So I am picking up where I left off. Testing results. To sum up: Don't share with kids. Don't put it on report cards. Don't set goals based on levels or scores. The creators of the resources I examined, Fountas and Pinnell and NWEA MAP Growth, do not intend this use. Simple enough.
But what if it works?
Hang on, let me make a small edit: But what if it "works"?
I have been asked, then told, (and, in the end, reprimanded) to set goals with students. To set score-based goals with students. Again and again, I have refused, citing my opposition to this practice, and yet the comeback I most often get is, "research shows that students improve when they set goals".
The Disney movie, Brink, was released in 1998. I totally remember it. (Let's assume it's because my younger sister or kids I babysat watched it, and not because of a crush on Eric Von Detten.) but this scene sums up exactly what I think about this goal setting process.
It's as if all we needed to do was say, "Read better." Or "write better." Or "know more math skills." And the rest will fall into place.
No one actually believes that. So why does it seem classes and students who do this practice of setting goals for scores are getting results this way?
Alfie Kohn has something to say about the effects of grades and motivation that seems applicable here. In his post, A Case Against Grades, he cites research concluding that the motivation to get better grades (scores, essentially) is different than the motivation to learn. By placing the heaviest weight on the score derived from the assessment, research shows we are likely to be diminishing the learning itself, even if the student's grade (score) improves. By emphasizing the importance of a score to students, the focus is redirected from what the student is learning to how well he/she is doing. He says,
Even a well-meaning teacher may produce a roomful of children who are so busy monitoring their own reading skills that they're no longer excited about the stories they're reading."Then there's the issue of the skills that can be most readily quantified. Sure we can get a number that supposedly measures a student's reading, but what about their reading are we actually measuring? Are we really comfortable only measuring that which can be answered by choosing one out of four possibilities? Of course not! And yet, when the emphasis is on scores, doesn't one run the risk of focusing on skills that can be measured in that way? In another zinger Alfie Kohn says,
Moreover, as Cuoco and Ruopp remind us, rising scores over time are often nothing to cheer about because the kind of instruction intended to prepare kids for the test - even when it does so successfully - may be instruction that's not particularly valuable. Indeed, teaching designed to raise test scores typically reduces the time available for real learning."Of course, the test producers themselves won't agree with that entirely. In fairness assessment tools that have been created in the 20 years since this research was published (not the article though. The post is from 2011.) have made strides toward higher depth of knowledge questions, but higher depth of knowledge questions that can be answered by clicking a button, nonetheless.
In a post on their blog, the Vice President of Education Research at NWEA says,
The goal of our work and our assessment is to help educators help students improve their learning, not their scores. In other words, improved scores should follow improvements in learning, and not be an end to themselves."I still have so much thinking to do here. So many questions about how to navigate these waters in my classroom and school. But even as I keep digging through the research and testing out new strategies, I can fall back on research that tells me I'm on the right track.
Now, just for fun, I'll leave you with this gem:
No comments:
Post a Comment