From Pennsylvania comes this tale of students who have learned facts but don't really understand the material - or so the teachers claim:
Wolfe, an eighth grade reading teacher at Big Spring Middle School, helped design the Reading Increases Students' Excellence (RISE) class to prepare students for the ninth-grade standardized writing test...
When she started incorporating the relay race into the class, students who thought they knew the words but didn't know them well enough to write their own examples were "devastated," Wolfe says.
They had memorized the definitions for a test in other classes, but "they didn't actually know that they had to know it for knowledge, for life."
This, of course, is the lead-in for a crop of test criticism. But I see this as a criticism of their former teachers. What did they do in their language arts classes? Say to the kids, 'Okay, just memorize this list, but you'll never use these words again - they aren't important"? How bad do teachers have to be for kids to get the idea that the English language is not knowledge they'll need for their lives? Don't go blaming tests for this, nuh-uh.
Getting the right answers on a state standardized test is a "game," says Donna Benson. It's a game many of her students refuse to play.
Benson teaches gifted students at Cumberland Valley High School, and says highly intelligent students tend to ignore test-taking conventions, especially when writing essays. Instead, many write creatively, and as a result score low on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).
I hear this a lot, but I've never seen any evidence to back it up. Anecdotal evidence, sure. But there isn't a scoring rubric out there that doesn't give examinees a boost for using correct spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. Is it really true that there are vast numbers of very smart kids whose writing is so creative that, despite proper vocabulary and spelling, their essays recieve very low, or flunking, grades?
"It's done kind of as formula writing," Benson says of how the writing portion of the PSSA is scored. "I want the kids to know what the formula is, but ... I want the kids to go beyond that," she says.
And they can. But they should understand why the formula is there, and why it would be silly to protest the formula on the grounds that it's too "dumb" for them. For a lot of kids, it would be a big step forward just to be able to write well, period, even if the writing came out formulaic.
Highly intelligent students often have trouble with multiple choice and true-or-false questions because they "over-analyze" the question, Benson says. She worries gifted and bright children get left behind when schools emphasize remediation...
When schools make proficiency their goal, they miss chances to enrich bright students further, she says. "Proficient isn't good enough for the progress we're facing in the future."
"I'm glad my children aren't in school anymore," says Candy Shively, who works for Cumberland Valley School District and used to teach special interest classes. "I think we're really skimping on the enrichment things and the higher level of thinking."
And I can understand her way of thinking. Unfortunately for the bright kids, the act is called Leave No Child Behind, not Push The Smart Ones Ahead. Proficiency isn't enough for a subset of kids, true. But when so many students are failing miserably, schools are often forced to focus on them.
Posted by kswygert at August 31, 2004 04:43 PM