Every assessment choice is a value judgment

Howard Gardener replied to a NYT article "Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds" (published March 12, 2012) with this:

It is instructive to know that second graders who received a Core Knowledge curriculum performed better tahn comparison gropus on measures of reading. But every choice of curriculum -- and, more important, every choice of an assessment measure -- entails a value judgment. Those educators who selected a reading program that valued fictional works (NOT those who chose the Core Knowledge Curriculum in the study) presumably thought that was an appropriate emphasis. It is now up to those educators to provide measures that might reveal better performances on their currciulum -- for example, richer imagination by students or a greater liklihood of reading books of any sort outside the school environment.

Today I was part of a discussion about rearranging curriculum so that teachers can measure student growth in writing. One teacher, Jim, noted that one unintended side-effect of this kind of thinking could make him shy away from asking kids to engage in complex, messy writing assessments which might blow up in his face, but might also yield some really good thinking and writing. Jim said, "I would be tempted to stick to the things that I know would show results." When you build a rubric, or an assessment, you're always drawing boundaries around what's important, what's worth looking at in student writing, and what's not relevant. When you build a common rubric to measure writing over the course of months or quarters or years, there's a lot that you're leaving out. There's also a tremendous advantage of naming the things that count. The goal is to keep this teeter-totter balanced.

Rhetoric, not literary analysis becomes the new focus in English

The common core asks for more nonfiction texts, specifically "high quality complex information texts.". Education week ("Schools begin shift to information-text instruction" by Catherine Gewertz, march 14, 2012) addresses the need for new kinds of PD. ("Most teachers are to taught how to teach reading", the article quotes one NY school official.).

What is especially interesting to me is the picture of what teachers are doing with texts. The article begins, "In an English language arts classroom in Iowa 10th-graders are analyzing the rhetoric in books about computer geeks, fast food, teenage marketing, working poor, chocolate making, and diamond mining... Students are dissecting the sources, statistics, and anecdotes the authors use to make their arguments in books... And film documentaries.". The same teacher, sarah brown wessling, the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, says, "we spend a lot of time talking about attributes of nonfiction, like how to read an interview. Or how to tell the difference between fact and opinion."

This is rhetoric curriculum spread throughout the 4 high school years. I think that's a different thing than saying that teachers must teach more nonfiction. Instead, it means teaching rhetorical reading, reading for argument, for tone, for bias, and for author's purpose.

The article references an online teacher toolkit developed by the state of Oregon and NY's teacher resources which can be found in this issues links page at edweek.org/links.

What is Literature Good For?

What is Literature Good For?

Carol Jago, in her recent book With Rigor For All (Heineman), cites six contributions that the study of literature makes to student development:
1. intellectual curiosity as the content of great works of literature offers them teh ways and means of delving into stories, and through these stories, of having a vicarious experience of the human condition far greater than any of them could ever acquire on the basis of luck and firsthand encounters
2. cognitive skills through the study of literature that supports the critical reading of all texts, the precise use of language, and the creation of sound arguments
3. aesthetic sensitivity that helps them recognize and respond to art
4. an intra- and intercultural awareness by reading texts from both their own and other cultures
5. an ethical sensitivity that includes the ability to regulate conduct according to principles and the ability to deliberate about issues both in their own heads and in dialogue with others
6. an existential maturity that allows them to behave as civilized human beings in a world where others are not always so inclined.

Jago draws this list from Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives by Marshall Gregory (2009). According to Gregory, existential maturity “is more easily defined by what it is not than by what it is. It is not self-centeredness; it is not unkindness; it is not pettiness; it is not petulance; it is not callousness to the suffering of others; it is not back-biting or violent competitiveness; it is not mean-spiritedness; it is not dogmatism or fanaticism; it is not a lack of self-control; it is not the inability ever to be detached or ironic; it is not the refusal to engage in give-and-take learning from others; it is not the assumption that what we personally desire and value is what everyone else desires and values” (57)

What's Going to Be on the New Common Core Test??

