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Blair Peterson

Tech's Favorite School Faces Its Biggest Test: the Real World | WIRED - 1 views

www.wired.com/...-faces-biggest-test-real-world

personalized innovation technology

shared by Blair Peterson on 29 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Last year, according to Summit administrators, 74 percent of Summit students met or exceeded Common Core standards for English Language Arts on California’s state tests, compared to 49 percent of students statewide, and 51 percent of Summit students met or exceeded the standards for math, compared to 37 percent statewide. The college acceptance rate for Summit graduates perennially pushes 100 percent.
    • Blair Peterson
      Blair Peterson on 29 Jan 17
       
      Amazing that the overall results are so low. How can this be? Another piece of data around lower performance in math.
  • Even some of personalized learning’s biggest backers admit that it’s easy to get it wrong.
  • “Personalized learning is easy to bastardize. It’s easy to do it superficially.”
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Last August, for instance, the Center on Reinventing Public Education published a brief field report from their ongoing study of personalized-learning initiatives warning that some schools focus on the “iconography” of personalized learning — the technology or the project-based learning — but sacrifice rigor.
    • Blair Peterson
      Blair Peterson on 29 Jan 17
       
      This is something that we always strive for. Rigor has to be the standard.
  • “When I walk into a classroom and see all the kids on a computer, mostly on the same screen, and the teacher is moving around the room like a test proctor, that is where we’ve gone way wrong and need to right the ship,”
  • The only prerequisites for would-be Basecamp schools are a commitment to Summit’s grading policy, a one-to-one ratio of computers to students and a team of at least four teachers covering the core academic subjects for about 100 students.
  • “Historically, there are virtually no game-changers in the history of school innovations,” said Justin Reich, executive director of MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab and the author of Education Week’s EdTechResearcher blog.
  • “I’m not spoon-feeding them anything,” she explained. “That’s a relief, because there’s a lot less of me trying to run around and help everybody with little details, and more of us having conversations about math.”
  • According to Riley, the personalized learning advocates wrongly assume that all students are able to effectively guide their own learning.
  • Christina Nguyen, a ninth-grader at Summit Denali. Nguyen was working on quadratic equations with her friend, Chloe Starbird
  • Summit requires Basecamp schools to follow its practice of basing 30 percent of grades on mastery of content and 70 percent on students’ use of various cognitive skills, such as making inferences and clearly communicating their ideas.
  • While Summit’s PLP does include tests of content knowledge for each subject, students take them only when they feel ready and, if they fail, can re-take them until they pass. Some Walsh parents, such as Paula Swift, whose sixth-grade son, Trevor, is in the Summit program, are fully supportive of this “mastery-based” grading.
  • Other parents are puzzled by the approach. “I’ve definitely heard from at least 10 parents who are like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ ” O’Connor said. ” ‘Is this good for my child?’
  • “I used to fail a lot of math tests. But now, I love school math, because I’m learning better.”
  • Benjamin Riley, who visited many personalized-learning classrooms from 2010 to 2014 as the policy and advocacy director for the NewSchools Venture Fund. Shortly after leaving that post, Riley planted his skeptic’s flag with an oft-cited blog post titled, “Don’t Personalize Learning.”
  • At the start of the year, her students were often frustrated, and she had to resist the urge to step in and rescue them. For nearly two months of school, she said, “It was tough. There were tears.”
  • Logically, this concern about the need for guidance heightens with novice learners.
  • “When you have little ones, it’s harder to do the full, self-directed learning. There needs to be a lot more scaffolding and support,” said Loughlin, singling out her school’s structured and deliberate literacy instruction. “We need to set a strong foundation. We don’t want to create gaps in our learning for our little ones.”
Blair Peterson

AFA discovered cheating by comparing online, final exams | online, cadets, scores - Col... - 0 views

www.gazette.com/...line-139894-cadets-scores.html

cheating math

shared by Blair Peterson on 10 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The cadets are suspected of using an online math program called Wolfram Alpha, which markets itself as a “computational knowledge engine.” The system can offer answers to math questions similar to the way Google searches for websites based on a few words.
  • Blair Peterson on 10 Sep 12
     
    Air Force Academy
Blair Peterson

An "Old Math Dog" Learning New Tricks: Time to Tweak! - 0 views

oldmathdognewtricks.blogspot.com.br/...time-to-tweak.html

assessment sbg grading summative standards-based grading standards based re-assessments

shared by Blair Peterson on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Grading is easier and generally less time consuming
  • Student grades reflect what they know and are not artificially padded with extra points.
  • Students could reasonably bring up their grade - there wasn't as much "hopelessness" about their grades and I think that kept students willing to try, especially when we changed concept areas.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • My Math 1 and Algebra 2 students did not take advantage of reassessing much at all. I only had 4 Math 1 students who reassessed during the course of the year (these students reassessed multiple times). Maybe 1/4 or as much as 1/3 of my Algebra 2 students reassessed during the year (and I have a few who are now reassessing for the very first time tomorrow).
  • @druinok - we allow reassessments on certain days only and can only reassess one quiz per session. another issue is the time frame - I stopped my assessments about 1.5 weeks before the end of the grading period
Blair Peterson

Short Assessment Grading: Add or Average? | Learning and Teaching Math - 2 views

mathmaine.wordpress.com/...essment-grading-add-or-average

grading average learning math standards-based grading

shared by Blair Peterson on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • Blair Peterson on 05 May 14
     
