Teaching to the test

Joe Bower includes a video of David Berliner talking about Campbell's law.

I like the idea of testing to see where kids are and to see if we are doing our job or not and to see if our kids are learning. I also see the potential problems arising from too much emphasis on standardized testing. This is a topic which I find fascinating, although it is not my main emphasis. Check out Joe Bower's blog for many related posts.

Grammar Workbooks and Math Tests

Joe Bower has posted on his daughter's experience in school on a fraction unit. He reports:

"I have been teaching 8 years and have struggled under the weight of grades and what they don't mean for true learning. The truth of their effects didn't become crystal clear to me until a recent discussion with my 6th grade daughter's math teacher. After doing very well on homework and in class work, my daughter has "struggled" (i.e., gotten poorer grades) on the unit tests."

The test his daughter did poorly on was a provincial assessment. This is a familiar story to me. Many students in my class struggle with provincial assessments when during class they are learning at their own rate. I am all for the assessments as a measure of their progress and relative standing. It should not be hidden from them that they are behind or ahead of others in their learning. That should not limit their ability to learn at their level and to be taught using the best possible methods.

Early in my career I had a very poor concept of how to teach reading and writing. I adopted a grammar and writing skills workbook for the students to complete every week. I had all of the students do every exercise in the book throughout the year. One particular student struggled, yet he completed the exercises religiously. At the end of the year I gave a comprehensive test on grammar and writing skills taken directly from the workbook. He scored below 30%.

His mother came in to talk to me and wanted to know why he did so poorly. She knew how hard he had slaved at the weekly workbook. I was dumbfounded and was unable to avoid the conclusion that what I had been providing him yielded little in the way of learning grammar and communication skills, for that matter, any meaningful learning at all!

I was so embarrassed and had no excuse to offer. The parent and the student deserved better. Since that time I have learned so much about how kids learn to read and write. Workbooks have been in my bad books for a long time now.

Joe Bower's daughter doing poorly on her math test may be:

1. a sign that she is not learning the concepts of math in class. It may be taught in the same way that I taught grammar years ago, workbook style, algorhythms, repetition and little meaning.
2. the assessment was inadequate in measuring the learning that his daughter had achieved in the classroom. I have had great success with teaching math using open ended, "conceptual math" (Dan Meyer et. al.), yet it has become obvious to me that the way I assess learning will have to change along with the more patient, creative approach to learning math concepts. It is my sincere hope that the changes I have made in my math classes will eventually result in my kids out- performing others on provincial assessment or, at the very least, improving their test scores drastically.

Lastly, in our earnest attempts to achieve the best possible learning environments in our classrooms, we have to be careful not to be too judgmental of others' attempts to provide great learning environments for their kids. I am the first to admit that what I provide in my classroom is a work in progress. I am open to sharing and know what I offer is imperfect. I am not the only educator trying to achieve the perfect learning environment, most others are on their own journeys as are the authors of the provincial assessments.

I am not judging Joe Bower's position with respect to his daughter's teacher. On the contrary, I believe he is a wonderful warrior for change that will improve learning for his kids and many others. I love the difficulty and challenge of change. It will keep me interested in learning about teaching for a long time.

Higher Order Thinking

In a post by Joe Bower entitled "Poor pedagogy + Technology = Accelerated Malpractice", he responds to comments he received when he criticised a teacher who posted about using google docs to create tests.

The debate is quite lively and Joe really digs deep to defend his point that creating google docs tests is not a twenty first century idea. According to Joe, true-false content tests are just another example of out-dated assessment tactics in a teacher centered classroom (my words).

He tells the story from a Kohn book where a surgeon from a century ago visits a modern operating room and would feel quite confused. A teacher from 1oo years ago visiting a modern classroom would feel right at home. Bower makes the point that it is our job to speak out and to recognize the old and tired from the new. He quotes Kohn:

"all that is necessary for the triumph of damaging educational policies is that good educators keep silent"

And Gerald Bracey:

"There is a growing technology of testing that permits us now to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn't be doing at all."

At our school, we have just come up with a goal for our technology initiative. We came up with the following:

"students will develop and practise higher order thinking skills (will be knowledge producers)"

We are quite proud of our goal as it is student centered, pedagogically based, as old as Piaget and 21st century as well. Notice that it doesn't even mention technology?!

Creating tests with google docs is a great idea. Does it change the classroom?

How about using microsoft publisher, web 2.0, blogging, web pages, e-books?

What is your school's goal with technology?

Joe Bower on 21st century education

Joe Bower ususally posts about the evils of grading and testing (I agree with him). He has written a post recently that is about 21st century education. I am convinced that many teachers don't have clue what we are talking about when we say 21st century education. Joe Bower does a great job of reminding us of something I say all the time, "Great teaching is great teaching, always has been always will be!"

He says it in a more eloquent way. The great minds of learning and psychology have framed progressive education years ago. Collecting knowledge and thinking have not been the same thing forever and men like Piaget have described this to us long ago. Arguably, the main difference in 21st century education is that technology alows us to not spend so much time accumulating lower order knowledge and to persue higher order thinking. (creativity, collaboration, critical thinking)

Joe writes:

If we really care about getting school reform right in the 21st Century, then we have to go back to two men from the previous century who have framed how we think of truly progressive education - John Dewey and Jean Piaget.Dewey's message focused on democracy as a way of life, not just a form of government, and that "thinking is something that emerges from our shared experiences and activities."

Piaget taught us that "even very young children play an active role in making sense of things, 'constructing' reality rather than just acquiring knowledge.If we take the work of Dewey and Piaget seriously, we have to acknowledge that the best kind of education we can provide our children has nothing to do with the date on the calendar and more to do with understanding how children learn.In the end, I have one question about the 21st Century: will the politicians and policy makers figure out what Dewey and Piaget figured out in the 20th Century, and will they listen to the modern day education experts such as Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Yong Zhao and Constance Kami."

When you try to convince your staff of the need to be a 21st century school, you can frame it with reference to what Piaget and Dewey have taught us years ago?