Ignorance is Strength

wordpress is being weird, didn’t include post 10, so here it is.  10. http://lilacfrenzy.uniblogs.org/2007/10/23/too-much-technology-…really/#comments 

1. http://carriek.uniblogs.org/2007/11/12/no-school-left-behind/#comment-12

2. http://wrightas.uniblogs.org/2007/09/24/racism-rears-his-head-in-louisianahow-can-students-respond/#comments

3. http://shembara.uniblogs.org/2007/11/12/looking-for-proof/#comment-10

4. http://wrightas.uniblogs.org/2007/10/23/more-jail-time-than-school-time/#comments

5. http://weathesh.uniblogs.org/2007/09/22/not-another-facebook/#comments

6. http://ebarsy.uniblogs.org/2007/10/07/sometimes-i-want-to-kill-someone/#comments

7. http://feuerdorn88.edublogs.org/2007/10/21/preschool-language-advantage/#comment-7

8. http://imgrundc.uniblogs.org/2007/11/25/bloodshed-in-bartlesville-figuratively-speaking/#comment-7

9. http://merp.uniblogs.org/2007/10/22/esl-suit/#respond

10. http://lilacfrenzy.uniblogs.org/2007/10/23/too-much-technology-…really/#comments 

I feel that I have learned a good deal about the topic of standardized tests and how it relates to teaching writing. I think that throughout searching for and reading various articles I have got a good feel of how most teachers feel about standardized testing. I was a bit disappointed in the fact that the majority of the articles reflected negatively on standardized testing. I wished there would have been more articles that showed it in a different light. This could be because the education community does view standardized testing as something that is that horrible or it could be because the media is only interested in the negative aspects of it. I also feel that I have a good gauge of what testing is going to look like for me when I get into the classroom. I think that I will share the view of many other teachers is saying that it will be something that my students and I must just get through. I have also learned that it is something that should be approached with caution being that a person can easily lose their job by breaking any rules of test giving. As far as my experience with blogging and RSS aggregators go, I am very pleased. I think that RSS technology is extremely useful and enjoyable. I am big into things being efficient and that is what this technology is. I love how much time I can save by simply going to google reader and seeing and reading about everything I want. I also found word press to be easy to use and figure out. I do have a somewhat sour taste in my mouth about it because it has been giving me some minor problems. I don’t know if I will incorporate this into my own curriculum. If I have a class that appears technologically advanced I might try it. To be honest I really don’t know if I will incorporate it or not. One instance where I could see it being useful is for daily journals. Instead of the class doing journals in class I could have then do blogging. They may also be more willing to do this than paper journals.   

Article

Carla Hammersley of Northport, a teacher of 15 years, was recently forced to resign due to a MEAP test violation. She did not give out any answers or prompts, but a committee of school board members found her guilty of the following:

• Providing information to three sixth grade students that may have aided in answering a total of five questions;

• Coaching sixth, seventh and eighth grade students by encouraging them during testing sessions, including writing, to include details, follow previously taught formats, and correct grammatical mistakes;

• Returning assessment materials to seventh and eighth grade students after students believed they had completed the test, and giving the students the opportunity to edit and revise their work;

• Using an overhead projector to review a persuasive essay format immediately before administering the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade writing tests 

Hammersley insists that she is innocent and has done nothing wrong. Her concern remains on her students, insisting that they know that they have done nothing wrong throughout this whole process. She is going to try and seek to start a career somewhere else. She stated that if she stayed at her school in Newport, she would become “the kind of teacher she hates, never challenging another student or parent, for fear of reprimanding.”

I admire the fact that even though she is being forced to give up a job, and most likely students that she loves, she is still showing concern for her students. I personally would be furious if I was forced to resign, although I suppose it is better than being fired. We as mere readers of this article cannot know for sure whether she is innocent, but for now I will trust her word. I can only imagine how difficult of a situation she is in. What with all of her students being interviewed and asked to testify against her. It reminds me somewhat of The Dead Poet’s Society, where the children are turned against their teacher in order that their school might not take the blame. Of course I have no way of knowing that went on, I’m just talking.

The thing I realized from this article and from Carla’s resignation is that fact that we take standardized testing extremely serious in this country. I had never thought that there were ramifications for failing to distribute and give a test properly. I look at some of the things that she was accused of doing and underneath it all I see a person trying to be a good teacher to her students. Maybe she understands that the demands put upon her students by the MEAP, more specifically the writing assessment, are extremely demanding. Any teacher who sees a student in need of assistance is naturally going to want to help that student. Were these her motives, or was it merely a lack or caution on her part.

