Thursday, January 5, 2012
Ms. Cummings Final Assessment Reasoning
Tammy Cummings
Final Assessment Reasoning
EDU: 645 Learning & Assessment in the 21st Century
Instructor: Rob Lion
January 5, 2012
FINAL ASSESSMENT REASONING
“Assessment is a part of the process of understanding what children know, understand and can do so that future teaching steps can be appropriately planned” (Assessment, 2006). Today’s schools are facing an assessment crisis one caused and generated in part by standardized testing. In the author’s opinion, the cause of the crisis in regards to education and assessment is multifaceted. It grows out of an effort to ensure education in this country is the best it can possibly be and an effort to hold schools and educators responsible for maintaining high quality standards in providing an education to the Nation’s children. It also stems from an ill-fated attempt by the Bush Administration to ensure that accountability and responsibility was established, monitored, and evaluated. It is also driven by the Nations need to remain relevant and competitive in today’s world economy. In addition, too much weight is placed upon assessments and the assessments are used to punish and reward instead of being used as a guide. To say that there are one or two causes to the crisis is naive and short-sighted, crises are seldom black and white issues and to try to make them so does not only complicate the crisis more but fails to take into account the whole perspective of issues that feed into the system. The realm of perspectives that feeds into this nations crises in regards to education and assessment this realm includes but is not limited to : politics, economics, ideologies, money as usual, companies who benefit from the testing, social class and status, abelism, out dated theories/philosophies of teaching, and ethnocentrism. I could keep going.
The possible implications are as a nation we are graduating a generation of children who are illiterate multiple choice test takers. These children are disillusioned with learning and the process as a whole because of the high stakes testing and the time taken away from other educational activities to focus and prepare for the test. In addition, the children who work hard and make good grades all year are punished if they fail the tests because they are held back while the children who do poorly all year make failing grades but pass the tests are promoted. This teaches the children that they are entitled and that hard work is not important and neither is education. Furthermore, schools lose money and are punished when they do not do well. Teachers lose jobs are receive cuts in pay regardless of whether they are good teachers or not based upon their classrooms performance on a test. In the author’s opinion, the rate of burnout and disillusionment in teachers and the administration is increased because of the high stakes testing. The author carefully took all this into consideration as well as other factors she will discuss further when she drew up the assessments for the AP British Literature I class.
The biggest problem with assessment in this country at this time is the No Child Left behind Act (NCLB). Time is taken from teaching class material and is devoted instead to passing this high stakes testing practice. This excerpt is taken from the book Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences by Sue Books (2004, p. 2),
Three men walking along a riverbank noticed children in the river, floundering and struggling as if they were drowning. Two of the three jumped in and pulled the children out—one, then another, then another. The third man wandered upstream. The first two rescued all the children without the help of their friend, who finally came back.
“Where were you?” they asked in exasperation. “We needed help!”
“I know,” the third man replied, “but somebody needed to find out who was throwing all the children in the water. ”
Books (2004, p. 2) explains the preceding parable as “Teachers must respond with competence and compassion to “drowning” children. Yet teachers also need to understand why so many children are in this situation to start with and to know more than many do about their students and the broader social/cultural context of their lives”. When the NCLB act was enacted into legislation the Bush administration jumped into the water and saved the children in their immediate sight but they failed to look at the root causes those children were there in the first place. The administration failed to account for the historically disadvantaged minority student, teachers, and schools.
The biggest hurdle for teachers and students that I personally see with the NCLB is that it dictates that all students in every school must be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. What’s wrong with this, you might say? Well “all students” includes students with special needs, students whose native language is not English, students who live in poverty or are homeless, students who do not benefit from their socioeconomic status, and students who have a socioeconomic advantage yet are not invested in their schoolwork. All these students despite their barriers and hurdles must be proficient in reading and mathematics along with their student peers by 2014. What happens if these students are not proficient in reading and mathematics? Well, the teachers and schools feel the magnitude of the ramifications. Nevertheless, is that the only ramifications of the NCLB, unfortunately no it is only one facet of the problem with the failing attempt of accountability and responsibility set forth by the Bush Administration.
