Reader Response #2: Does being a teacher require you to be a statistician?

Assessing is the main focus of Chapter 4. I have thought a lot about assessments as a future teacher and a parent. I have always thought standardized testing is more detrimental to education than helpful, especially after NCLB. This chapter reaffirmed my opinion that federal government has overstepped its boundaries and has put in place a traditional, formal assessment that is not helpful for students or teachers. I understand the need to be able to measure students’ proficiency; as a teacher you have to test the information learned in a classroom. However, the conditions attached to the outcome of standardized testing are absurd. Losing funding because federal standards are not met is not helpful to schools or students. If standardized tests are needed to assess students and teachers it should be done on a state and local level. Teachers begin teaching to the test and curriculum is narrowed to prep for tests. Students are not learning to apply knowledge, but are focused on memorizing information. Money that is spent on teaching to test could be spent on actual curriculum and other resources to help students learn instead of take a test. I want to teach in a private school where federal tests are not the teacher’s sole focus. Standardized testing also ignores background information a student may need to succeed and can ignore minorities and low income students because of it. The author uses the term “coerced” when discussing NCLB and it seems to me to be a fitting term to describe how our federal government gets states to meet their requirements. Education has been taken out of the hands of educators and parents and put into the hands of politicians who answer to more than their constituents.

 

After reading the section Standardized Testing: What Teachers Need to Know, I was thoroughly confused on how to interpret scores. I felt I needed to hold a stats degree to decode how the scores are transformed. It felt to me that any score could be twisted and molded to fit any outcome. The author listed reliability and validity as two important characteristics of standardized testing. I agree with this idea, but I am curious who gets to decide validity and reliability. As educators and legislators, we might have very different ideas on what comprehension is and how to measure it.

 

The quote, “In a high stakes approach to assessment, the test is the major tool; in an authentic approach, the teacher is the major tool,” really stayed with me. I think this idea is what is argued over in education today. People tend to look at test results as being indicative of a good teacher, but this is not always true. Good test results are not necessarily the outcome of a successful teacher. Almost anyone can teach test prep, even a poor teacher. If all we are looking at is test scores we could be rewarding subpar teachers and disciplining exceptional teachers.

 

I had a lot of questions about the frequency observation form for bad behavior. When I looked at it the items being tracked were behaviors that I didn’t necessarily find as being classified as bad behavior. Most people, not just kids, tap desks, hum and make other “unnecessary noises” without realizing it. I know I click my pen persistently while thinking and most of the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it. If we are labeling kids as ADHD because they move out of their seats, drop things and make noises nearly every child would be labeled ADHD. I know I can only sit still for an amount of time before I start fidgeting. Also, maybe we need to look at the material we are covering in class and the lessons we are teaching because maybe the kids are bored. It is possible to lose a child’s interest. I felt this form to be lacking and the need for it as something to simply show a parent who wants to see proof their child is behaving badly. Have we gotten to the place where we expect kids to no longer act like kids?

 

The section discussing the portfolio assessment was very helpful for me. I took away a lot of idea on how I could utilize this in my classroom. I especially like the aspect of the students having a say in their educational plan. Expectations are raised by making the student be a part of how they are learning and giving feedback on what works for them. It is always a good idea to have someone be a part of how they are learning and forcing them to think about what their goals are. This is beneficial for both student and teacher. It does seem like it would take up a lot of time, but even if the portfolio isn’t used every day in its entirety, pieces can be used throughout the year or the whole can be used over the course of one lesson plan. The portfolio can be useful as a tool to help students understand how they learn and how they can apply it in all classes.

 

This chapter gave me much to think about and helped me understand assessments in the classroom.