This situation makes me think that we as teachers are always going to have to cover out “behinds”. This in turn makes me wonder why it has to be this way? Why should a teacher of 15 years have to worry about being fired over helping her students with the MEAP. Why should teachers have to constantly look over their shoulder, in fear of being reprimanded-or even sued for doing this or that.

Perhaps I am being too dramatic, or too cynical. It may be I am worried about all these things because someday soon I might be in that same situation. This article shows again how much I do not know about the teaching world and how much I have to learn.   

Article 

The school district in Fayetteville Arkansas has decided to stop giving the Iowa Basic Skills Test to it’s students. This test was used to guage the performance of their 3rd through 8th graders. The students will continue to take the state test but will not be forced to take the two additional Iowa tests. Previously the school district had be administering all three tests to their students.

Lester Long, who is the districts director of assessment and accountability, says that eliminating the two Iowa tests gives the students and teachers more time to concentrate on their curriculum rather than standardized tests. Long also thinks that the districts teachers will have a positive response to less testing. He says, “Teachers like quick assessments.”What Long says seems to correspond with what I have heard from most teachers who are involved with standardized tests. Standardized tests get in the way of the flow and rhythm of the classroom. This district seems to be understanding of the needs of not only their teachers but their students.

What does this reduction of testing mean for the teachers and students. It means that they get one to two more weeks of instruction in the classroom. That is valuable time for teachers especially if they are pressed for time. The Arkansas district is not giving up completely on test assessment. Instead of administering the two large Iowa tests to assess their students they will give out two small assessment tests that will only take minutes of classroom time as opposed to days.

This seems like a logical way to go about testing and assessing our students. What I mean is that if we can still accurately assess them with a test that takes less time and money, why not do it? We, as teachers and administrators, should try and be as efficient as possible when we are dealing with the school’s time. Maybe whenever we are thinking about administering standardized tests we should keep the word “efficient” in mind. What is efficient for the student and what is efficient for us as teachers? 

I have a few links for the following post.

Article 1
Article 2
Article 3

The subject of all these articles is the MEAP retake. On October 9th and story ran in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that disclosed the writing topics for the 5th and 6th grade MEAP test. The state superindendent of Public Instruction Michael Flanagan, says that the test needs to be fair to all students. What does being fair mean? It means that all 5th and 6th graders throughout the entire state must take the writing portion of the MEAP again.

All of this because an article was published that gave away some of the topics on the writing test. One of the articles that I read gives the example that all writing tests aren’t even taken on the same day in Michigan, so who’s to say that these 5th and 6th graders aren’t dialing and making cross state phone calls to help out their other friends? Being that tests in the past weren’t taken on the same day does that make them invalid, because there was a possibility that these elementary school students had a complex underground network of shuffiling answers? I am also curious as to how many 5th and 6th graders across the state read the Jackson Citizen Patriot. How many of these conniving students looked over this article with their hearty breakfeast of Captian Crunch and Leggo Waffles?

I wonder if maybe it’s just a bit ridiculous to think that this article is a complete breach of the MEAP test? It seems ludicrous to spend thousands and thousands of dollars of the states money to retake this section of the test. It doesn’t make sense, it’s a waste of money. Especially since the reason the state is retaking this test doesn’t make sense. I am willing to wager that the majority of these 5th and 6th graders don’t care enough to make the effort to search this article out, read it, and then guess as to what the actual questions are on the test, being that the article only gave topics.

This is, as one article states an “overreaction”. There is no point in wasting the time and money on this retake. Also has the state considered the extra time this will take away from the students courses? Teachers and students struggle enough as it is with the MEAP why make them waste more of their time on it?

How many of us, while taking a standardized test, have ever thought, “This is simply a waste of my time.” I know I have and I’m sure I’m not alone. Most of the time when we’re taking standardized tests we’re either trying to get through them as fast as possible or we’re thinking of other things that we could be doing.

