Join the conversation

...about what is working in our public schools.

Thinking Outside the Bubble

vonzastrowc's picture

Last Sunday the Dallas Morning news published a disquieting article about students' results on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).  Here are a few excerpts:

 

Students are passing the ninth-, 10th- and 11th-grade language arts TAKS at higher rates than ever. Some even post near-perfect passing rates.

But on the short-response portion, fewer than half of North Texas students pass.

                                                ...

Testing experts say exams should include sections that expose such academic cracks.

But rarely do Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests ask students to do more than fill in a bubble.

                                                ...

Texas Education Agency officials say the short-response questions provide a better window into how well students can think, communicate and write.

                                                ...

Teachers and testing experts say they see several reasons for the low short-response scores.

They point to students' shorter attention spans, due in part to cellphones, video games and less reading for fun.

Also, the TAKS doesn't test the skills often. The short-response questions appear only on the language arts tests in three high school grades, and the section accounts for just 25 percent of those tests' overall scores.

 

One could hardly find more compelling evidence of what happens when states create and administer tests on the cheap. I'm not quite sure how highly we should value results on English Language Arts multiple choice tests that apprently provide limited insight into "how well students can think, communicate and write."

As education budgets grow leaner, states like Washington are reportedly stripping their assessments of open-ended questions and relying more heavily on multiple choice items.    As Tom Toch argued in 2006, states that nickel and dime their assessment programs strengthen incentives "to build tests that measure primarily low-level skills."

It is difficult to have meaningful discussions about accountability in the absence of reliable, credible assessments that truly measure what we want students to know.

(Hat tip to Diane Ravitch for her reference to the Dallas Morning News article.) 

 


As a former high coshol

As a former high coshol teacher, early own in my career, I understand some of the present-day challenges faced by families within the current US educational system. Charter coshols per se, won't fix the problems that have been inherent in the very structure of the system itself. The problems and challenges just get a new face'. You can blame the industrial revolution' for current ailments within the system.As worked shifted out of the agricultural fields and the home, children had to be prepared for factory life. It was at that time, a step up' from agrarian work in the fields. The early mine,mill, and factory owners recognized that you could not bring a farmer' into an industrialized factory. Young people had to be pre-fitted to the industrial system. The result: mass education. And it worked.Built on the factory model, mass education taught basic reading,writing,and math skills; some history and english. That was about it. However, beneath this curriculum lay a secondary objective: It consisted, and still does, of three basic courses':obedience,punctuality; and rote,repetitive work. Everything the factory owner demanded of his workers. The minor league of the factory environment. It demanded workers who would take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning those orders.So, from the mid-nineteenth century on, one found a relentless educational progression. Mass education at the time, was a wonderful step forward. Nevertheless, this type of education, machined generations of young people into a pliable, regimented work force as required by the mechanical age and the assembly line work. And all of this worked well for the creation, existence, and success of the Corporation.In all, these three institutions: Family,education,corporation, created a social fabric that lasts even to this day. Thus, in order to make significant, major changes in education, you would also have to re-define the roles of family and the corporation itself, which is actually occurring within the social fabric of many countries.Thus, I do not believe that you can simply change the educational system by moving to either private or charter education facilities, if the base line' philosophy doesn't change as well. And that's probably not likely to occur in the near term.For concurring opinion you can read, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options