Ayana's Site On Teaching and Learning!

Here is information, resources, commentary, and links on assessment, a.k.a. grading, evaluating, scoring, measuring, and testing students.  Subject pages have their own info; here are general tips, downloadable documents, and information about standardized testing.

On Choosing Assessments:

Questions for reflection and discussion, from a course I taught.
 

Questions About Stakeholders

• What do I need to know in order to teach?
• What do kids need to know about how they’re doing?
• What do families need to know about their kids?
• What do my bosses (and their bosses) need to know about the kids or about me?

Logistical Questions

• For which assessments do I have all the parts?
• Which assessments are easy to use?
• Which assessments can help more than one person?
• Does my assessment calendar give me time to teach?

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Assessment Documents

So I'm at school and I'm thinking that I could really use a copy of a blank record sheet.  I surf teach-and-learn and can't find one!  I will be bereft no longer because here are most of the uploads from my assessment folder.

AttendanceAward.doc  If they ain't at school, you ain't teachin' 'em.

IndividualConferenceRecordSheet-1page.doc 

IndividualConferenceRecordSheet-multipage.doc  Was it Lucy Calkins who suggested research-decide-teach?

NYS_Standards- kid-friendly.doc  Someone had to do it, so I did it.  I did it before my beautiful standards movement was derailed by give-em-the-stake testing and the NCLB act.

record_book_pages.doc  Blank, basic, perfect for hours of data collection fun!

PerformanceUpdate.doc  From when I thought that report cards just weren't enough.

Here are report card comments from two years when I taught third grade.  They show comments from the first two marking periods.  My comments on June report cards tend to be very brief.  "It has been a pleasure teaching such an adjective, adjective child.  This summer, it would be great if Name reads a lot of (picture books, chapter books).  I'm confident that Name will (excel, learn a lot) in ## grade!  Have a great summer!"

rep_card_comments_01-02.doc

rep_card_comments_02-03.doc

On High-Stakes Tests

July 14, 2005

Like many public school teachers, I work during the summer (and after school during the year) to help ends meet.  Here in NYC, an OK teacher contract and the teacher retention crisis means that teaching summer school is the fastest, legal way for me to be able to pay my bills.  Students in grades 3-8 who fail one or more of their yearly city or statewide exams are mandated to attend summer school and then retest in August.  The consequence of not passing the city or statewide exams is that students have to repeat the grade, or as a student might say, "get left back."  There are many problems with leaving kids back, only a couple of which I'll touch on here. 

When the policy began a few years ago here in NYC, supporters heralded the 'end of social promotion' and applauded the implementation of high-stakes testing.  But education researchers, parents, and students know that subjecting children as young as 8 to high-stakes tests is nothing to cheer about.  For example, some school districts don't follow basic assessment principles.  When I was studying for the GRE, I was mortified to discover that NYC K-8 assessment policies violate ETS' (makers of the SAT) guidelines on fair and appropriate use of scores (http://www.gre.org/grescores.html).  If it's not good to use a single, non-verified measure to make high-stakes decisions for adults, how could it be good for kids?

Unfortunately, a growing population of adults benefit financially from student misery.  For example, over the past 3 years, investors in McGraw-Hill (that's who NYC pays to make the citywide tests) enjoyed an obscene 55% return on their investment (http://investor.mcgraw-hill.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=96562&p=irol-stockcalculator).  Meanwhile, how many of our public schools have 55% more money than they did 3 years ago?  The growing testing industry means lots of money for investors at the expense of public schools and the students they serve.

There's a basic fairness issue.  No child wants to fail and children don't control our educational system.  Thus, if a child fails a test, then it's adults who are at fault.  High-stakes tests punish children and youth for a system they can't change, which is governed by people they didn't vote for.  In a fundamental way K-12 educational assessment in the U.S. is broken.  It just doesn't do what it's supposed to do (improve learning) for whom it's supposed to do it (children and youth). 

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Links about High-Stakes Tests

www.fairtest.org  The most comprehensive organization to address problems around standardized tests is the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards/standards.htm Alfie Kohn has written important commentary and suggestions on his website.

http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1998_08/Darling-Hammond.htm An article, "Alternatives to Grade Retention" (Darling-Hammond, 1998) from the American Association of School Administrators website.

http://www.sharingsuccess.org/code/bv/testing.pdf  A so-called "Balanced View" from a NY research consultancy.  I agree more with www.fairtest.org.  Note that some research summaries (including this) tend to ignore large classes of qualitative data; moreover very few meta-studies access what I would call the 'lived experiences' of teachers and students.  However, I include the link because it is a good overview, even though I disagree somewhat with the conclusions.

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Links for Sample Standardized Tests

Despite that I know high-stakes tests are harmful for students, I have a responsibility to help my students pass them.  Thus, I could really use a few full-length sample tests to familiarize myself and my students with the format.  A problem is that the NYC Department of Education does not make any such practice tests available to students or teachers.  (Go ahead, try and make a liar out of me; the website is www.nycenet.edu.) Can you imagine having to take a test which will decide your future, and not being allowed to do a few authentic practice tests in advance?  Well, that's exactly what NYC third, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders experience every year.

Fortunately, the people at http://www.edinformatics.com/testing/ have compiled a state-by-state list of links to sample tests.  Tonight I started going through their links looking for the type of downloadable sample tests I need.  I figured that since I was surfing each of these websites, I might as well copy the links for you, and that's how this page got started.  Here are 20 or so links in alphabetical order by state, more or less.  Some of links are different than edinformatics because I was looking for downloadable tests and their criteria are different.  Also, I didn't include some states because their websites made it too hard to find the samples.  

AK http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/assessment/benchmark.html

AZ http://www.ade.state.az.us/standards/aims/sampletests/

AR http://arkedu.state.ar.us/actaap/student_assessment/student_assessment_p1.htm

CA http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/css05rtq.asp

CO http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/csap/asrelitems_index.htm

DE http://www.doe.state.de.us/aab/DSTP_publications.html#items

FL http://www.firn.edu/doe/sas/fcat/fcatsmpl.htm

GA http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/curriculum/testing/crct_forms.asp

ID http://www.sde.state.id.us/dept/standards.asp

IL http://www.isbe.net/assessment/CDPool.htm

IN http://www.doe.state.in.us/istep/publications.html

LA http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/ssa/1341.html

ME http://www.state.me.us/education/mea/mearelitems.htm

MA http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/testitems.html

MI http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-22709_31168_31355---,00.html

MN http://education.state.mn.us/html/intro_teach_mca_tests.htm

MD http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/acad/osa/practice.html Found a 6th grade math test almost identical to one my NYC students will take.

MO http://www.dese.state.mo.us/divimprove/curriculum/releaseditems/index.htm

NE http://www.nde.state.ne.us/stars/index.html Writing assessment stuff.

NH http://www.ed.state.nh.us/education/doe/organization/curriculum/NECAP/PracticeTest.htm

NY http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/ NY State, scroll down for test samplers for grades 4 and 8.

By the time I surfed NY State, I was tired of looking at tests, and so that's where I quit to start writing this page.  For the rest of the states, see http://www.edinformatics.com/. 

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