A Season of Change: From Common Core to High Stakes Tests

This week I’ve been blog trolling and found a good amount of discussion centering on worries about Common Core plans as well as continued discussions on high stakes testing from SATs to High School Exit Exams.  Both topics are rich with controversy but also offer insightful possibilities for how the nation looks at the important job of educating our K-12 students.

From the flypaper blog associated with edexcellence.net, Tim Shanahan and Ann Duffett examine the way texts are being incorporated in classrooms under the Common Core rubric.  What they find is that on the one hand teachers are eager to bring new emphasis on reading content to their students, but they also found that teachers have become so habituated to teaching skills that this method often supersedes selection of texts based on content.  Further, the study found that Common Core asks teachers to plan lessons with texts that provide language complexity and proper grade level information and vocabulary.  Teachers, the preliminary research suggests, still prefer to assign reading that matches the students’ ability, even if it is below grade level.  It is good to begin hashing out all these complications with a new national system of education standards.  It is understandable in a nation with roughly 3.9 million K-12 teachers that we wouldn’t all see eye-to-eye.  I think in some ways this question about text complexity has surfaced in other discussions in education over the years. Author Mem Fox talks about Basal Readers being the one sure fire thing that kills reading. And many studies point toward children with rich vocabularies come from homes where parents use big words often.  It stands to reason this could work in classrooms too.  The growing pains with a shift from the emphasis on skills in reading to content and higher grade level reading will be felt with the Common Core style teaching methods, but in the long run, these classes may provide more rich topics for kids to explore.  The challenge for educators will center around this question- is it possible to find a happy medium between providing skills and drills for the reluctant reader to move ahead and designing a rich in-depth reading environment that supports science and history content?  Read more at http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/common-core-in-the-schools-a-first-look-at-reading

Robert Schaeffer wrote in his blog Getting Schooled (part of the Atlanta Journal Constitution online newspaper) about the continued frenzy associated with high-stakes testing.  Performance on one test can keep a student from earning a HS diploma, getting into college or in some instances moving up a grade level.  Schaeffer points out the many studies that disprove the reliance on one test as an accurate measure of anyone’s abilities.  He also documents the well-worn area of how the curriculum narrows as a result of teaching toward the anticipated test and how all of this really diminishes the rich content that could be in schools if we were less focused on the singularity of testing.  His thoughtful words really support what teachers need to hear, because more often than not teachers get the brunt of the ridicule nation-wide when it comes to performance on tests.

As educators, we should consider these questions: It comes down to what is the purpose of a test? Is it really to assess and monitor a student’s progress through school? Or is it about shaming and punishing those who don’t measure up?  Perhaps in the short term some test score improvements may occur in the current climate. But for long-term motivated learners to prevail, a new system without blame needs to endure.  Assessment can be productive.  We don’t have to be anti-testing.  The summative testing climate is about flogging instead of about learning. A formative assessment is flexible, context-specific and linked directly to recent content. Schaeffer’s blog urges us to seriously consider our testing culture.  I say, let’s as educators consider replacing shaming measures with formative ones.  These tools help the teacher and learner establish where they are and how to precede. The process is transparent to both teacher and student and establishes learning as a goal, not a contest! Read more of Schaeffer’s ideas at http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2013/sep/26/flawed-exams-support-phony-school-accountability/