I had the opportunity to chat with Carol Jago, past NCTE president and PARCC and NAEP member, last week over lunch. She’s sitting on the committee that’s currently figuring out what the yearly Common Core test will look like. As far as I can recall -- and I should say that there was a glass of wine or two involved over lunch -- there will be two tests: one at the end of the year (May/June) that will feel like an AP Language multiple-choice passage analysis test with a focus on challenging texts – and the examples she gave really were challenging. This one on computer, probably computer adaptive. Another test earlier in the spring (April) will be an "integrated reading and writing task," a writing test that asks kids to create an argument after reading multiple texts – again, it sounded like the “synthesis question” on the AP Language test. This essay test will likely be graded – at least partially – by computers. Again, she offered some pretty interesting examples that involve a range of text types, even paintings.

As far as I’m concerned all this is good news, a good focus on reading challenging texts, argument, analysis, and synthesis. OK… I’m a little concerned with the computer graded essays! But right now, with a couple pounds of essays to grade this weekend, I'm willing to see what those computers can do to provide feedback about things like focus, development, and organization.

Common Core Standards - comments by Doug Reeves

In Education Week, Doug Reeves comments on Common Core Standards using English Language Arts as a pointed example. He praises them and says that they should come along with more direction to teachers about how to achieve the high expectations.

I've cut-and-pasted it here:

COMMENTARY

Common Standards: From What to How

How Common-Core Standards Should Influence Teaching

By Douglas B. Reeves

Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.

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Will the recently released draft of K-12 standards from the Common Core State Standards Initiative provide a degree of coherence in academic expectations for students, teachers, and education systems that has not previously been available in American education? Or will this effort be one more failed reform, distinguished more by enthusiastic presentation than by successful implementation? The answer depends not merely on the standards documents, but also on the degree to which policymakers and leaders are willing to link the clear intent of the standards to the reality of the classroom.

We should first acknowledge that, in a nation committed to “local control” of education, any attempt to draft common standards represents courageous and difficult work. The standards-writers deserve our thanks, if not always our agreement. But while I applaud the rigor and specificity present in much of the standards document, I must challenge what seems to be its central premise: that standards are merely the “what” of education, while the “how” must be left to the discretion of individual schools and teachers.

In the introduction to the English/language arts standards document, for example, the writers declare: “Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the standards” [Page 2]. And they then say, “The standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do but not how teachers should teach” [Page 3]. Such statements undermine what is otherwise a document with a great deal of promise.

Consider the best features of the proposed common-core standards, which include a refreshing emphasis on nonfiction reading and writing at the elementary school level. The document suggests that 65 percent of elementary school writing should be explanatory or persuasive in nature, while most current elementary writing is dominated by fiction, fantasy, poetry, and personal narrative.

The standards also make clear that teachers in social studies and science are responsible for teaching and assessing reading, writing, speaking, and listening as well, a directive that is particularly important at the secondary level. Recent research suggests that while teachers are widely aware of the importance of evidence-based instructional practices in writing, they are not likely to apply them in secondary social studies and science classes.

The standards for grades 6-8 are particularly strong, and will for many schools represent a significant improvement in the preparation of students for high school. If taken seriously, they will lead to dramatic increases in the attention given to the teaching and assessment of reading and writing in these grades. The case for improved quantity and quality of nonfiction writing and reading at this level is supported with an impressive collection of research.

The standards-writers not only make clear the importance of greater rigor in our expectations of what student literacy should be, but also demonstrate convincingly that most students now fail to read and write at the levels suggested by these standards. Indeed, students are rarely asked to read and write with this degree of complexity.

The standards-writers deserve special commendation for their emphasis on kindergarten reading and writing. While I continue to hear the evidence-free argument that it is not “developmentally appropriate” for kindergartners to read and write, the standards document demonstrates with authentic examples that students can rise to the challenge. Writing, or failing to write, by the ages of 5 or 6 is not a reflection of brain development, but a consequence of adult expectations.

