two were higher stakes tests mandated by the province and the remainder were school-based tests in writing, math, and reading. The tests seem disruptive, but I have not thought them time consuming. They probably are more intrusive than I realize. Learning in my classroom is implicated by anticipation of these tests.

I don’t grade formative learning. That leads to complications in the classroom. Other teachers can anticipate my thoughts. Many students are accustomed to extrinsic pressure tactics to motivate them to complete learning tasks in a timely fashion. Without that pressure, they struggle. For most of my class, that has not been a problem. While we are learning concepts, skills, and facts, I am not overly concerned with how the students attain mastery. It is important to me that young people master a variety of learning strategies. I might not mind students peer mentoring and sharing answers but we are probably all agreed that it is not desirable as a person’s only strategy. That would be too limiting. People need to master a multiplicity of connections in their learning. Because of this, I think I do assess learning process. I share that assessment with students and their parents. Otherwise I agree with Plybon that a demonstration of mastery should be our only concern. Take a moment to read her full article.

Pointslessness: An Experiment in Teenage Psychology

Posted by Shawn on May 14, 2011 at 10:36 pm.

But, in a system with no points, what were they getting away with? It quickly became a very surreal post-modern classroom. Students began to engage with the readings after they were supposed to be read.

Abstract:

In this, one teacher’s vain attempt at public education without grades, a class of students are given the opportunity to engage with learning for the sake of learning and nothing else. Grading was not entirely avoided, but it was eschewed for as long as possible: 90% of the total course time was void of all grading rhetoric. A final grade (A-F) was given, which was determined by a final project whose rubric was designed by the students with facilitation from the instructor.

I’ve been living this non-graded classroom environment with my fifth and sixth graders for the last two years. How do you quantify the amount of grading that does happen? As I have written before, my school division adopted a reporting (grading) rubric of Exceeds, proficient, adequate, limited, and no evidence. It is grading in the sense of categorizing performance and it is not grading in as much as there is no normative curve applied to differentiate student’s performance. The descriptors reflect benchmarking.

I use the scale sparingly throughout the terms. Telling a student that their latest essay is proficient is as unhelpful as telling them they got a 70% or a “B”. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the essay promote learning. Collaborating with the students on the goal for the essay – humorous voice with energetic words – and reflection on that goal is decidedly better.

The term ends for everyone and something has to be reported to parents and students. In my school division that means the scale up until grade six (at this point) and the comforting familiarity of the mystical percentage grade until graduation. Like medieval doctors we cling to this practice desperately hoping that patients and their families will not question the efficacy of all the messy cutting and bleeding.It is a science after all and we’re well trained in its intricacies. “You got a ‘B’, you’re above average.”

“Oh good!” the student responds and the parents sigh with relief. Learning must have happened if a ‘B’ resulted. The letter (or percentage) correlates with something significant surely. What it really speaks to is our human need for a hasty generalization, an approximation that provides closure and allows us to move on quickly. I do that when I cook much of the time. Who measures the peanut butter spread on the toast? But if I was a pharmacist I’d be more careful.

Shawn confesses that the process has been less than successful, controversial and somewhat messy. That assessment reflects my experience and it does not concern me much. To expect anything else is to buy into the theory that systems can perfectly manage or measure human endeavour. Nothing in my experience leads me to that conclusion. I listen to each new learning or discipline approach in education and remind myself that everything works… until it doesn’t. It all is all contextual, demands reflection and dialogue. Nothing about teaching and learning is ever automatic or controlled. I hope teachers like Shawn don’t give in and return to grading. I remember grading everything and I recall the fights and arguments with students and parents over the validity of those grades. Percentages and letters are wonderful things… until you start questioning them. About that malady you mentioned… let me quickly slash your wrist and we’ll let the ill humours bleed away.

Saturday morning and I’m checking my bloated Google Reader while watching a Danish movie on NetFlix. It is a bit of a celebration to mark a very busy time and the end to a week without home internet. So many experiences, impressions and thoughts crowd the day (and week): curriculum planning and implementation, moderating the climate of my elementary classroom, driving eight hours to Olds, Alberta to participate in a Powerful Learning Practice culminating session, driving back after a long day (how do people keep moving like that week after week?), and catching sound bites of hugely significant events like the popular movements in North Africa and the Middle East. It all presses in and your responses get fragmented.

Perhaps that is a good thing. There are more than a few times when I aught to step out of the classroom and make a sandwich. We all need to count to ten from time to time. I understand my first thought is not always the one to share, I just wish I could remember that when I’m standing in my classroom.