testing, value-added, cheating, and more - a brief Saturday meditation
I am coming to this later than normal. I slept until 7, surprisingly the cat curled up next to me not complaining nor demanding his breakfast. There are four days of school until the end of 3rd quarter and the beginning of Spring break. And several things in the news.
First, it is impossible to get away from tests of some kind. As a classroom teacher I create my own, but at least they are tied to what I am teaching, and thus a valid indicator of what students have learned. For my AP students, they can take back the multiple choice portions of their tests, look up what they got wrong and correct it with an explanation for half credit - after all, why just measure how poorly they did if the intent is to help them learn, why not give them a motivation to correct their incorrect understandings? I started doing this last year and saw it have a positive impact upon learning. Sad, the things one does not seem to learn until one nears the end of a teaching career!
Please keep reading. . .
First, it is impossible to get away from tests of some kind. As a classroom teacher I create my own, but at least they are tied to what I am teaching, and thus a valid indicator of what students have learned. For my AP students, they can take back the multiple choice portions of their tests, look up what they got wrong and correct it with an explanation for half credit - after all, why just measure how poorly they did if the intent is to help them learn, why not give them a motivation to correct their incorrect understandings? I started doing this last year and saw it have a positive impact upon learning. Sad, the things one does not seem to learn until one nears the end of a teaching career!
Please keep reading. . .