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several thoughts and ideas...
Our interim School Superintendent and our Board of Education hosted a community forum for input and ideas on the future of our schools. The following are comments I delivered.
Ideas on modifications in policy and practices for our county schools:
The recent campaign to standardize textbooks purchased in our county have resulted in books which are no longer in line with the classroom curriculum. In honors Biology, the county endorsed curriculum includes worksheets and homework assignments on information not provided in the the textbook. To refer students to the Internet to supply the additional resources and references adds demands on a student's time and assumes that all homes have updated technological resources. Assignments based on web resources can be frustrating to the student if the capabilities at home or the capabilities of the software or website are not totally consistent and adequate.
We have been asked to purchase the English Textbook in our student's AP Literature class and numerous novels for use in the English Honors class. Along with the many fees and costs of field trips, the calculator, supplies and dues, the costs associated with sending our children to school has sky-rocketed.
Re-evaluate the use of severely flawed county-developed curriculum (pacing guides and scripts) and tests in core subjects. The organization of Math and Science in particular has been of great concern to the teachers. The tests are often clumsily written, confusing and often incorrect.
The current testing program has inhibited a great deal of both teaching and learning opportunity. The county has most recently been asking for county tests (benchmarks) in Science to apply as half of the student's grade. With so many tests, the curriculum and classroom experience has become a race to measure diluted and abbreviated learning, extinguishing discussion, analysis and creative thinking.
The practice of expanded AP and IB programs have extinguished the opportunity for other, perhaps more useful classes and courses for students of individual and varied ability. In freshman year, the choices for Science are limited to Earth Science, at a lower level or Honors Biology. By the next year, the choices for these students will similarly include AP or nothing much. By their Senior year, the kids have few choices at our children's levels academically but to take course loads of all AP classes. The real goal of this program is the thrust to prove the school's "progress" statistically and not to publicize the many flaws of this program which include a growing group of students with poor preparation causing performance and a growing teaching staff with poor preparation to teach these classes.
The teachers have to be treated as professionals. Their credentials and training should very certainly be evaluated as to quality but to remove them professionally from the process and volition in curriculum development, test development, choice in instructional materials, choice in organization of classes, distribution of students in ability level, etc. leaves the classroom atmosphere often impoverished of creativity and ineffective and mechanical for students and teachers.
Beginning with the class of 2009, the students are required to pass a state exam in each core subject. The quality of the exam is questionable and reduces the teaching to a directed goal toward the test, period. The mentality of such testing-based educational policy has marginalized the experience for teacher and student alike and has attached itself relentlessly to the core foundations of our schools. The value and even reliability of these tests has been a carefully guarded secret and the results of such an expanded testing protocol on our classrooms are on the way to destroying the learning environment entirely.
Block scheduling in Middle and High School reduces the class time and increases class load for the teachers. It is argued by the National Research Council that the reduction in class time gives an already shallow-in-scope AP or IB program further reduced value. Other schedules exist that offer varied course choice but do not compromise the student or teachers class time as greatly. The use of a flexible block schedule could provide, in coordination with departments and individual teachers, the ability for a more appropriate use of time within an overall block schedule. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309074401/html/index.html entitled: Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools (2002).
Rethinking county participation in NCLB:
NCLB requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in grades 3,4,5,6,7, and 8 in reading and math and soon in science. It
also requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in high school in reading, math, and science. Developing, administering, and assessing these tests takes money. A lot of money. The research that has been done by the federal General Accounting
Office (GAO) estimates that from 2002 to 2008, states will spend approximately $3.9 billion to $5.3 billion simply on developing and
administering the annual assessments required under NCLB. This number does not include the funds required to develop, administer, and assess special education students and English language learners. NCLB does not say that states must use standardized tests to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). However, standardized tests are cheaper and easier to develop, administer, assess, and report on. Given the fact that NCLB is already under funded, there's no way that states can develop more comprehensive systems of assessment without more funding. AYP does not track the progress of individual students over time. The solution, then, is to provide a growth model which demonstrates over time what the accomplishments are for each student in relation to a set of goals and standards. Student accomplishments are measured in a
number of different ways, including -- but not limited to -- scores on standardized tests. ( http://www.fairtest.org/arn/links.html )
Test standards and major research groups such as the National Academy of Sciences clearly state that major educational decisions should not be based solely on a test score. High-stakes testing punishes students, and often teachers, for things they cannot control. It drives students and teachers away from learning, and at times from school. It narrows, distorts, weakens and impoverishes the curriculum while fostering forms of instruction that fail to engage students or support high-quality learning. In a high-stakes testing environment, the limit to educational improvement is largely dictated by the tests - but the tests are a poor measure of high-quality curriculum and learning. In particular, the emphasis on testing hurts low-income students and students from minority groups. Testing cannot provide adequate information about school quality or progress. High-stakes testing actively hurts, rather than helps, genuine educational improvement.
