The problem with standardized tests

Just posting something with this title would put me under pressure from the "reform minded" educators as someone who is against accountability, someone who thinks its okay if teachers don't do their job and our students don't learn. Thats not who I am. I do believe in assessing students' learning, and using it as a way to assess teaching. But I mean this in the most general sense.

Assessing students learning - good for students, teachers, districts, states, nations, to know how they are doing. Knowing how you are doing IS important as a student, it IS important to know how students in your class are doing, it IS important to know how students in your district is doing.

The problem is assessing accurately. I would argue that standardized tests aren't accurate (or precise for that matter). The problems with standardized tests are they are culturally biased, simplistic, and that you can do well on a standardized test without knowing content because of skills independent of the content.

First, the cultural bias leads to inaccurate results in a specific direction. Although there has been some attempt recently (at least reported attempt) of making tests reflect the full spectrum of american culture, there are still problems. Last fall, I was a human reader for the High School Assessment (HSA), a graduation requirement in MD. I read a story about someone canoeing through some river. One of the words in the story was aft, it didn't have any context clues about what aft might mean.

There was a question that the student I was reading to got wrong because she didn't know what aft meant. I consider aft to be a trivial word, not something that needs to be tested to earn a high school diploma. Not to say that students shouldn't know the word aft, but that there are literally a million words like 'aft' and that you can only learn these words through experiences and not by memorizing them from word walls or a handout list.

Second, tests are simplistic. They can't assess higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, only your ability to identify other people's analysis or criticism or evaluation. In a multiple choice test, I can't ask you to compare two works of fiction, only to identify which comparison the test maker came up with is the most accurate. The test maker can't assess someone's ability to do perform science, but only assess their knowledge of natural history or knowledge of science lab procedures. Only assessing a students ability to identify (never recall, and rarely create) the correct answer is simplistic, and the least we should expect of our students not the most.

Lastly, there are specific test taking skills that span content and are minimally useful to people in their every day lives. There can be two students that know the same amount of science content, that would be able to perform a task in a science lab as competently as each other, and who would be able to draw conclusions from their results as accurately as each other, but if one excels at taking tests (for whatever reason) they will not be equally likely to graduate. This for me is one of the worst problems. Its like building a huge mound in front of your house to keep the flood waters out, only to watch your home get flooded from your neighbor's yard. There is no reason to focus solely on content if the student would be better served by learning test taking strategies (that will be of little worth for the rest of their life). There is no reason to try and teach students words like 'aft' and have them have all of the rich experiences that is life, and that makes life exciting, and that teaches vocabulary, if you could just teach them smart process of elimination on multiple choice tests.

On Spring Break

Yesterday was the last day of class before spring break. We had a half day, with students getting out at noon. After school we had 'PD' in the library, where we celebrated a baby shower for one of our teachers (third for a teacher's wife this year). Then our Lead Content Teachers (LCTs) were in charge of our professional development, and were secretly instructed to tell us we could leave. The principle couldn't tell us to leave, but the LCTs could have off campus or independent PD... Even though I could leave at about 12:30, I stayed till almost 4 (after having a relatively long lunch). I was not ready to leave, not ready or excited about starting my vacation. I'm having a hard time writing my exact feelings at the time as they seem at first glance to be contradictory.

I felt warn down by the grueling 5 day a week schedule of March. I felt as if I have pushed through enough 5 day weeks that I could do it forever, and disappointed that I have don't get this time to teach my students. I feel like I had a stoic resolve that isn't all together healthy. The kind where I have given up on hopelessness and complaining, and just get the work done, and then sit/sleep/bike in a vegetative state. All of my energy was reserved for school work and teaching. It was a simple, it was barren, but it would get me through indefinitely.

Friday night I was tired, and grumpy, but felt like I could easily turn around and teach again on monday. I don't see this time as a vacation, but rather a break from teaching. I have a very long to-do list, and many hours of planning, grading, and school work to do. I don't feel relaxed like I did before winter break, I feel run down, I hope this break is rejuvenating enough that it is worth the break in concentration that will cost me when I get back.

I am slowly regaining my humanness, contacting friends, doing things I enjoy, interacting with others, laughing. Spring break, as feared, has shaken me loose of the simple industrious life style. I hope I can get back there when I get back from break. It means I would put my life on hold again, but I AM a first year teacher, thats what everyone said I was going to have to do.

The only fear is that come June some aspects of my life will be unsalvageable from the wreckage and I can't rebuild them during the summer to maintain a more balanced life next year.

ACCE Baseball

I love baseball, think its a great sport, probably the best sport, possibly the most perfect sport. Baseball is a pretty easy sport to understand, not too hard to learn to play, but impossible to master. Its a very elegant sport in the same way that simple, definitive science experiments are elegant.