Arce, Luna, Borjian, & Conrad, (2005) write that one of the problems with the NCLB act is “specifically harmful for the children described as "disadvantaged students," the same socioeconomic groups that have historically received inferior education. In fact, NCLB's goals are highly restrictive for lower-income families whose children attend low-income schools”. If a school is already low income, located in an area that has a high prevalence of poverty, poor supply of food and access to unhealthy fried fast food, a high unemployment rate, and has a number of children from single parent homes one could logically assume that their scores would be quite lower than the school in the affluent area, which has a moderate-high income school, two parent households, access to resources, working parents, and adequate & healthy food supply. These schools get hit twice as hard when they repeatedly fail to meet year end standards. Especially, if their population of students are disengaged, abused/neglected, special needs, ESL, and gifted students whom have not been properly identified and challenged.
The Bush administration applied a band-aid to a wound that needed stiches, after a while it became infected and bacteria resistant, soon thereafter gangrene set in the region. It is time to amputate the NCLB before the infection results in sepsis resulting in toxicity and certain death for the Nation’s educational system. Reform needs to happen and it needs to happen now but it cannot and should not happen overnight. If change is going happen and make a difference, then we must throw life preservers to the children in the water now while others go upstream to find out why the children are ending up in the water in the place. So what is the answer? At this time, the author does not know if any of us have an answer.
Defining what to measure and determining how to measure are identified by Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010, p. 84) as two problems encountered in classroom management. Quite often the problems occur when we are unsure of or unclear about what and how we are going to measure our students. As with everyday life, communication that is unclear and hard to follow causes confusion and undesired results the same happens with testing and measurement. The problems are similar because when the “the trait is not clearly specified” or “the testing procedures lack definition or specificity” the problems with measurement occurs (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010, p. 87). A detailed description makes it clear what trait is being tested. Also a clear and concise definition sets forth the procedures for testing. In addition, one affects the other, as Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010, p. 87) note, “Specifying or defining what we want to measure often determines how the trait should be measured”. If what we want to measure is not clearly designed or specified, then the method of determining how the trait should be measured is affected directly.
It is important to overcome the problems of classroom testing because of accountability. Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010), “it has become imperative that teachers be able to understand and demonstrate the role that objective test data can play in educational decisions making”. As teachers, we are not only accountable to the profession but to our students, our schools, and our community. How can we as teachers teach material to our students if we are not capable of adequately and appropriately test their capabilities or deficits in the material? Do we not have some level of responsibility of capability in the matter? Should teachers not have knowledge of how to formulate, prepare, administer, assess, interpret, and translate the data? In the author’s opinion, yes if they are going to teach the material they should be able administer properly formulated and designed tests.
The first step in designing an assessment is to plan your objectives. Objectives are like outlines for a research paper. The outline provides a framework for a finished project, your paper. Objectives in the classroom can also be equated to road maps. Road maps, for instance, you have a trip and you only have two days to get there you and your brother are driving two different cars and leaving about two hours later than the other. Being a reasonable person, you have a starting point pin pointed on the map, but on a piece of paper to the side you have made notes and plans, when to break, sleep, eat, so on and so forth, even the final stopping point is marked. Your brother has no road map, gets in his car and just starts driving makes it there a day late and tired because he barely slept, and his kids are cranky and hungry.
Do the authors agree with the statement “any good classroom test begins with your objectives” (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010)? Yes, or she would not be here studying this material or in this program. Teaching children or adults is not a laissez-faire type of system. In the author’s opinion, authoritative type of system is what works best with children. Authoritative demands but is responsive; whereas, laissez-faire is nonresponsive or demanding. Children need structure, guidance, and understanding. Objectives allow teachers to show the children what they will be learning and what they will be expected to demonstrate later on after the material is mastered. In addition, objectives allow teachers to stay on track with the material and lesson plans.
The author designed one aspect of her assessment to be both formative and summative to give her an ongoing and a final assessment of learning. Both the formative and summative assessments are gauges that assess student learning and comprehension; the formative assessment basically is concerned with progress monitoring (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The formative assessment is administered frequently sometimes daily or weekly. This insight allows the teacher and/or educator to modify the amount of teaching or mediation given to students. The summative assessment is more traditional and is composed of multiple choice questions and essay test questions. The summative test evaluates what the student has learned over the course of the teachers’ instruction of the material. The tests are basically tools and provide a snapshot into what the student(s) have learned or are learning and where improvements need to be made (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The teacher gathers the information from the assessments and other means of measurements (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).
