Peabloggy

“The five-paragraph essay does not exist in the wild,” writes Barry Gilmore in Is it Done Yet?: Teaching Adolescents the Art of Revision. But as early as the wild days of seventh grade, we teach our students the form of five-paragraphs and assess them on their ability to perform it. As a writing tutor at Vanderbilt’s Writing Studio and a preservice teacher, I struggle to make sense of the conflicting messages we send to students about how to write well:

• Expository writing omits the first-person article, but authorial voice is one of the most essential components of effective writing.

• Revision is where a writer truly exercises her craft, but you must learn to write a cogent essay in a limited time frame for important state assessments. You will never see this essay again.

• Writing is a truly collaborative act between a writer and her audience, but you must demonstrate an ability to construct an argument or expository piece without a deep understanding of your reader.

• Good writing has authentic purpose - to convince, explain, or move an audience - but you must learn to write an essay for the purposes of a timed test.

I wonder: What do we truly want to teach students about writing, and how can we best communicate that message? What kinds of writing do we find most valuable in our own work and lives? What are the priorities of good writing for us, and do our assessments communicate those priorities to our students?

As Literacy Education Advocacy Month approaches and mandatory writing assessments continue to impact Language Arts instruction in profound ways, we must consider our answers to these questions.

- Rachel Bowers

Anyone would agree: outstanding teachers also need solid interpersonal skills. Teacher colleges have an obligation, then, to graduate students who know how to appropriately handle the thousands of interactions teachers face each day and who have the disposition to cope with the stress and demands of teaching.

The controversy of this situation lies in the defining of “disposition.” How do you objectively evaluate teacher candidate “dispositions” without bringing in psychologists and analysts? NCATE, the organization responsible for accrediting teacher colleges across the nation, added this area of evaluation in 2000, and the debates have continued ever since. The latest development in this discussion can be found in the most recent issue of Education Week.

–Katie Harris

While running at Percy Warner Park the other day, my husband and a teacher friend of his discussed how new teachers must devote excessive amounts of time to their jobs while earning comparatively low salaries. The friend noted that this situation was much like that of lawyers practicing for the first time. However, practicing law can result in triple-digit salaries over time, while teaching in the classroom never does, regardless of achievement or higher education degrees.

The other difference, of course, would be that lawyers have the potential to earn these higher salaries based on merit and job success. Teaching salaries are often based on years of experience within the same district and certifications/higher education degrees. One can easily determine the problems with this situation. On the other hand, while I love the idea of teachers receiving merit-based pay, how can one determine the merit and success of a teacher?

A lawyer clearly wins or loses a case, but teachers must try to win students in the classroom everyday. Sometimes the results of effective teaching aren’t revealed in students until several years later. Sometimes a teacher’s victory falls outside the realm of student test scores. So, while I support teachers earning raises and higher salaries based on performance, how could such a principle be implemented in our school systems? Does anyone have any ideas?

–Katie Harris

I suppose before one can discuss whether higher education is effectively preparing graduates for the workforce, the first consideration would involve if, indeed, job training is really the, well, job of today’s universities. Otherwise, while reading this recent article in The Chronicle, one may say “shame” on our colleges for testing content knowledge and recall.

Now, I have long felt that most people write poorly, including spelling and grammar; so, I understand that employers are finding college graduates lacking in their writing skills. I also know what it is like to graduate from undergrad without any hope of full-time employment (I studied writing and political science). So, in those ways, I am on the bandwagon hitched to this article. However, I don’t mind multiple-choice tests, and I am not sure how to learn “self-direction” or globalism in most college settings.

Although a degree and zero work experience is not necessarily the best combination (I know this first-hand), so employers could offer more on-the-job training and consistent development opportunities to enrich their new staff’s practical abilities. Career services programs on college campuses can help, too.

-Teresa Bagamery Clark

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=rCmg3nBzkSsb9GWWwpbtmqghkjq2RBs8

High school students in New York City who earn a score of 3 or higher on AP exams could get a cash bonus for their efforts, courtesy of a program in 25 public schools funded by private philanthropists.

When I first read the New York Times article that reported on this initiative, I balked. Shouldn’t we encourage hard work and learning for its own sake? Shouldn’t we expect students to try their best regardless of any financial payoff?

