Group items tagged

limits of standardized tesing and comparisons to Finland (beloved of the more testing folks)

"Pearson would like to become education's first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves. To this end, the company is testing academic, financial, and technological models for fully privatized education on the world's poor. It's pursuing this strategy through a venture called the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson allocated the fund an initial $15 million in 2012 and another $50 million in January 2015. Students in developing countries vastly outnumber those in wealthy nations, constituting a larger market for the company than students in the West. Here in the US, Pearson pursues its privatization agenda through charter schools that are run for profit but funded by taxpayers. It's hard to imagine the company won't apply what it learns from its global experiments as it continues to expand its offerings stateside.

"The SAT college admission test will no longer require a timed essay, will dwell less on fancy vocabulary and will return to the familiar 1600-point scoring scale in a major overhaul intended to open doors to higher education for students who are now shut out."

"In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department. The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving. Last year, under an easier test, 47 percent of city students passed in English, and 60 percent in math."

"In the first large-scale analysis of new systems that evaluate teachers based partly on student test scores, two researchers found little or no correlation between quality teaching and the appraisals teachers received. The study, published Tuesday in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, is the latest in a growing body of research that has cast doubt on whether it is possible for states to use empirical data in identifying good and bad teachers."

"A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank - determined by grades and test scores - governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds." This musical, written by a high school teacher, explores some really interesting questions inspired by the students including: "How do we know the difference between who we actually are and what people want from us?" Usually, Granite Bay announces its spring musical by posting headshots of the performers in the hallway. But this year, it tried something a little different: Holmes asked students to anonymously submit personal text messages, exchanges and emails that depicted the pressure the students were under from parents and counselors. One text exchange reads: A: How was the test? B: I got an 86%! A: Oh no what happened? Another: A: I'm watching you B: Where am I currently then A: Failing class They used the messages in a collage that included headlines from recent news stories ("The Silicon Valley Suicides," "Is class rank valid?") and hung it in the hallway instead of the headshots. A banner at the top reads: "Pain is temporary. Grades last forever."

"Through hashtags, test takers have categorized tweets about different AP exams. #APLit for the AP Literature and Composition exam. #APBio for the AP Biology exam, and so on. While these tweets are in jest - and many in the format of popular memes -there is something peculiar about them: they are oddly specific. For example, in reference to the AP Literature and Composition exam, many users tweeted about Mr. Pickle and Godfrey. These tweets about the exam even inspired a Twitter moment that highlighted the best memes about the AP exam. A Twitter search of #APLit will yield similar results. All of these memes reference a specific short story published in 1751, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett. While the tweets express the sentiment of the students taking the exam, they do another thing: reference the questions asked of them on the AP Literature exam."

Interesting information about the testing culture our politicians and education corpratists use to critique our "failing" system.

How private schools post strong test scores.

"Each Friday we collaborate with a classroom in New Jersey to test and publish three short writing ideas that address Common Core Standards and that are grounded in New York Times content. This week, all three prompts focus on the common theme of life on a coastline - a topic of great importance to our classroom collaborators, who recently went through weeks of disruption because of Hurricane Sandy."

What - there's a Google app that will grade my assessments for me?!

Yep! Check out Doctopus as well.

NY state resources for the common core - k-8 for now but good frameworks and test blueprints

"New Jersey has become the second state to require students to pass the PARCC exam in order to graduate from high school. The New Jersey Board of Education voted Wednesday to begin the requirement with the class of 2021. Currently, New Jersey students must pass a test to graduate, but they can choose which one: PARCC, ACT Aspire, the ACT, PSAT or SAT; Accuplacer, or the ASVAB-AFQT (military entrance exam). They can also opt to demonstrate mastery of subject matter through a portfolio presentation. The board's vote means that as of 2021, only two graduation options will be available to New Jersey students: First they must try to score "proficient" on the PARCC exams in 10th grade English/language arts and Algebra I. If they can't, they may submit a portfolio appeal. "

"Carrie is a professor at a university. She had asked me how to turn an area of her expertise, secondary school education, into writing that the general public would find rewarding and enjoyable. That's when I began talking about scenes, using her accident as an example of how to approach her work. Almost all creative nonfiction, essays or books, are, fundamentally, collections of small stories - or scenes - that together make one big story."

"Last year, Mr. Olsen and Ms. Gross, who work at High Technology High School in Lincroft, N.J., a school that U.S. News ranks as the No. 1 S.T.E.M. school in the nation, created short daily reading and writing prompts for their students to use with that day's Times. They told us they wanted to do it again this year, but wanted to tailor the tasks more closely to Common Core demands. So we agreed. Each week, they will send us the questions they tried in class that they and their students felt were the most successful. So, beginning Sept. 21, each Friday you'll find three quick, classroom-tested tasks that ask students to do Common Core-focused work with that week's Times. Our hope is that you'll see at least one each Friday that works for you, and that you'll write in and help us shape the feature as we go. It's an experiment, after all."

Students can test themselves on using vocab in context. All exercises link to NY Times articles.

In celebration of Read Across America Day, and of World Read-Aloud Day, both in early March, we offer engaging, short Times essays, articles, op-eds and humor pieces on a range of topics for teachers, parents or students to read aloud. Many of our picks are pieces that someone on the Learning Network staff has field-tested with real, live middle and high school students over the years

"A recently published game called "Gone Home" is testing the traditional progression of learning by flattening the story. Players have questioned whether it qualifies as a game since it doesn't include traditional points, prizes and leveling up (the game is self-titled as "a story exploration video game"). Critics have praised "Gone Home" as a new way of storytelling, and it's beginning to make its way into the classroom, as a viable substitute for traditional text. The game is non-linear and players have a great deal of agency for filling in the gaps to arrive at their conclusions.*"

"You plan. You assess. You network. You collaborate. You tweet, differentiate, administer literacy probes, scour 504s and IEPs, use technology, and inspire thinking. And for all of this, you're given bar graphs on tests to show if what you're doing is actually making a difference. But there are other data points you should consider as well."