There is a large body of evidence that says that the move towards accountability is having unintended consequences. In some cases, these consequences are disastrous: data that shows that untested subjects are not being taught, the Council of Basic Education report that social studies instruction is down. In our own county teachers are quoted as stating that information not tested or organized into rote learning for regurgitation in prefabricated 5-paragraph format has disappeared. Writing skills have suffered as students learn to rewrite prefab essays and are no longer challenged to find or experiment with a style or a voice of their own. (http://www.fairtest.org/arn/Packer_Transcript.html, http://www.lessonplans.com/commentary.htm , http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/14/news_pf/Perspective/Formula_writing_teach.shtml, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-08-22-ncguest1.htm)
Test preparation is on the rise and it's a multi billion dollar market now that shares growing revenues with other opportunistic educational industries of tutoring and "support services" to testing. Our students are learning the skills for test-taking and the educational researchers have coined a new phrase to describe them; they are the "bubble kids." Many academic and research papers have provided information on the many destructive forces of a testing-orientation to school reform. http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/epru_2002_Research_Writing.htm
The Government Accounting Office, the Center for Research in Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Education all rejected the NAEP proficiency measure as "fundamentally flawed." And yet, we continue to offer the scores for evaluation of our school progress...why? No research supports NCLB’s contention that the way to improve schools is to test every child every year research argues against the use of such high-stakes testing as an instrument of school reform. Tests that serve as useful monitors lose their credibility, validity and value when high stakes are attached. As researcher Donald Campbell noted many years ago, the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more the indicator and the users are likely become corrupted.
Anne Arundel County:
With change, comes an opportunity to step out of our former structure of thought and practice. With the resignation of our former Superintendent, we have a new day, a new opportunity, a new chance to evaluate the "progress" we have made in our schools and apply what we have learned and experienced to a new, better vision for the education of students in our county.
Ideas on modifications in policy and practices for our county schools:
The recent campaign to standardize textbooks purchased in our county have resulted in books which are no longer in line with the classroom curriculum. In honors Biology, the county endorsed curriculum includes worksheets and homework assignments on information not provided in the the textbook. To refer students to the Internet to supply the additional resources and references adds demands on a student's time and assumes that all homes have updated technological resources. Assignments based on web resources can be frustrating to the student if the capabilities at home or the capabilities of the software or website are not totally consistent and adequate.
We have been asked to purchase the English Textbook in our student's AP Literature class and numerous novels for use in the English Honors class. Along with the many fees and costs of field trips, the calculator, supplies and dues, the costs associated with sending our children to school has sky-rocketed.
Re-evaluate the use of severely flawed county-developed curriculum (pacing guides and scripts) and tests in core subjects. The organization of Math and Science in particular has been of great concern to the teachers. The tests are often clumsily written, confusing and often incorrect.
The current testing program has inhibited a great deal of both teaching and learning opportunity. The county has most recently been asking for county tests (benchmarks) in Science to apply as half of the student's grade. With so many tests, the curriculum and classroom experience has become a race to measure diluted and abbreviated learning, extinguishing discussion, analysis and creative thinking.
The practice of expanded AP and IB programs have extinguished the opportunity for other, perhaps more useful classes and courses for students of individual and varied ability. In freshman year, the choices for Science are limited to Earth Science, at a lower level or Honors Biology. By the next year, the choices for these students will similarly include AP or nothing much. By their Senior year, the kids have few choices at our children's levels academically but to take course loads of all AP classes. The real goal of this program is the thrust to prove the school's "progress" statistically and not to publicize the many flaws of this program which include a growing group of students with poor preparation causing performance and a growing teaching staff with poor preparation to teach these classes.
The teachers have to be treated as professionals. Their credentials and training should very certainly be evaluated as to quality but to remove them professionally from the process and volition in curriculum development, test development, choice in instructional materials, choice in organization of classes, distribution of students in ability level, etc. leaves the classroom atmosphere often impoverished of creativity and ineffective and mechanical for students and teachers.
