what schools do to raise standardized test scores
The new question-of-the-week is:
How are state standardized assessments working and how can they be made better?
I don't think I've ever met a instructor who has been satisfied with the the standardized tests they are required to give their students - no affair who has created them!
Today, Douglas Reeves, Jennifer Borgioli, Kristin DeJong, Chris Gareis, and Leslie Grant explore about how they tin be improved. Though this column doesn't have an accompanying podcast, you can still mind to past ones here.
Response From Douglas Reeves
Douglas Reeves is the writer of more than 30 books on instruction and leadership. He blogs at CreativeLeadership.net and tweets from @DouglasReeves:
How to make state assessments better? The piece of cake reply would be to say, "eliminate them." But in that location is a legitimate public interest in knowing how students are performing, especially in essential skills such as reading.
I take listened to teachers cry as they talk well-nigh students who only put their heads downwardly when faced with hour after hour of testing, or cheers to computer failures, have students lose hours of work and start over on state-mandated exams. To bridge the gap between the "exam them 'till they drop" crowd and the "never examination" opponents, allow me offer a few unproblematic ideas to make standardized assessments more than useful.
Beginning, make the tests shorter. In their zeal for high reliability coefficients and adhering to content sampling requirements, test designers have made tests unreasonably long. After xxx or twoscore minutes, we are testing endurance, non learning.
2nd, test throughout the twelvemonth with locally designed and implemented assessments. If we really desire to measure growth, so the best mode to practise so is to compare the same student to the same educatee within the same yr while working with the aforementioned instructor. Iii curt 30-infinitesimal assessments in fall, winter and leap would reveal far more about student growth than a three-hour exam at the end of the year over the class of three years by three different teachers.
Finally, publish the full information sabbatum - raw scores, individual items, and everything. This would, of grade, drive the multi-billion dollar testing industry - both for-profit and non-turn a profit - mad, because they thrive on the secrecy of their items. But if we expect testing to exist a vehicle to improve education, learning, policy, and leadership, so nosotros need an open book. We need to know, for example, the difference betwixt a exam item that is hard and ane that is just obscure. The onetime is a challenge to teachers; the latter a claiming to test writers.
Response From Jennifer Borgioli
Jennifer Borgioli is a Senior Consultant at Learner-Centered Initiatives, Ltd. where she supports teachers, schools, and districts with designing assessments that capture prove of educatee learning in ways that are meaningful for students and teachers. She also assists districts with auditing or reviewing their tests and assessments in society to better support balanced assessment systems. Her Twitter handle is @JennLCI:
For one delightful day this summer, August 21, Americans both young and one-time stopped what they were doing and looked upwards to the sky. Middle protection carefully in place and the repeated warnings to not expect directly at dominicus ringing in our ears, we shared a moment of wonder at the natural world. The post-obit day, August 22, New York Country released the results of student operation on the 2017 state tests and us New Yorkers - educators, reporters, bloggers, and real estate agents stopped what we were doing to stare directly at them.
My hunch is that the well-nigh powerful respond to a question nigh how the land assessments are working and how they can be fabricated better lies in shifting our eyes and avoiding the bright glare of the tests and looking at their edges. To be sure, policy and large-scale assessment design folks who best understand the test themselves have lots to offering effectually how the assessments are working and what can be done to improve them. I'm personally optimistic about the New Hampshire's PBA experiment, New York'due south Performance Consortium, and the ascension of portfolio or Competency-Based schools in Pennsylvania, California and Illinois. If the tests are going to get dramatically better, I suspect the ESSA innovative cess pilot will help make that trouble. All the same, these solutions are long-term and outside the sphere of influence of building and classroom educators.
If we want to best empathize how the tests are working, it'southward compelling to consider how they're working from the students' perspective. On one hand, tens of millions of children go to school a few days a yr and take a state standardized test. They return the side by side mean solar day, seemingly no worse for the wear. On the other, pieces like this one past Kristina Rizga tells us conspicuously that in that location are students who feel they're non working. Most chiefly, the students interviewed stress information technology's not merely the one (or 2 of three) country standardized tests; it's the cumulative effect of how districts answer to them.
Rather than focusing on making the tests ameliorate, which is a long-term proposition, we can immediately brand the conditions around the tests better. We tin eliminate redundant tests and have careful stock of simply how often students are asked questions with i best answer. Teachers, parents, and administrators can consider the language, tone, and vocabulary they use. Do we speak of the tests in terms that communicate they are a routine part of school or are we unconsciously telling students they're the virtually important thing that will happen to them that year? Exercise we focus on increasing scores or decreasing stress? Do we lift the burdens students carry effectually the tests or practise we add to them? It'southward entirely possible to prepare students for standardized tests in a manner that maximizes what we know about learning sciences, metacognition, and stereotype threat, but this requires quality professional evolution and district-based guidance around what that looks like inside a standards-based, loftier quality, learner-centered curriculum.