I recently helped assisstant coach middle school cross country. It just so happened that my little cousin was on the team I was coaching. One day on the way home from practice I asked her what she was doing in school, she repiled with what appeared to be annoyance, “we’re taking the MEAP.” I proceded to ask her why she seemed so annoyed with the test. She went on to explain her situation. She is an advanced language arts which is basically eigth grade english at the seventh grade level. The thing that was annoying her so much was the fact that the MEAP only covered things that pertained to seventh grade english. So this entire week was devoted to something that she had already learned, something that was almost elementary to her.

Could this time have been better spent? I understand the fact that we must test in order to show proficency, but I feel how this is an example of how imperfect the system is. The system sees a seventh grader and tests for what it thinks a seventh grade student should be capable of. And in this case as in so many others it is off.

In this article a group of public school teachers, parents, and students were assembled at the University of Texas at Brownsvill and Texas Southmost College for a public forum on NCLB legislation. Their standardized test is called the TAKS or Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. The group had the complaint that their school curriculum became to rigidly conformed around this idea of taking the TAKS. Sounds familiar for some reason.

“They’re killing everything we want to do because they want us to take the TAKS,” one teacher said and drew laughs by playfully declaring that “TAKS kills brain cells.”

The article also said that: “according to panelists at Saturday’s forum, it (TAKS) does squash creativity, individuality and a teacher’s freedom to incorporate students’ strengths and evaluate with multiple measures.”

It sounds to me that the TAKS are out of touch with the students. They are trying to evaluate students that they have no personal relationship with or knowledge of. How much time has been wasted teaching students how to pass the test, when the teacher who really knows what the students need to learn is forced to teach them something that could be useless.

I know that I’m not going to want to teach my kids how to write for the MEAP if I know that they have bigger and better things to learn. But it doesn’t really matter what I want it is what the tests require of us. That’s what perturbs me about this subject, it’s that someone is telling me what my students need to know.

Article

This article is about elementary school teacher Kathryn Sihota, who refused to give her 3rd graders a standardized reading test. She refused to give this test based on her own personal beliefs about student evaluation. Her community has rallied behind her in support of her decision. Teachers and parents are backing up Kathryn’s decision with many positive comments. One of her colleges went so far as to say that “Kathryn represents the best in teaching… when teachers put their children before themselves.” I have to agree that this is a gutsy move that shows a lot of care and concern for her students.
Kathryn made this comment in response to the testing:

“Everything we know about young children tell us that in order to assess a child effectively, we must know much more about him or her than can be revealed by a test,” she said.

I could not agree with her more, how many third graders do you know who are very effective test takers. And on top of that how many are really interested in the test when they are taking it. They are too young to understand that this test is affecting them and their future lives. It’s unfair to base decisions about their future educational career based on a test in third grade. I feel that only the way to effectively evaluate student capabilities. One of the parents that was interviewed shares my view as well, she says, “I am not willing to trust someone I’ve never met make an assessment of my child that could affect her future in the higher grades.” This couldn’t be more true, especially at such a young age. The children haven’t been trained in test taking to the point where the tests can effectively evaluate what they are capable of.

I feel that this personal evaluation of a students capabilities will almost always be more reliable than a test. When we rely solely on tests we are doing our students an injustice. We are leaving them in the hands of people who don’t know them and their personal abilities and grade them solely on some bubbled in answers. Their is much more to student evaluation than this. What if for every writing assessment we relied on a person who had never met our student. How would we feel having a complete stranger having the only say in where that student went in school. I would feel horrible about it, because I would like to think that I knew that students capabilities far more than the distant test maker. What if a particular student merely had a bad day, are we willing to put him on the slow track for four years of high-school because of one day. I’m not ready to do that.

This situation almost happened to me in my high-school career. I was taking a placement exam for a private high-school and the results of this test showed that I was to be put in a pre-algebra class. This was outrageous, mainly because I had taken algebra already, there was no reason why I should be put in a pre-algebra course. I went home upset by the news. But later that week I got a call from the 8th grade algebra teacher, Mr. Hilken, saying that there was no reason that I should be in that pre-algebra class. So I took his advice and went on the get an A in my high-school class and was than placed in honors geometry. It pisses me off to think about what would have happened to my high-school career and my education if Mr. Hilken hadn’t stepped in.

The thing is is that Mr. Hilken actually knew me. He knew what I was capable of, and so he made a much more accurate evaluation than any test could have done. I hope that I can have some say in the evaluation of my students reading and writing. I am not content with leaving them in the hands of people who neither know of care about them.