Beginning with the class of 2009, the students are required to pass a state exam in each core subject. The quality of the exam is questionable and reduces the teaching to a directed goal toward the test, period. The mentality of such testing-based educational policy has marginalized the experience for teacher and student alike and has attached itself relentlessly to the core foundations of our schools. The value and even reliability of these tests has been a carefully guarded secret and the results of such an expanded testing protocol on our classrooms are on the way to destroying the learning environment entirely.
Block scheduling in Middle and High School reduces the class time and increases class load for the teachers. It is argued by the National Research Council that the reduction in class time gives an already shallow-in-scope AP or IB program further reduced value. Other schedules exist that offer varied course choice but do not compromise the student or teachers class time as greatly. The use of a flexible block schedule could provide, in coordination with departments and individual teachers, the ability for a more appropriate use of time within an overall block schedule. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309074401/html/index.html entitled: Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools (2002).
Rethinking county participation in NCLB:
NCLB requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in grades 3,4,5,6,7, and 8 in reading and math and soon in science. It
also requires states to develop, administer, and assess standardized tests in high school in reading, math, and science. Developing, administering, and assessing these tests takes money. A lot of money. The research that has been done by the federal General Accounting
Office (GAO) estimates that from 2002 to 2008, states will spend approximately $3.9 billion to $5.3 billion simply on developing and
administering the annual assessments required under NCLB. This number does not include the funds required to develop, administer, and assess special education students and English language learners. NCLB does not say that states must use standardized tests to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). However, standardized tests are cheaper and easier to develop, administer, assess, and report on. Given the fact that NCLB is already under funded, there's no way that states can develop more comprehensive systems of assessment without more funding. AYP does not track the progress of individual students over time. The solution, then, is to provide a growth model which demonstrates over time what the accomplishments are for each student in relation to a set of goals and standards. Student accomplishments are measured in a
number of different ways, including -- but not limited to -- scores on standardized tests. ( http://www.fairtest.org/arn/links.html )
Test standards and major research groups such as the National Academy of Sciences clearly state that major educational decisions should not be based solely on a test score. High-stakes testing punishes students, and often teachers, for things they cannot control. It drives students and teachers away from learning, and at times from school. It narrows, distorts, weakens and impoverishes the curriculum while fostering forms of instruction that fail to engage students or support high-quality learning. In a high-stakes testing environment, the limit to educational improvement is largely dictated by the tests - but the tests are a poor measure of high-quality curriculum and learning. In particular, the emphasis on testing hurts low-income students and students from minority groups. Testing cannot provide adequate information about school quality or progress. High-stakes testing actively hurts, rather than helps, genuine educational improvement.
There is a large body of evidence that says that the move towards accountability is having unintended consequences. In some cases, these consequences are disastrous: data that shows that untested subjects are not being taught, the Council of Basic Education report that social studies instruction is down. In our own county teachers are quoted as stating that information not tested or organized into rote learning for regurgitation in prefabricated 5-paragraph format has disappeared. Writing skills have suffered as students learn to rewrite prefab essays and are no longer challenged to find or experiment with a style or a voice of their own. (http://www.fairtest.org/arn/Packer_Transcript.html, http://www.lessonplans.com/commentary.htm , http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/14/news_pf/Perspective/Formula_writing_teach.shtml, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-08-22-ncguest1.htm)
Test preparation is on the rise and it's a multi billion dollar market now that shares growing revenues with other opportunistic educational industries of tutoring and "support services" to testing. Our students are learning the skills for test-taking and the educational researchers have coined a new phrase to describe them; they are the "bubble kids." Many academic and research papers have provided information on the many destructive forces of a testing-orientation to school reform. http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/epru_2002_Research_Writing.htm
The Government Accounting Office, the Center for Research in Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Education all rejected the NAEP proficiency measure as "fundamentally flawed." And yet, we continue to offer the scores for evaluation of our school progress...why? No research supports NCLB’s contention that the way to improve schools is to test every child every year research argues against the use of such high-stakes testing as an instrument of school reform. Tests that serve as useful monitors lose their credibility, validity and value when high stakes are attached. As researcher Donald Campbell noted many years ago, the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more the indicator and the users are likely become corrupted.
Anne Arundel County:
With change, comes an opportunity to step out of our former structure of thought and practice. With the resignation of our former Superintendent, we have a new day, a new opportunity, a new chance to evaluate the "progress" we have made in our schools and apply what we have learned and experienced to a new, better vision for the education of students in our county.
posted by annie | 10:22 AM
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