For 15 years, states take been working towards better standardized tests. And in that time, educators have been facing downwardly the tests themselves, trying to figure out the right combination of bubbles and lines to capture educatee learning. My hunch is that unless we look away and concentrate on what happens around the tests, information technology won't matter how good the tests cease up, they yet won't work well for all.
Response From Kristin DeJong
Kristin L. DeJong, Grand.Ed., is a Learning Sciences International staff programmer. DeJong has taught high school and middle school classes at public, private, and charter schools, serving in a wide array of capacities, including new teacher mentor, Department Chairperson, PLC team leader, Assistant Chief of Curriculum and Instruction, and Literacy Instructional Coach:
"I Choose C" Is Not the Answer: Moving Across Erstwhile-World Testing
Ask any dedicated teacher how the plethora of current standardized tests are working and the answer you'll nigh often hear is simple: "They're not."
The joy of pedagogy and the fun of learning are disappearing because the world of education has turned into test preparation. Gone are the days when the P-SAT, SAT or Human activity were the simply standardized tests administered with college access equally the goal. Year after yr, educators from all grade levels face an unavoidable result--they'll demand to gear up themselves and their students for a myriad of state standardized tests.
Many feel that their students are over tested. Students themselves experience stressed by the notion that high-stakes tests will dictate their futurity. In some states, a 3rd grader cannot move to fourth grade without passing a reading and math test. Parents are overwhelmed during "testing" season as they worry and question if their child is prepared, both academically and socially, to perform well. This is not healthy for our society or our educational system.
Restructuring Assessment to Support a "New World Economy" Classroom
Let's exist clear: didactics to standards is not the issue. Having common standards across the nation is not a bad affair. When moving from i state to another, it'due south quite comforting to know that students are being instructed with like standards, developing similar skillsets.
Testing is the upshot. Quite simply, there's likewise much testing, and the formats of these tests are outdated. From district progress-monitoring tests, terminate-of-course exams, and high-stakes comprehensive year-terminate exams, our students go overwhelmed by testing throughout the year, and far too many "bank check out" of their learning.
Standardized testing also goes confronting all the work we're doing to shift our educational strategies to address the need for collaboration, inventiveness and problem-solving skills in the classroom. In an age where forrard-thinking, progressive educators are trying to "ignite" a passion for creating a "new world economy" classroom, tests continue to exist formatted for an "old globe economy" classroom.
Rethinking the Multiple Pick Testing Format
"I choose C" is a joke many educators understand. Multiple pick, one-size-fits-all, "standardized" testing, defeats all the ideas aimed at creating active learners, non passive absorbers of data, in a new-age educational environs. Our students are anything but "standardized." They're diverse, with varied interests and learning styles. Not all learners perform well on a timed, multiple-choice, figurer-based exam; notwithstanding, that'southward often the just pick to demonstrate their learning.
How tin can nosotros improve the system and ensure that students are prepared--that they go masters of the common standards? Short of eliminating standardized tests, in that location are some specific and deliberate steps we tin can accept to simultaneously reduce testing and ameliorate results.
Changing Our Mental Model of Rigorous Pedagogy, Learning, and Cess
First, we need to prepare teachers to understand the value of consistent monitoring of learning targets and success criteria multiple times inside a lesson. We need to assist them get skilled at tracking learning toward standards-based targets, examining student evidence, and using formative assessments that align with the taxonomy of the standards.
If we find out at the terminate of the twelvemonth or marking catamenia that a student hasn't been meeting learning goals, it's likewise tardily to do anything about information technology. Progress monitoring must take place every solar day, throughout every lesson, so teachers can identify and address learning gaps on the spot.
Giving Students Opportunities to Demonstrate Authentic Mastery of Skills
Second, the most forward-thinking way to assess the true abilities of all students is through capstone projects that allow for greater student autonomy. Completing a enquiry project (for which the student chooses the topic of involvement) over the course of one or two years would truly demonstrate college-society thinking skills.
Response From Chris Gareis & Leslie Grant
Chris Gareis (crgare@wm.edu) is a former teacher and chief. He is a currently a professor in the Schoolhouse of Education at the College of William and Mary. He regularly works with schools, districts, states, and abroad in classroom assessment, performance-based assessment, curriculum development, plan evaluation, and instructor mentoring. His nearly recent book, co-authored with Leslie Grant, is Teacher-Made Assessments: How to Connect Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Educatee Learning (Routledge, 2015).
