By 2021, schools must offer diplomas based students reaching proficiency in the four core academic subject areas: English, math, science and social studies. By 2025, four additional subject areas will be included: a second language, the arts, health and physical education.
proficiency-based idea has also created headaches at some schools for teachers trying to monitor students’ individual progress.
Students have more flexibility to learn at their own pace and teachers get time to provide extra help for students who need it
It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Bowen said. “It was a systems design problem.”
offer students clarity about what they have to learn and how they are expected to demonstrate they’ve learned it.
at schools that have embraced the new system, teachers say they are finding that struggling students are seeing the biggest gains because teachers are given more time to re-teach skills and students better understand the parameters for earning a diploma.
Deciding to believe that all students are capable of learning all of the standards, she said, “was scary.”
Multiple-choice questions have virtually disappeared. Homework is checked, but not graded.
students get less than a proficient score, they must go back and study the skill they missed. They are then given a chance to retake the relevant portions of the test until they earn a satisfactory score.
We inherited a structure for schooling that was based on time and on philosophical beliefs that learning would be distributed across a bell curve,
get crystal clear about what we want students to know and be able to do and then how to measure it.”
This is probably not the forum for this video but I love that John Oliver took a stand and explained the ridiculous issues the United States education system faces with standardized tests.
Quote from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island)
to think that first-graders fluently reading would “cure poverty” is not only indefensible, it trivializes the great economic inequities that are the root cause of our nation’s greatest challenge.
I have witnessed schools move from progressive practices such as inclusion, to the grouping of special education students with ELLs and other struggling learners into “double period” classes where they are drilled to pass the test.
There is now minimal support from the research community for the use of annual test scores in teacher evaluations, often referred to as VAM.
When teachers begin losing their jobs based on test scores, how easy will it be to attract excellent teachers to schools with high degrees of student mobility and/or truancy? Who will want to teach English language learners with interrupted education, or students with emotional disabilities that make their performance on tests unpredictable?
Step 1: Teach students that the ability to learn is not a fixed quantity
The key to a student's ability to become a self-regulated (i.e., metacognitive) learner is understanding that one's ability to learn is a skill that develops over time rather than a fixed trait, inherited at birth.
In particular, students are encouraged to think about the key points of the lecture as they listen and take notes. At the end of the lecture, students write what they think the three most important ideas of the lecture were on an index card.
Example: lecture wrappers
Teaching Self-Monitoring Strategies
Monitoring and adapting strategies can be taught as learning habits. A wrapper is one tool for teaching self-monitoring behavior. A wrapper is an activity that surrounds an existing assignment or activity and encourages metacognition. For example, wrappers can be used with lectures, homework assignments, or exams. Wrappers require just a few extra minutes of time, but can have a big impact.
Example: homework wrappers
Before beginning a homework assignment, students answer a brief set of self-assessment questions focusing on skills they should be monitoring. Students complete the homework as usual, and then answer a follow-up set of self-assessment questions.
Example: exam wrappers
When graded exams are returned (as soon as possible after the exam was given), students complete an exam reflection sheet. They describe their study strategies, analyze the mistakes they made, and plan their study strategies for the next exam.
"Metacognition is a critically important, yet often overlooked component of learning. Effective learning involves planning and goal-setting, monitoring one's progress, and adapting as needed. All of these activities are metacognitive in nature. By teaching students these skills - all of which can be learned - we can improve student learning. There are three critical steps to teaching metacognition:"
Really useful reminder of how we need to address very basic ideas about how to absorb new information and ask students to self-monitor and push themselves. I appreciated the information and plan to incorporate the wrappers!
"The biggest threat to education today is the corporate education reform movement-what many of us call "Ed Deform." It is also the biggest threat to teachers' working conditions."
"You are a college professor. I have just retired as a high school teacher. I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution."
In these last days of April, I wanted to acknowledge the yin and yang that this month represents for my discipline. April is National Poetry Month, but it is also the time of year when students in grades 3-8 take their ELA and math New York State exams. The irony of this is not lost on us English teachers.
This same accountability "fear factor" has been applied nationwide, too.
STAAR replaced the four tests previously required for graduation with fifteen—more than any other state. Lawmakers also mandated that the new tests, known as end-of-course exams, would count for 15 percent of a student’s grade in each subject area
Longtime observers of education policy are openly speculating that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the accountability movement, right here in the state where it was born.
Isn't that amazing?! How long will this concept take to catch on and make it nationwide?
Of course, the stakes are high not just for kids but for adults too. Teachers whose students fail to improve—or don’t improve sufficiently—can find themselves out of a job. Students at poor-performing schools can transfer to better schools in their district—and take their state funding with them.
This is happening locally - I have witnessed such!
Shortly before he resigned as education commissioner, Robert Scott warned that assessment and accountability had grown into something akin to a “military-industrial complex,” a kind of public policy juggernaut with its own internal momentum.