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Ron King

The break-things-into-bits mistake we have been making in education for centuries - hap... - 0 views

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    In the just-released Math Publisher's Criteria document on the Common Core Standards, the authors say this about (bad) curricular decision-making: "'Fragmenting the Standards into individual standards, or individual bits of standards … produces a sum of parts that is decidedly less than the whole' (Appendix from the K-8 Publishers' Criteria). Breaking down standards poses a threat to the focus and coherence of the Standards. It is sometimes helpful or necessary to isolate a part of a compound standard for instruction or assessment, but not always, and not at the expense of the Standards as a whole.
Troy Patterson

CURMUDGUCATION: Norms vs. Standards - 1 views

  • A standards-referenced test compares every student to the standard set by the test giver. A norm-referenced test compares every student to every other student. The lines between different levels of achievement will be set after the test has been taken and corrected. Then the results are laid out, and the lines between levels (cut scores) are set.
  • When I give my twenty word spelling test, I can't set the grade levels until I correct it. Depending on the results, I may "discover" that an A is anything over a fifteen, twelve is Doing Okay, and anything under nine is failing. Or I may find that twenty is an A, nineteen is okay, and eighteen or less is failing. If you have ever been in a class where grades are curved, you were in a class that used norm referencing.
  • With standards reference, we can set a solid immovable line between different levels of achievement, and we can do it before the test is even given. This week I'm giving a spelling test consisting of twenty words. Before I even give the test, I can tell my class that if they get eighteen or more correct, they get an A, if they get sixteen correct, they did okay, and if the get thirteen or less correct, they fail.
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  • Norm referencing is why, even in this day and age, you can't just take the SAT on a computer and have your score the instant you click on the final answer-- the SAT folks can't figure out your score until they have collected and crunched all the results. And in the case of the IQ test, 100 is always set to be "normal."
  • There are several important implications and limitations for norm-referencing. One is that they are lousy for showing growth, or lack thereof.
  • Normed referencing also gets us into the Lake Wobegon Effect.
  • On a standards-referenced test, it is possible for everyone to get an A. On a normed-referenced test, it is not possible for everyone to get an A. Nobody has to flunk a standards-referenced test. Somebody has to flunk a norm-referenced test.
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    "Ed History 101"
Ron King

Standards Based Grading: District-Wide Journey - 1 views

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    It's a pretty exciting time to work in my current school district. About twenty years ago, the elementary school implemented a standards-based report card. Over the past several years, we've seen a grassroots movement in the area of assessment and grading reform in our secondary buildings. Dozens of teachers and building leadership teams have visited and/or inquired about what's going on in our high school and middle school, which is one of the reasons we'll soon be co-hosting a standards-based grading conference in eastern Iowa (before you ask, we've reached our registration capacity and the waiting list has been closed as well).
Ron King

Standards-Based Grading Videos - 0 views

shared by Ron King on 29 Apr 13 - No Cached
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    Many of the videos on this site are a culmination of the work of practitioners who led breakout sessions at a standards-based grading conference held April 24, 2013 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This website is organized around three themes: SBG 101: videos designed classroom practitioners who are getting started with standards-based grading. Discipline-specific: math, science, social studies, language arts, visual arts, career & technical education videos Leadership/Change: videos for administrators and leadership teams.
Ron King

Grades that mean something - 4 views

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    KENTUCKY DEVELOPS STANDARDS-BASED REPORT CARDS A group of teachers, school leaders, and education researchers create report cards that link course grades to student progress on mastering state standards. By Thomas R. Guskey, Gerry M. Swan, and Lee Ann Jung
Ron King

CCSS Toolbox - 1 views

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    T he Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), the product of a major, multiyear state-led initiative coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), present an extraordinary opportunity for districts across the country to move to higher levels of achievement for all students. These rigorous standards will require that districts reexamine what it means for all students to understand and to do mathematics in ways that prepare them for success in a rapidly changing world.
Ron King

The Door to Common Core - 0 views

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    Middle school math teachers have a challenge-they need to help students become mathematical thinkers who truly understand concepts and don't just memorize. One way we recommend doing this is by using the new Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) to help students build a foundation of thinking and communicating math. We find it most helpful to think of the standards as a door.
Troy Patterson