But then, as I started to think about it, I realized that this might come closer to accomplishing what our high-stakes testing does not both in terms of (potentially) increasing student learning and making school relevant to teenagers’ lives. The program is designed to encourage low-income students in the city - a group that takes disproportionately few AP tests - to take on the AP challenge.

Just like adults, money is a language teenagers understand - and these teenagers in particular. Many of them work jobs in addition to attending school. They sit in a classroom for six hours a day and may not see how that endeavor alleviates the struggles of life whereas their extracurricular paycheck pays off, literally.

If a financial incentive encourages kids to spend time working to further their education, I have a hard time criticizing it, even if my gut reaction was a negative one.

Read the NY Times article here.

- Rachel Bowers

In the arena of education politics, the debate about national curricula is one of what is arguably a herd of elephants in the room.

From EdWeek:

The National Conference of State Legislatures has taken a hard line against any form of national academic standards, declaring last week that any national attempt to unite school curricula across states would be unacceptable until perceived flaws in the federal No Child Left Behind Act are fixed.

The interesting aspect of this debate to me is the tug-of-war between those who perceive a massive nationwide effort to develop national standards as a necessary step toward global educational competitiveness and those who see the federalism of education as unconstitutional and a threat to the existence of our representative republic.

I tend to straddle the fence on this one (it’s easy to do of course, being a student of these issues and not a primary decision-maker.) First, what most people fail to mention is that nearly all states’ academic content standards already are derived from a single source (though they are not federally mandated to do so). My view, then, is that whether the government prescribes this unity or it comes about as a result of research, it’s bound to happen. The effort it takes to develop a set of content standards needn’t be repeated ad infinitum. Where there is disagreement, of course, states are free to adapt the standards to their needs.

On the other hand, without resistance to federal control, states run the risk of being drawn passively into the wrap of federal legislation that may restrict their freedom to decide their own standards. In general, people tend to want to cooperate and organize - if only to reduce work. In my view, the government does not need to force this kind of cooperation.

The CAAVES project at Vanderbilt is one example of six states collaborating to improve the validity of their assessments, without being required to do so. The research project benefits everyone involved - while contributing to the body of knowledge that informs assessment and lawmaking (namely NCLB). These kinds of consortia should be lauded and encouraged, because they remind us that progress can be made independent of government control.

- Peter Beddow

Over at EdWeek (free subscription required), two Virginia teachers have written a thoughtful commentary about the notion of “teaching to the test”. After learning that their school did not meet AYP requirements of NCLB, they describe the following observations:

Our passionate and progressive staff was stunned. Not making AYP meant that parents could send their children to other schools. We never doubted the potential and abilities of our students; we knew the problem lay elsewhere, and, as a staff, we knew we had to take a long, hard look at our attitudes and approaches to the test.

Rather than move completely into the territory of critics of the law itself (where indubitably they would have had much company) they determined that “state and federal pressures were not the only reasons students needed to learn to pass tests. Test-taking is a life skill.”

The two teachers go on to make several interesting observations. In conclusion, they write:

After so much hard work, we were frustrated and confused by our drop in scores. Then we remembered what we’d learned in the classroom and through our research: Education is not an exact science. Real change and success take time. But we see the difference in our students every year. They’ve gone from fearing tests to approaching them with confidence, excitement, and a set of skills and strategies to use. Now they view the test as a reading challenge for which they are well prepared.

Their commentary is worth reading in its entirety.

- Peter Beddow

A recent article in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer online was entitled Rule lets schools not test disabled.

New No Child Left Behind Act regulations (published in April) allow up to 2 percent of students to take a modified version of the state assessment. The modifications are intended to provide a valid assessment for students who are ineligible for the alternate assessment but for whom the general assessment would not yield valid results because of a disability.

Scott Stephens, the author of the article, draws what strikes me as a glaring misconstrual of both the intended and the likely consequences of the 2 percent regs:

Whatever you call it, the change allows schools to exempt more of their hardest-to-educate children from standardized exams. Officials in school districts with high percentages of those students believe the exemption could provide a more accurate reflection of their progress.

For some special education advocates, that low-hanging fruit is more like the biblical apple, a temptation that has more to do with raising a school’s ranking than providing children with disabilities the education they need.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, this summer, researchers convened at Peabody for the second phase of a major project aimed at validating the 1 percent “alternate” assessment from seven states and modifying general assessments to satisfy the validity requirements of the “2 percent” assessment.