We are in the midst of tryouts, there are some great players, some with potential, and some that just don't quite have it. Everyone has a good enough idea that they could come out and play a game and follow the rules. But thats the thing with baseball, it takes forever to master.

Its a true game of millimeters, game thats decided at the margins. The ubiquitous example is of batting average: You get about 4 at bats a game, so over three games you get 12 at bats. A struggling major leaguer would get 3 hits in those 3 games (.250). An all-star would get a whopping 4 hits in those three games (.333). Its consistently getting that one 2-4 game every series that makes you a man among boys.

Similarly, defensively you need to do it right EVERY time.

This is what its difficult to get across to my players, to my students. You can't take a day off (in the classroom), and you can't take a play off, or a pitch off, or an at-bat off. You need to 'do right' every time. I say need meaning in order to excel, they can go out and do whatever they want to and nothing bad would happen, but the point of sport is to push yourself and to excel. We've already said it at tryouts, but we are out there to win the championships.

It doesn't hurt there are only 5 teams in the league

Formal Observation

I had my formal observation on thursday. Getting observed is always nerve racking for me, I'm so self-conscious about my teaching that having another adult, any other adult, in my room takes a lot of attention away from my teaching.

Last semester I set up my class so that the formal observation came on a lab day, my kids tend to do better work in labs, and my administrators tend to be in awe of scientific phenomena. The observation went alright, but was definitely not my best teaching of the semester. It was good enough, and because of other informal observations my principal said I was doing well.

Last thursday I decided to not do anything special, and instead, stick to my long term plan and see where the cards fall. The observation happened to fall on one of the least traditional teaching days of the year for me. The students were in the middle of a 3 day assignment to prepare for a debate. Wednesday was the introduction to the assignment, research in the computer lab, putting them in groups, and having students assign each other group roles. Thursday was about how to turn your arguments and evidence into an introduction, rebuttal or conclusion (depending on your assignment), and writing a rough draft of your debate part, I also introduced the rubric they would be graded on. There was some teaching, but not a lot. Much of the class was small group work, with me going around helping students.

There have been a lot of things going on at ACCE this week, so my principal has been busy. While doing my observation, he got called out several times, missing much of the teaching I did have. He was there for much of the independent work, and then left just before my conclusion and exit ticket, coming back into class just at the end.

I feel that the class was well, students worked on a skill, they did it pretty successfully also. I'm afraid about the conversation at the post-observation conference because it was such an abnormal day. On the other hand, it was a pretty easy day for me because when the principal is in the room, the behavior is GREAT.

I hope to talk about baseball tryouts later today...

In other news

Soon I will be writing an update about how baseball tryouts are going, and about the beginning of the ultimate season. Also the potential of a change of my summer plans, but I don't really know about that yet.

Update from the last post

In some classes the lab went really well. In some classes it didn't. There wasn't any big problems, just some people not actually doing any of it. That was a problem. That is a problem. What can I do when students won't do work? Its one thing when they don't answer questions or take notes, but when they refuse to go through the process of the lab, when they avoid productivity at any cost.

I have one class, thats very large, has students with IEPs, and has many 'behavior problems.' There are several of them who have below a twenty in my class.

During class I get mad at them, I'm upset with them disrupting MY class, them stopping the other kids from learning. But at home every night, I realize/remember/think that its not their fault. They have been hurt, beaten down, destroyed, mentally, usually physically and sometimes sexually. They want to learn, somewhere in there. They come to school every day (or 3 times a week, or one who I've seen about 9 times this semester). They want to graduate, go to college, live differently then their guardians. I need to figure out how to keep their eye on the prize, and not on who said what to whom in what tone of voice and what it means for who will be at whose house this weekend.

The curse of inexperience for a new teacher

We are about to finish our unit on Climate Change. My students have mixed understanding of what we are actually doing. I went about it by teaching the carbon cycle (photosynthesis, the carbon cycle, organic decay, and combustion). This week we are going to get into the greenhouse effect, which will actually get us to talking about climate change.

I have a pretty exciting week going, including experiments, watching an inconvenient truth, and having a debate (I still have to figure out exactly to make this accessible to my students).

The problem is this is a first, and I have no idea how its going to go over. I don't know if the students will learn anything. I don't know if the students will find it interesting. I don't know if this will be the week the students revolt. I'm doing little more then throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm getting a little better, now that I'm teaching the same thing for the second semester, but its incredibly different teaching juniors and freshmen.

I feel that the way the day goes is based more on how my students are feeling then how well my lesson is designed. I don't have the skill, the ability, to greatly effect my students mood. I do it sometimes, but not with enough of the students and not enough of the time.

Baseball starts tomorrow, lets see how that changes some of those relationships...