Another day, another demand that we stop measuring academic abilities in school and start assessing the "whole" child:
Every year, millions of children in California are required to take a standardized test known as the STAR test. I am dreading the thought of taking this test in the spring and I know I’m not the only student who feels this way...The results of a STAR test do not measure the most important traits of a student. For instance, they don’t reveal anything about the child’s moral development. Is the student happy, compassionate or kind? Does the student enjoy learning and school?
Note: The author here claims that the most important traits of a student are not academic achievement. Instead, that is outranked by enjoyment of learning, and happiness. Pop quiz: Who do you think will be happier as an adult, in the real word - the student who learned to be "happy" in school, or the student who developed a solid foundation in reading, math, science, etc?
For that matter, why is the author assuming these are mutually exclusive? Wouldn't it be fun to produce research showing that the students who learn the most in school and do the best on standardized tests are also the ones who are happiest and have the most love of learning? I'm not saying I know that's so; I'm saying it would be fun to poke at the anti-testing folks with those kinds of correlational results.
One alternative to the STAR test is called portfolio assessment. This is where the teacher and student work together to collect samples of work throughout the school year. These samples are kept in a "portfolio" or large folder. The teacher uses the portfolio during conferences with parents and the student, and the teacher reviews the work in the portfolio to check student progress.
Portfolios are time-consuming, and I thought teachers were always harried and pressed for time. Bias is an issue - what if your teacher doesn't like you, or like kids like you? How can this be compared across different classrooms, never mind different schools? What if the teacher's feedback is subpar, so that the assessments don't improve over time? What if this year's teacher is an easy grader, and next year's teacher is not?
Last year, my teacher did a project with the class called Reflections/Connections. This project was a good way of showing individual student progress. My teacher asked each child to complete a different assignment for each subject. We could choose to create an art project, a piece of writing, make a video or invent some other way to fulfill the requirement. For instance, I planted a garden, photographed the growth of the plants and created a scrapbook of all my photos along with notes about each plant for science. I thought it was interesting to see the different ways each kid expressed him/herself. This project revealed much more about our individuality.
Isn't that precious. As we all know, individuality is the most important thing. Did this author learn the scientific names for plants? Did she do a valid research study to see which plants grew the tallest, and why? Did she write a summary that demonstrated her understanding of the science involved? If she did, did every other kid in his class do as well? Or was individuality and effort the only thing graded here?
Please note: I know the author is a sixth-grader. For a kid that age, she writes well. And I know that class projects like this can be informative as well as fun. I am not so much ragging on the budding botanist as I am on the Santa Cruz Sentinel staff, who apparently believe it is newsworthy that a student enjoys planting a garden more than taking a standardized test.
Posted by kswygert at June 13, 2005 11:00 AM