    Long assessments can waste precious class time unless there is much material to be assessed, but shorter assessments (with few questions) can cause small errors to have too big an impact on a stude...
  • Blair Peterson on 05 May 14
     
    Long assessments can waste precious class time unless there is much material to be assessed, but shorter assessments (with few questions) can cause small errors to have too big an impact on a stude...
Blair Peterson

Homework: An Unnecessary Evil? | Psychology Today - 2 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...homework-unnecessary-evil

homework grading learning assessment formative

shared by Blair Peterson on 27 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • First, no research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school.
  • Second, even at the high school level, the research supporting homework hasn’t been particularly persuasive.  There does seem to be a correlation between homework and standardized test scores, but (a) it isn’t strong, meaning that homework doesn’t explain much of the variance in scores,
  • Third, when homework is related to test scores, the connection tends to be strongest -- or, actually, least tenuous -- with math.  If homework turns out to be unnecessary for students to succeed in that subject, it’s probably unnecessary everywhere.
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  •  Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test.
  • And the result of this fine-tuned investigation?  There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.”
  • Even if homework were a complete waste of time, how could it not be positively related to course grades?
  • The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework.  
  • The assumption that teachers are just assigning homework badly, that we’d start to see meaningful results if only it were improved, is harder and harder to justify with each study that’s published.
Blair Peterson

Real teaching means real learning: How I abolished grading. - 1 views

realteachingmeansreallearning.blogspot.ca/...how-i-abolished-grading.html

assessment grading homework formative summative math Calculus

shared by Blair Peterson on 30 May 13 - No Cached
  • One day I realized that I wasn't weeding out the weak mathematicians, but instead weeding out the weak test writers.
  • Before you continue, I want to remind you that this does not mean I have not assessed, but not one student in my Calculus classes has received a grade at this point.  (Other than the report card mark which I must give).
  • First, I went through my outcomes, given to me by the government, and identified what the "Rocks" are.  These rocks are the outcomes which I expect the students to master above all other outcomes. 
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  • Next, these outcomes were rewritten in student friendly language and then provided to the students on the first day of class.
  • here were no "trick questions", just simple questions that would assess "Can the child demonstrate this outcome, on their own, as a basic level of understanding?"
  • I would write comments only on them, and either a "Outcome demonstrated" or "Need to learn" for each outcome assessed (Not on the overall assessment). 
  • ext, if the child received a "Need to learn" he/she must do the following: 1) Demonstrate the understanding of the questions given at a later date.  This usually occurs after a lunch session, a quick conversation, or multiple conversations with the child. 2) A conversation explaining how he/she made the mistake earlier and how their understanding has changed now 3) Write another assessment on the outcomes.
  • After 5-7 outcomes have been taught, then each child is assigned an open ended project. 
  • I simply take the number of outcomes and projects completed (at the end of the course) and divide by the total number of outcomes and projects.  This is not the best strategy, but it seems to work for me at this moment.  I do weigh projects twice as much. (I have 20 outcomes, and 5 projects, so the total is (20+5x2=30)
Blair Peterson

Getting Grades out of the Way - 3 views

web.mit.edu/...winston.html

assessment grading learning

shared by Blair Peterson on 01 May 13 - Cached
  • angemolony on 09 May 13
     
    I was thinking about this as I sit with a couple of my seniors that are taking their final maths exam. One student knows that she is going to do great on the functions and the statistics but she is worried about sequences. It would be great if I could grade the test in chunks and give her the opportunity to show me (at a later date) that she can master the sequences material. So instead of getting one % grade on this final I can give them feedback on how well they did for each unit/topic.
Blair Peterson

Unintended Consequences of a 0 – 100 Grading System | Learning and Teaching Math - 1 views

mathmaine.wordpress.com/...nces-of-a-0-100-grading-system

grading Grades standards-based grading averaging Averaging Grades

shared by Blair Peterson on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • Blair Peterson on 05 May 14
     
    If a student makes four errors in the course of answering ten questions, what is an appropriate grade? Presumably, it would depend on the severity of the errors and the nature of the questions. Con...
  • Blair Peterson on 05 May 14
     
    If a student makes four errors in the course of answering ten questions, what is an appropriate grade? Presumably, it would depend on the severity of the errors and the nature of the questions. Con...
Blair Peterson

Education Week Teacher: Best Practice: Formative Assessment Done Right - 2 views

www.edweek.org/...tln_formative.html

assessment formative learning

shared by Blair Peterson on 05 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Grant Wiggins says this about the feedback we give based on formative assessment: "Feedback is value-neutral help on worthy tasks. It describes what the learner did and did not do in relation to her goals. It is actionable information, and it empowers the student to make intelligent adjustments when she applies it to her next attempt to perform."
  • It’s information for me, but just as importantly, it’s information my students can use to achieve more and perform at higher levels.
  • Grades don’t tell them much about what they need to learn or what they need to do better. When students earn a "C," they may feel like failures, but they have little idea what to do to improve their skills.
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  • Once I realized how little help a grade was for students, I changed things—big time! Now they get the feedback they need to gauge their own progress. Sometimes my feedback is on the content of the curriculum and sometimes on foundational skills.
  • My formative feedback at each step of the way let students see how to improve their notes or summaries and whether they needed to look for more examples of the laws. From the first drafts I read, I could tell they had no idea how to write these kinds of descriptions. I had to create writing frames so that students could learn specific patterns of writing and how to use simple math calculations from their lab work to support their ideas.
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