Article

For some people being told they have to spend an entire Friday evening and afternoon at a Shakespeare festival would be quite a drag. And I must admit that I was a bit hesitant about the whole situation, but I am extremely glad I went. It was an experience I have never had before. From intriguing lectures to a brilliant play, my evening was filled with excitement.

The first item that was on my schedule was a lecture by Dr. James Shapiro. Dr. Shapiro gave me a view into the world of Shakespeare that I had never before received. Several times throughout the lecture he said that he could live in the year 1599 and to be honest I believed him. His disruptions and explanations were vivid and elegant. The lecture itself contained mostly historic facts about the life and times of Shakespeare. These were some of the things that intrigued me the most, because it gave me a different perspective into Shakespeare’s world. To me it makes sense that we should know the history of an author’s world, for in order to really understand the text we should to some respect understand the time.

This is an important aspect that I would like to incorporate into my teaching of literature. I think it’s important for students to have some understanding of the history behind the text. I know that it always has helped my to better understand and better appreciate whatever I am reading. I also think it will make my students more aware of what is truly going on inside that particular piece. If they learn certain things about the other and his life they may begin to see things in the piece that they hadn’t seen before.

Attending the lecture, casting call, and play was a new experience for me, because I had never really taken the time to look into things that were happening on campus. I thought that it was so interesting that I could be apart of something such as this. I refer mostly to the fact that I could attend this lecture by a Columbian scholar and later on in the night ask him questions as if in a classroom. That is what the casting call was like, I found that it was fantastic that I had the opportunity to probe the mind of such a great thinker. When I think about my experience that Friday night I realize that I would think to provide this same feeling for my students. I have to admit that I don’t know what that would look like right now. I also wonder if they would be interested being that they would only be teenagers and English is not necessarily their passion. I think though that it would be great to provide some sort real life example of English in motion.

One of the major problems that many educators have with standardized testing is that fact that for a certain period of time in their class, what they are teaching is all about the test. It doesn’t matter if a teacher is in the middle of an amazing string of lessons or teaching and lecturing on something he is passionate about. All that matters for those moments is the test.

In an article that I was reading, Michael J. Crossey, vice president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, commented on this very topic. He says:

“We need to teach children how to be lifelong learners,” Crossey said. “Teach them how to be successful and how to learn.”
Instead, educators must teach to the test, he said.
The same would be true if the state went to competency testing to graduate from high school, he said.
“To me, one test is never going to meet your needs,” Crossey said, noting that he hasn’t seen the proposed test. “There’s so much more involved than a test.”

Mr. Crossey says a couple important things in this quote. The idea I would like to focus on is the concept of teaching children how to be “lifelong learners”. From my experience as a student and my limited knowledge collected from other Teachers, it seems to me that standardized tests aren’t teaching students how to use their minds, they are merely teaching them how to be good test takers. When I look back on my education I hardly remember anything from the MEAP or ACT or SAT. All that I remember from those tests is how I took them. I learned how to narrow down options in a multiple choice and how to pass the test, not learn some of the material. Of course knowledge of the material is needed in order to succeed, but it can also be argued that students who are knowledgeable in certain subjects may test poorly in those subjects do to poor test taking skills. There are even entire books dedicated to studying for tests, the “test prep” book section is not an uncommon site at any Barnes and Noble.

So as I reflect on this article and my test memories I wonder, “What’s the point?” When am I ever going to use those test taking skills in the real world. I doubt I will and I doubt whether any of my fellow students will. So why do we keep bombarding students with this format of learning if it really isn’t beneficial to them in the long run. I feel that there have to be other ways of enabling our students to become better life long learners. What if we taught them things that mattered in each subject instead of how to successfully pass a test. I know that I don’t have the experience or the knowledge to propose a better plan, but I feel there must be one out there. There has to be a better alternative to standardized test.

I would like to say something, for myself and my readers, regarding me and this topic. It is the fact that I am extremely uninformed on this subject. I have my general opinion in regards to standardized testing, but I am willing to hear both sides of the argument. Perhaps there are some benefits to testing, I would like to find out so that maybe a better way of evaluating students could be discovered. I may not know it all but one fact that I am getting from my readings is that there is a certain amount of unrest among practicing teachers in regards to this testing system.

So hopefully through this class and these blogs I can discover just a little bit more about what it means to be an educator. If anyone out there has any information that could send me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

– Link