Today was a district wide in-service day. I was bracing for, well, I wasn't really certain since I'd never attended one before. However I really had a good time. The entire process proved interesting, and I got to see a lot of new educational technologies.
I also got to talk with a few people from other schools within the district, and while they were all middle school teachers, many had insights and thoughts on teaching high school.
I must admit I felt like the coolest guy in the room whenever someone had a technology issue and they turned to me. Mostly it was the simplest stuff in the world, like pushing a button or plugging something in, but it still felt quite good to be successful. We also got a great conversation going on the usage of wikipedia, of which I am a staunch supporter.
I also met one of the people from the Department of Education who is responsible for NECAP testing - that's the New England Common Assessment Program. This is a standardized competency test shared by Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Soon Maine will also begin using it. We touched upon many interesting issues regarding this test, but one in particular really surprised me.
We looked at one sample prompt, which presented a fact sheet by a 'student' and the test-takers were tasked with contrasting television in 1965 and television now.
This seemed fairly harmless until we began to really dig into it. Is this prompt fair to students who don't have television? In addition, the fact sheet was not written by a student but instead was written by professionals, and was designed to resemble student writing. This surprised me, since this meant it was intentionally difficult to read.
Now while I see the point, that students need to be able to organize, decipher and raise the worthwhile information from the chaff, it rubs me the wrong way that they were, well, deceived about it in some ways. If a student is unfamiliar with current television, then they won't have much to go on for a comparison. When I mentioned this, the reply I got was that a valid answer would be to say that you don't have/watch television.
How many students would think of that? Further, how would that answer score? As someone who is tasked with scoring a test of this nature, is it really a comparison between TV then and TV now to say "I don't know - I don't own a television" even if that's the case?
This whole matter is troubling to me, and is something I need to think about deeply. Looking at our NECAP scores, it seems by and large that Vermont as a state isn't doing particularly well. Does this stem from cultural differences between Vermonters and New Hampshire and Rhode Islanders? Based on the figures I saw, the mean scores for Vermont don't meet proficiency in any area - I can't believe that should be the case.
Troubling is really the only way I can think to describe it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well, maybe i'm a bit biased, but i have a feelnig that it might have less to do with that and more to do with money and its cultural effects. NH, given that it has a sea coast, is in general a wealrthier staste than Vermont. Meanwhile, so is Rhode Island. In contrqast, in Vermont, probably something like half the kids go home, sit on the dirty living room carpet, watch wrestlnig with their dad, and listen to him (between cans of Budweiser) bitch about that asshole with his fancy education at work who tells him what to do. Point being, I think a lot of Vermont students get the message that education doesn't amount to anything, or makes you stupid on subjects that really matter (something I was taught, and struggled against all through college); this travels over to not learning the material that's presented, which leads to low test scores...
ReplyDeleteWhich isn't to say that there aren't other factors, but really, most of the people i ever met going through Vermont public schools who didn't regularly watch several hours of TV a day were smart enough to write coherent essays on just about anything, whether they knew veyr much on the subject or not...
It's aLso important to keep from slipping too far to the other side of that--there are standardized reading tests wherein writing samples have to be selected based on such things as minimal geographical description, because obviously children in a mountainous, landlocked state would not be able to understand a story set on the Florida coast...or vice versa. This is also a strong issue in choosing selections for elementary school reading text books...again, all I'm saying is you have to be careful not to put too much stress on the question of who might be alienated by a question...