Trouble with Rubrics - 0 views

  • She realized that her students, presumably grown accustomed to rubrics in other classrooms, now seemed “unable to function unless every required item is spelled out for them in a grid and assigned a point value.  Worse than that,” she added, “they do not have confidence in their thinking or writing skills and seem unwilling to really take risks.”[5]
  • This is the sort of outcome that may not be noticed by an assessment specialist who is essentially a technician, in search of practices that yield data in ever-greater quantities.
  • The fatal flaw in this logic is revealed by a line of research in educational psychology showing that students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they’re doing often become less engaged with what they're doing.
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  • it’s shortsighted to assume that an assessment technique is valuable in direct proportion to how much information it provides.
  • Studies have shown that too much attention to the quality of one’s performance is associated with more superficial thinking, less interest in whatever one is doing, less perseverance in the face of failure, and a tendency to attribute the outcome to innate ability and other factors thought to be beyond one’s control.
  • As one sixth grader put it, “The whole time I’m writing, I’m not thinking about what I’m saying or how I’m saying it.  I’m worried about what grade the teacher will give me, even if she’s handed out a rubric.  I’m more focused on being correct than on being honest in my writing.”[8]
  • she argues, assessment is “stripped of the complexity that breathes life into good writing.”
  • High scores on a list of criteria for excellence in essay writing do not mean that the essay is any good because quality is more than the sum of its rubricized parts.
  • Wilson also makes the devastating observation that a relatively recent “shift in writing pedagogy has not translated into a shift in writing assessment.”
  • Teachers are given much more sophisticated and progressive guidance nowadays about how to teach writing but are still told to pigeonhole the results, to quantify what can’t really be quantified.
  • Consistent and uniform standards are admirable, and maybe even workable, when we’re talking about, say, the manufacture of DVD players.  The process of trying to gauge children’s understanding of ideas is a very different matter, however.
  • Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they’re doing is exact and objective. 
  • The appeal of rubrics is supposed to be their high interrater reliability, finally delivered to language arts.
  • Just as it’s possible to raise standardized test scores as long as you’re willing to gut the curriculum and turn the school into a test-preparation factory, so it’s possible to get a bunch of people to agree on what rating to give an assignment as long as they’re willing to accept and apply someone else’s narrow criteria for what merits that rating. 
  • Once we check our judgment at the door, we can all learn to give a 4 to exactly the same things.
Troy Patterson

Response: Differentiation Is Important 'Because We Teach Students Not Standards' - Clas... - 0 views

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    "Differentiation Is Important 'Because We Teach Students Not Standards'"
Troy Patterson

Diagnostic Teaching: Pinpointing Why Your Students Struggle - 2 views

  • 1. Fundamental curricular & unit design
  • 2. Complete all missing or incomplete assignments
  • 3. Differentiate assessments on non-mastered standards
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  • 4. Isolate and prioritize standards for mastery
  • 5. Choose new materials/resources that feature more transparent illustration of standard
  • 6. Daily use of student exit chart
  • 7. Student goal-setting & progress monitoring
  • 8. Beyond-the-classroom support systems
Ron King

In Common Core, Teachers See Interdisciplinary Opportunities - 0 views

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    Educators around the country are exploring innovative ways to teach the new common-core literacy standards, and some are calling attention to an approach they say is working well: interdisciplinary thematic units.
Ron King

Competency Instructional System - 2 views

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    Complete Standards Based Grading Philosophy
Ron King

Ethical & Effective Ways to Prepare Students for Testing (MiddleWeb) - 0 views

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    "So much rides on the results of standardized tests these days. They're even talking about making student scores worth 50 percent of my own evaluation and using them to determine my pay! I don't want to spend weeks "drilling and killing" my students with test-prep work sheets. What am I supposed to do?" - A teacher's question
Ron King

Common Core Math Tools via NCTM - 0 views

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    Core Math Tools is a downloadable suite of interactive software tools for algebra and functions, geometry and trigonometry, and statistics and probability. The tools are appropriate for use with any high school mathematics curriculum and compatible with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics in terms of content and mathematical practices. Java required.
Ron King

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium - 0 views

shared by Ron King on 23 Apr 13 - No Cached
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    Smarter Balanced is a state-led consortium developing assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics that are designed to help prepare all students to graduate high school college- and career-ready.
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