One of the conclusions was that indeed, large reforms (e.g., “Het nieuwe leren”, or the new learning) were imposed without scientific support. Another that political prejudices, not any kind of data, were the main motivating factor in the reforms.
Sadly, I think this is true of most educational reforms - ICT or not.
The alternative, assessing educational reforms well before introduction, is a form of social engineering. Social engineering seems to always be more difficult than you think. And I think history has shown that education is no exception in this respect.
whose tests? and what is being tested? and why do tests have to be the only metric of success?
The curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature, seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.
I would probably argue that having tests which match the curriculum is a GOOD thing. However, in this case it seems that the problem is the curriculum. So reform does not always begin with the assessment, or with the ICT.
If we want to test whether changes in education really improve learning, we do have other tools. They are called aptitude tests.
I agree. Students who got to read the passages ahead of time had an advantage - of course, is anyone looking to see if there was a "hit" on other textbook passages - is this luck or is it corruption. Either way - it smells like corruption. There is a conflict of interest if you're testing and selling textbooks to help kids do better on testing.
"students who read the Pearson test before seeing it on the state test had the opportunity to fill the gaps in their own knowledge-whether through class discussion or simply by reading and answering the questions provided in the curriculum-before they took the test. And that means that the validity of a test that aims to differentiate between "good" and "poor" readers is necessarily called into question.
Unfortunately, it seems that New York education officials don't realize how significant this problem is. Or even that it is a problem. (Meryl Tisch, New York Board of Regents chancellor, actually defended the quality of the assessments, boasting that, thanks to a rigorous new quality-control review, the Department of Education had avoided the kinds of problems that lead to last year's now-famous pineapple scandal. And that failure to recognize what may be a far more serious and consequential challenge may be the biggest red flag that Common Core assessment decisions are in trouble in the Empire State."
Finland is an innovator in education and now they're doing it again. Schools need a facelift. If you're building a new school - rethink school. I'd look at the designs. Also, Ewan McIntosh wrote a great "7 spaces of schools" that is in the "Choice" chapter for those of you have bought my book Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds - he talked about this on a boat in South Africa with me 2 years a go and is an expert to follow in the area of school design.
"Finnish students consistently have placed among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, which gauges 15-year-old students' ability to understand and transfer concepts in reading, mathematics, and science. For example, in the most recent mathematics assessment, in 2009, Finnish students scored 54 points higher than their American peers on a scale of zero to 1,000. Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland's education ministry, attributes the nation's academic achievement to a three-fold approach: quality of the academic curriculum, equity in educational access, "and the third one is the environment. How the environment and design of the school is supporting students' learning. When we combine these three things we can say something about the overall goodness of the school system."
If you'd really like to get into the Luminosity program, here is the application form to get into it. Here's info from the press release. This is a cool app that is supposed to improve many parts of cognition. I have it on my list to try and it is very interesting to me. Here's the link and some info:
"Preliminary results from the Spring 2012 semester found that students who trained with Lumosity improved more on a battery of online cognitive assessments than students who did not train. Additionally, effects were dose-dependent; engaging in more Lumosity training led to greater improvements on the assessments. Insights from the 2012-13 LEAP academic year on the effects of cognitive training on students' real-world academic outcomes are forthcoming.
Educators are increasingly interested in enhancing their students' cognitive and behavioral factors. More than 75 percent of all teachers who applied for the Fall 2013 LEAP semester believe training with Lumosity will promote: cognitive enhancement, increased ability to pay attention, improved self-confidence, and improved general attitude toward learning."
A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.
A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.
Today on horizon, my students set up their PLN (personal learning network) in their RSS reader -- we use Netvibes although some switched to Google reader.
Here is how I will assess this:
I am assessing the students on this by having them print the page out and turn it in -- I'm also checking over their shoulders in lieu of printing -- but I may not get to everyone. -- In this blog post, I've REQUIRED 6 things on the page -- each is worth 10 points -- with 2 of those points being for a properly edited title in Netvibes (so that they may see what is what!) -- and then I have them find at least four additional sources of information for another 10 points each.
Knowing how to set up a PLN for a topic of study is a VITAL skill for the 21st century researcher. I like Netvibes because it is very simple -- one page interface.
TRAILS is a knowledge assessment with multiple-choice questions targeting a variety of information literacy skills based on sixth and ninth grade standards. This Web-based system was developed to provide an easily accessible and flexible tool for library media specialists and teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the information-seeking skills of their students.
The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part
IV)
Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in
school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and
instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the
day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went.
Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet
competing demands from
multiple stakeholders.
In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments,
I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach.
It's posted in four installments:
1.
A
Taxonomy of
Reflection
2.
The
Reflective Student
3.
The
Reflective Teacher
4. The Reflective
Principal
It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and
suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel
construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student,
teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each
perspective.
4. The Reflective Principal
Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy.
(See
installment 1 for more on the model)
Assume that a principal (or
instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision,
project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask
themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not
suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to
pick a few that work for you.)
Bloom's Remembering
: What did I do?
Principal
Reflection:
What role did I play in implementing this program? What
role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and
being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in
place?
Bloom's Understanding:
What was
I've been working on another assessment to help students think about the connections and global understandings they are establishing. I've developed a rubric and a checklist to use in a classroom with middle school students.