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The false “what-how” dichotomy, however, threatens to reduce the standards-writers’ accomplishments to rubble. In their introduction, for example, they also say that “the standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or specify the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to use to monitor and direct their thinking and learning” [Page 2]. They might as well have written, “While the evidence suggests that obesity is a national tragedy with enormous personal and financial costs, we completely support your decision to dive into a smorgasbord of sugared water and junk food.” After all, recommending diet and exercise would be too close to mandating a “process,” something these standards eschew.

Any careful reading of the standards makes clear that process and content are essential components of effective education. The document very clearly does not regard every expression of professional judgment as equally valid. The writers, properly in my view, would require that 4th grade students “produce coherent and clear writing in which the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience” [Page 18].

The document also provides very explicit requirements for persuasive, informative, and narrative writing at each grade level. The expectations for revisions, research, correction, and adherence to conventions all have clear implications for teaching methods and instructional leadership.

With a majority of states having agreed to embrace the common-core standards, this moment is too important to let slip away. Now is not the time to weaken before those who think that “local control” implies a constitutional right of indifference to evidence. Standards take us halfway up the mountain. If we are to reach the summit, then teaching and leadership, not equivocation and indecision, will take us there. n

Douglas B. Reeves is the president of the Leadership and Learning Center, headquartered in Englewood, Colo.

Vol. 29, Issue 31, Pages 32-33

"Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning"

Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning

Article by Linda Darling-Hammond.
Find it here: http://www.ccsso.org/publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=381

The Council of Chief State School Officers asked Darling-Hammond to describe what a student assessment system could look like... it seems like the new common core standards are just assumed to be part of it.

Highlights:
Think of assessments as a system with a variety of purposes -- infroming learning and instruction, determining progress, measuring achievement, providing accountability information.

In this idea system, teachers "are skilled at developing and using a rnage of assessments based on standards, learners' needs, and their professional judgment. Scoring student work based on shared learning targets is common classroom practice for teachers. Teachers are well educated and supported in these new expectations.

goal for students: "how knowledge is to be used to solve problems and develop cognitive skills: the abilities to find and organize information to solve problems, frame and conduct investigations, analyze and synthesize data, self-monitor and improve one's own performance, communicate well in multiple forms, work in teams, and learn independently."

things that can't be readily assessed through paper-and-pencil testing: making oral presentations, develop a portfolio of work, undertaking fieldwork, carrying out an investigation, doing practical laboratory work or completing a design project,...

check out "leading-edge assessment systems" in CT, KY, ME, MY, VT

A VISION BUILD ON EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES

1) process is guided by common standards.... curriculum guidance is lean but clear and focused on what students should know and be able to do as a result of their learning experiences.

2) include a balance of assessments ... emphasize deep knowleedge of core concepts within and across the disciplines, problem solving, collaboration, analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking... give student opportunities to develop and demonstrate higher order thinking skills such as the abilities to find and organize information to solve problems, frame and conduct investigations, analyze and synthesize data, and apply learning to new situations.

3) teachers are involved w/ curriculum development

4) Assessment measures are structure to continuously improve teaching and learning... close examination of student work, learning progressions, curriculumembedde assessments give models to teachers,students should be engaged in own progress of learning

5) designed to improve quality of learning and schooling... report publicly the data

6) assessment and accountability systems use multiple measures to evaluate students and schools... (other indicators often include student participation in challenging curricula, progress through school, graduation rates, college attendance, citizenship, a safe and caring climate, and school success and improvement

7) new technology enable greater assessment quality and information systems that support accountability

HOW A HIGH-QUALITY ASSESSMENT SYSTEM MIGHT OPERATE
develop curriculum frameworks, create a digital curriculum and assessment library, develop state and local assessment measures (see New England Common Assessment Program, New Standards Project (1990s implemented in Maine, KY, VT). "curriculum-embedded performance components" "tests and tasks" for use in classrooms (see England's "tests and tasks") (these should be standardized and scored in moderated fashion). evaluate student growth over time... see the "Developmental Reading Assessment", learn about electronic portfolios, develop moderation and auditing systems ofr teacher-scored work, provide time and training for teachers and school leaders.