Then the teacher analytically evaluates all information from the assessments and the measurements, she or he then uses the information for a variety of purposes. In reference to the student, the teacher uses the information to advise advanced standing, advise tutoring, allocate a ranking, and/or suggest other interventions or suggestions as she or he see fit. In reference to the teaching of the material, the teacher uses the information gained to decide if she or he should review the material, proceed to the next section, reassess the students, and reteach the section. In reference to the curriculum, the teacher uses the information gained to decide if she or he needs to replace or revise the materials and/or methods of instruction (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The formative assessment is the assessment method that is ongoing and gauges a student’s educational development in a specific subject area, whereas, the summative assessment is the broad assessment of a student’s comprehension of a variety of subjects. Unlike the formative assessment, the summative assessment is based upon the collective evaluations of the formative assessments.
The other assessments preformed (refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy) are Criterion- Referenced Testing and Norm-Referenced Testing. The author feels these are valid means of assessment. A method of testing that examines an individual’s performance is Criterion-Referenced testing ("Criterion- Referenced Testing," 2006). This method of testing was developed by Glaser and Klaus in 1962. As stated in the article entitled Criterion- Referenced Testing, (2006, Para. 1), criterion-referenced testing is best understood through the following explanation: “criterion is a level of performance achieved only when the person being examined is able to perform certain tasks. These tasks have been determined to be necessary for learning “criterion is a level of performance achieved only when the person being examined is able to perform certain tasks. These tasks have been determined to be necessary for learning”. The content on which the individuals are assessed upon on the criterion-referenced test is well- defined ("Criterion- Referenced Testing," 2006). In comparison to the criterion-referenced test, the norm-referenced test is slightly different. Criterion-referenced test is concerned with content domain and skills and norm- referenced is concerned with rank of individual within a group. The standardized test is the norm-referenced test ("Norm-Referenced Testing," 2006). It refers to the wide-ranging assortment of standardized tests. As stated in the article Norm-Referenced Testing, (2006, Para. 1), “the results of which are interpreted by comparing the performance of examinees with that of a specified population of individuals, or norm group”.
It is important to remember why we do assesments in the first place as the authors Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010) simply state, that one must not lose sight of the purpose and reason behind why the assessment was given in the first place, as well as the moral and ethical obligation that teachers have to serve the student and her or his workplace. Assessments are used to help teachers gauge instructional methods. Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010) point out that performance assessments are given to help teachers adjust, modify, and improve instructional methods and to assess and improve learning. Furthermore, as Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010, pp. 202) note “Performance assessments create challenges that objective and essay tests do not. Performance grading requires a greater use of judgment than do true-false and multiple choice questions”. Because we are human first and teachers second, things such as: feelings, bias, religion, good and bad judgments, values, beliefs, racism, sexism, gender bias, homophobia, misogyny, ethnocentrism, physical ailments, mood, medications, and a wide array of things cloud or distort our judgment. Just as factors affecting the children’s performance can come into play such as, too much noise, time of day, mood, sleepiness, anxiety and etc. Other things that must be taken into consideration are as Kubiszyn & Borich, (2010 pp. 203) write “ constraints that must be decided upon when constructing and administering a test are amount of time allowed, use of reference material, help from others, use of specialized equipment, prior knowledge of the task, and scoring criteria”. All these things must be considered and accounted for to have a reliable and valid assessment.
In conclusion, “all tests and scores are imperfect and are subject to error” states, Kubiszyn & Borich, ( 2010), the authors mean there is no such thing as a perfect test score there are too many factors at play that can positively or negatively affect the score of a test. It’s the opposite of like saying truth is absolute truth and should be accepted and unquestioned? The thing is on the surface most people would accept that statement upon principle alone but in philosophy there are no absolute truths or are there? The authors are asking you to open your mind and forget everything you have been taught about testing as a test-taker and see it from the test-scorers viewpoint. They are asking you to see trees instead of the forest. To change you thinking and way of viewing testing also to prepare you for the journey, they are about to take you upon a world of standard errors of measurement and standard deviation. This is important because the sources of error are test-takers, errors with the test, errors in scoring, and errors with the test administration. There are ways of identifying these and steps to take to avoid and or correct the error or prevent them from occurring in the future. More importantly, score reliability is not stable across different environments are affected by other factors. What I can do that can most prevent error in testing is the test-retest method. In addition, alternate forms scores reliability is much lower, so the use of this method would be unreliable at best. I would only use reliable, tested, a confirmed valid forms of assessments to avoid this conflict.
Reference
Norm-Referenced Testing. (2006). In Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of the Handicapped and Other Exceptional Children and Adults. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/wileyse/norm_referenced_testing
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