Leslie Grant (lwgran@wm.edu) is an associate dean and associate professor in the School of Education at the College of William and Mary. She works with teachers and educational leaders at the local, land, and international levels in the areas of classroom assessment and using data to improve teaching and learning. She is a member of ASCD's board of directors and currently serves equally its President:
The advent of standards-based state curricula and high-stakes accountability testing in the tardily '90s and early '00s was a tectonic shift in the educational landscape. As a principal and instructor, respectively, during those years, we each experienced that shift at the footing level.
In the 15-plus years since No Child Left Backside codification state standardized tests as the coin of the realm, our roles have professional roles have inverse only our collaboration with teachers, school leaders, and country officials beyond the United States in helping to encounter accountability demands has only intensified. Our approach has been to leverage teachers' classroom assessment practices for genuine pupil learning, which in turn leads to stronger, more stable outcomes on state assessments. This approach is described in our book Teacher-Made Assessments: How to Connect Curriculum, Education, and Student Learning (Routledge, 2015), which is now in its second edition. Expert educational practise--whether in the classroom or in country policy--is always well-nigh intentionality and alignment among curriculum, pedagogy, and cess.
With this in mind, we offer a few observations on how country standardized assessments are working--for ameliorate and for worse--so offer what we see as the next important step for teachers and policymakers, akin, to have.
To brainstorm on a positive note, country standardized assessments have improved educational equity within and among many states by leveling the curricular playing field for students. In the not-too-distant past, students in one classroom could exist exposed to a robust curriculum while students in another classroom could exist exposed to a lesser curriculum. When states began testing all students in grades iii through 8 in math and reading and science at different points, school districts and teachers began to organize their curricula by adjustment more intentionally to land standards. The advent of state tests laid the groundwork for greater equity in opportunities to acquire.
Of course, there have been unintended consequences of these accountability assessments. As we identified ten years ago in the first edition of Instructor-Fabricated Assessments, state tests have resulted in a narrowing of the taught curriculum; a prevalence of drill-and-impale instructional practices; a proliferation of ineffectual criterion assessment systems that significantly reduce instructional time; and an incessant mimicking of multiple-option item format on classroom assessments. In the medical field, these would exist called side furnishings. We think these side effects are serious enough that the prescription of country standardized tests in their current class must be inverse. Specifically, we believe it is high-fourth dimension for the integration of performance-based assessment into state accountability systems.
Functioning-based assessments (PBAs) are the family of assessment formats that include constructed-response items, written responses, processes, production creation, complex projects, and myriad other forms that prompt students to engage in extended, higher-order thinking that is reflective of field of study-specific processes (e.g., the scientific method) and of real-globe scenarios beyond the classroom. PBAs should not supplant all conventional state assessments; rather, PBAs should replace some of the current country assessments and thereby complement the remaining conventional assessments. This is balanced assessment: The employ of complementary ways of assessment to provide a more complete movie of the student learning outcomes that nosotros intend.
And how will this mitigate the current side furnishings we have experienced from country standardized tests? The inclusion of high-quality PBAs in both land accountability systems and in teachers' classroom practices volition allow for (ane) education and assessing important, circuitous intended learning outcomes, (ii) cess practices becoming more integral to instruction rather than disruptive of it, and (3) assessment practices that are themselves engaging and meaningful experiences for students. In brusk, PBAs are assessments worth teaching to. That's worth a alter.
Thanks to Doug, Jennifer, Kristin, Chris and Leslie for their contributions!
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this mail service.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can transport one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send information technology in, let me know if I can use your real name if it'southward selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and take a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.
Anyone whose question is selected for this weekly column can choose one free book from a number of didactics publishers.
Education Week has published a collection of posts from this web log, forth with new material, in an e-book grade. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Instruction.
Just a reminder--y'all tin subscribe and receive updates from this weblog via email or RSS Reader. And, if you lot missed any of the highlights from the beginning six years of this blog, you can see a categorized listing below. They don't include ones from this electric current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar.
This Yr's About Pop Q&A Posts
Classroom Management Advice
Race & Gender Challenges
Implementing The Common Core
All-time Means To Begin The School Twelvemonth
Best Ways To End The School Year
Pupil Motivation & Social Emotional Learning
Teaching Social Studies
Project-Based Learning
Using Tech In The Classroom
Parent Engagement In Schools
Pedagogy English language Language Learners
Student Assessment
Brain-Based Learning
Reading Instruction
Writing Instruction
Education Policy Issues
Differentiating Instruction
Math Instruction
Science Educational activity
Advice For New Teachers
Writer Interviews
Inbound The Teaching Profession
Administrator Leadership
Instructor Leadership
Relationships In Schools
Professional person Evolution
Instructional Strategies
I am as well creating a Twitter list including all contributers to this column.
Await for the next question-of-the-week in a few days.
The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reverberate the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Teaching, or any of its publications.
Source: https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-response-ways-to-improve-state-standardized-tests/2018/08
0 Response to "what schools do to raise standardized test scores"
Post a Comment