Beyond the Bubble Test: Why We Need Performance Assessments (Education Week - July 9, 2014) NYC Education News: New York City Department of Education EXCERPT: Last spring, while millions of American students were bubbling in answers to multiple-choice questions on the ubiquitous tests that determine school and teacher ratings, student promotions, graduation, and college admissions, some students were meeting a higher standard. At the Urban Academy, a second chance high school in New York City that is part of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, Gemma Venuti completed the set of research papers that were part of her graduation portfolio — and defended them before a committee of teachers, students, and experts from outside the school. (See Gemma talk about her experience here.) Schools in the Consortium require students to complete a well-developed literary analysis, a mathematical model, a scientific investigation, and a social science research paper. Students must provide evidence of competence in oral and written communication, critical thinking, and technology use, among other 21st-century skills. Some schools add demonstrations of competence in the arts, world language, or other fields. Teachers are trained to score the tasks reliably using common rubrics. Students who do not meet a graduation standard revise their work until it meets the criteria. Based on the high rates of graduation, college-going, and college success of Consortium students, most of whom are low-income students of color, New York State allows these performance tasks to substitute for the Regents Examinations. In science, Gemma conducted and wrote up an experiment about the Effect of Stress on Memory. In mathematics, she calculated the distance of the Empire State building from her school and explained how this and other problems could be solved using trigonometry. Gemmas literary analysis evaluated the religious views of The Life of Pi protagonist, who claimed three different religions. In social science, which requires the use of primary source materials to write a research paper, Gemma wrote about Hobbes and Kropotkins views on the right form of government. Gemma noted, Although I started off convinced by Hobbes, I re-read Kropotkins writing a few times, read background material, and found that I actually agreed with many of his opinions. I revised my opinion, and argued that neither one of them was completely correct. Gemma answered tough questions about the meaning of her findings, how she derived them, and how they could be extended when presenting these projects to panels of judges. It is easy to see how Gemmas work prepared her for college. The tasks she undertook exemplify the college and career-ready standards recently adopted by most states across the country. These standards urge an emphasis on deeply understanding and applying content knowledge to real world situations, critical thinking, complex problem solving, inquiry, communication, collaboration, and uses of technology to research and create. . . . In places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, for example, science assessments require students to design, conduct, analyze, and write up an independent investigation over the course of several weeks. International Baccalaureate schools in more than 100 countries ask students to design and conduct a collaborative inquiry and present it orally and in writing to others, defending their process and conclusions. In Denmark, students have full access to the internet as they write their open-ended examinations. The goal is to be able to research, synthesize, and apply, not just to remember. Teachers score these tasks as part of the examination system, which helps them learn about the standards and improve their instruction, while students learn transferable skills they can take with them into college and careers. These kinds of assessments are desperately needed in the United States, not only to evaluate the new standards, but to ensure that our children will have the kinds of learning experiences that will allow them to succeed in the knowledge-based society they are entering. Students abroad who engage in these experiences are learning to become the scientists, researchers, and innovators of the future. U.S. students will fall behind if they continue to spend their time perfecting the art of choosing one answer out of five — a skill they will never use in the real world — rather than engaging in more useful work.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 01:25:24 +0000
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