The primary form of modification the participating state assessment experts plan to use is to reduce the number of distractors - or wrong answers to a multiple choice question - from 4 to 3. Other common modifications are increasing the size of the text, adding pictures (e.g., if the question refers to 7 pennies, a drawing of the coins might be included to the side of the question). A third modification may involve reducing the number of items on a page for easier readability, ensuring text is written concisely and with grade-level vocabulary, increasing color contrast, implementing simple interfaces for computer-based tests, creating Braille versions for blind students, etc.

Despite Mr. Stephens’ implication, the 2 percent assessments are standardized. In fact, the questions for the modified assessment are drawn from the exact same standards as the general assessment. In other words, the material being tested in the modified assessment, if the test is valid, remains the same. To as large an extent as is possible (due to the fact that the test is being altered), the skills being assessed are not what is modified. The test is simply being filtered through a strict set of accessibility checks that ensure the test measures only what it purports to measure.

In all of the conversations I’ve heard in meetings with state administrators from Hawaii, Indiana, Idaho, Arizona, Mississippi, and Nevada, no one has ever mentioned wanting to generate a test that increases their state test scores. In fact, recent validity studies have shown that the rate of students reported as proficient is actually lower for students who took alternate assessments than for students who took the general assessments.

In short, extant evidence does not support the notion that states are designing assessments for students with disabilities with the aim of increasing their proficiency rates.

As I’ve mentioned previously, there certainly are problems to be found with No Child Left Behind. Simply hearing the word “modified” and making inaccurate assumptions as Mr. Stephens has done, however, precludes honest debate from occurring.

-Peter Beddow

Previous:
From taking tests…
NCLB: Creating a new gap?
NCLB: When in doubt, bake cookies
Investigating the validity of alternate assessments

EdWeek has a new series of blog posts on what they refer to as NCLB: Act II and they’re already going full steam. The primary blogger is a gentleman named Mark Walsh.

The first of the recent posts is called You’ve been YouTubed and describes the set of 4 questions devoted to K-12 education issues in the recent Democratic candidates’ debate. They’ve linked to video highlights from those questions, and the answers by the candidates.

Personally, I felt CNN embarrassed itself and the candidates by posting questions straight from YouTube. I couldn’t imagine Lincoln and Douglas ever agreeing to subject themselves to silly amateur skits instead of pre-written questions when they engaged in their famous debates in 1858. To me, it was tantamount to permitting participants to rollerskate through the forum in chicken suits while screaming questions at the potential future Presidents.

The second post reflects briefly on Secretary Spellings’ recent foray into the debate on testing.

EdWeek has become a useful source for links to, and opinion pieces on a variety of education-related issues. Take a look at the blog when you get a chance.

-Peter Beddow

The new NCLB regulations released in April detail the newest form of alternate assessment. In sum, the government now allows states to report up to 2 percent of their annual Annual Yearly Progress data based on student performance on a modified version of the grade-level assessments in reading and math. By 2011, this will include science as well.

Currently, most states have general assessments (those “bubble tests” we’re all so familiar with) and some form of an alternate assessment for students who are unable, due to significant disabilities of a variety of sorts, to sit for these tests. Alternate assessments generally involve some sort of evidence collection to support a school’s conclusion as to whether a student with a disability is proficient in reading or math when his or her performance is judged against grade-level academic content standards. Based on current law, 1 percent of student AYP data from these alternate assessments may be reported as part of NCLB’s requirements.

As I’ve written about previously, I’ve been involved in a major consortium study, the first aspect of which was an examination of the validity six states’ alternate assessments. The second aspect of the consortium was a study of how to modify existing grade-level test items to increase their accessibility to students for whom the general assessment may not be valid but who are not eligible for the alternate assessment. On July 12-14, the consortium convened in Wyatt for a 3-day working session to modify existing test items. Essentially, the purpose was to create a test that we will look at experimentally. One of the primary questions will be to ask whether our “modified” test items are more accessible for students with disabilities. Additionally, we will plan to examine whether conclusions based on the modified items are as reliable as those drawn from scores on the original items.

This was my first experience leading a group of teachers and education professionals on the seemingly monumental task of changing test items to allow children with disabilities to really “show what they know”. It was, at times, an arduous process, but overall it was a terrific weekend. As always, I’ll keep you all posted on how this and our other related projects progress in the near future.

-Peter Beddow

Previous: Investigating the validity of alternate assessments