As one colleague once put it simply, in politically incorrect terms, "Smart kids do well on tests."
p. 126
Daniel Koretz is Professor of Education at Harvard.
Harvard.
Where 75% of the entering class scores 700 or above on SAT reading, writing, and/or math.
I don't think we'll be seeing GATE programs staging a comeback any time soon.
In our state, it's not easy to translate the raw score data into the "Proficiency Index" that they use. It's defined somewhere, but perhaps they don't think that anyone can understand it, so they don't put it online. I've been able to figure out that our cutoff is roughly 60 percent raw score correct on the test, but this is only part of how they calculate the Proficiency Index. If I really pushed, I could get the formulas, but I'm not sure it would do me much good.
ReplyDeleteOur schools directly mislead the public into thinking that our "High Performing" status, based on getting lots of kids over the low cutoff, is a reflection of a "quality education". I would love to write an article for our local paper explaining what the testing and numbers really mean, but I would be completely trashed.
The dynamic seems to be that you are either for or against the public schools. If you are against the public schools, then all you care about is money. Everything is translated to money. If there are problems with the school, then more money would fix it.
I ran into a parent from another town who thought like this. He could not separate issues from money. This reflects the dynamic of school committees. Money and contracts. There is no such thing as an issue without the school putting a price tag on it.
I'm now in the camp that says grades and scores, as practiced in the majority of school systems are meaningless to parents and useless to the teachers who should be consuming them as data points.
ReplyDeleteWhat does 80% even mean? Does it mean the student knows 80% of the material? No. Does it mean the student is in the 80th percentile? No. Does it distinguish between skill in the fundamental prerequisite skills kids need next year and ancillary stuff that is not building block material? No. Does it tell a parent what their child is weak in? No. Does it tell next year's teacher where to begin with this student? No.
Useless!
What would be far better would be for the parent and teacher to know the hierarchical roadmap the child is driving on and what things on that road have been mastered (or not). With that kind of data (created everywhere) you could assess where your child is relative to peers. The progression of teachers in that child's life would know precisely where to focus.
Most importantly nobody (parent, teacher, or student) gets to hide behind the facade of an A or an F and, my personal favorite, it gets rid of grade level groupings in the bargain.
I'm now in the camp that says grades and scores, as practiced in the majority of school systems are meaningless to parents and useless to the teachers who should be consuming them as data points.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
And in our case grades are deadly because we have a fair amount of grade deflation (a topic Lefty and I have been planning to write a series of posts on).
What this means for kids like C. is that when you apply to private schools or college, you're sending high standardized test scores & mediocre grades - not a good combination.
As far as I can tell there is a near-universal belief amongst gatekeepers that high scores & crummy grades means a kid with low motivation and/or behavioral & emotional problems.
"Grade deflation" never occurs to anyone as an explanation...
My favorite grade deflation story thus far: one of C's friends got a B- in English. His mom called the teacher & learned that his "average" in the class was an 82.5. (An 82.5 in an English class can't possible be meaningful, but never mind.)
82 is a B-; 83 is a B.
The teacher rounded his grade down.
Steve - do I have your email address?
ReplyDeleteI'll send you the letter Ed forwarded around town before the budget vote.
My address is: cijohn @ verizon.net
I think emails from my address tend to get put in people's junk files. Apparently my address shows as "verizon"...
Our district needs the things money can't buy.
ReplyDeleteThe dynamic seems to be that you are either for or against the public schools.
ReplyDeleteNCLB is eating away at that dynamic, I think.
A couple of years ago we all got recorded messages telling us to vote for the budget to "show our support for public schools."
That message hasn't been used in the past 2 years.
What would be far better would be for the parent and teacher to know the hierarchical roadmap the child is driving on and what things on that road have been mastered (or not).
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
That's what I love about the ALEKS assessment system.
Why do you want to get away from grade level groupings? (What are grade level groupings??)
Grade level grouping is the process whereby kids are put into grade x because their age is y. Then they are delivered the grade x porridge no matter where they are academically.
ReplyDeleteI favor ZPD groupings to the extent you could figure it out. ALEKS does this automatically. With ALEKS I can get a report on a group of 300 kids that says these six are ready for equivalent fractions, while these 4 over here are ready for finding common denominators, and these 10 need to learn addition facts. I favor moving kids to different groups as frequently as the logistics allow (weekly?), driven by ZPD measures, and independent of age, homeroom, phase of the moon, or any other non academic reason.
I think traditional classrooms are one form of organizational block to 'getting out of the box'. Putting ADD kids or autistic kids into a typical classroom is far too stimulating an environment. It's contrary to everything I've ever read or experienced as good practice. Have you ever seen a classroom with 5-10 ADD kids? The teacher is consumed with playing whackamole and nobody learns anything. The only consistent classroom management technique in that environment is to give the kids low stress activities to calm them down. This is implicitly dropping kids out of their ZPD on the low side (comfort zone, work on stuff they already know).
It's not just the disadvantaged kids that suffer in classrooms either. Everybody gets the same porridge in a classroom and when it doesn't taste good everyone easily slips into ADD like behaviors.
Classrooms, conventional grading, and rigid curricula pacing are all part of a toxic stew that assumes all kids are in the same place and that there is no more convenient way to deliver up the porridge.
"Putting ADD kids or autistic kids into a typical classroom is far too stimulating an environment."
ReplyDeleteBut that's what our schools do. Academics and ZPD are non-issues. We're "High Performing". Some of the low grade teachers are even resisting differentiating anything.
Parents bail their kids out and that makes the schools look good. They can continue doing what they want. In non-academic ways, many like this arrangement, but when parents raise academic issues, they get nowhere. They can't do both, so academics loses out.
The teacher is consumed with playing whackamole.
ReplyDeleteSo that's what I've been doing in my 3rd grade classroom these past few years! Word gets out that you're good with boys that have attention "issues" and your class fills with them. Not that I'm complaining - I love 'em, it's true - the description just puts a smile in my heart!