Our purpose in writing this article is to set the stage for a series of activities that you can use personally or with your students to practice the strategies of the skilled thinker.  There are many ways to conceptualize the organization of these skills.  We have chosen to group them into the categories of gathering, assessing or considering, and applying.

Gathering skills can be thought of as discrete skills that are used to recall or collect bits of data that are thought to be useful in the pursuit of the solution to some sort of problematic situation.  As the data begins to accumulate, the skilled thinker considers and assesses what has been gathered and begins to sketch out potential solutions.  Often, additional gathering steps are required to fill in gaps.  Application skills blend all of the pieces into a strategic attack on the problem at hand. Read more…

Articles Thinking

10-Points in the Development of a Quality Assessment Program

I  support the use of content standards as one component of an accountability system for the students and schools of the State of Washington. I further believe that state required accountability tests, based on these standards, must be practical and useful to parents and educators. These tests are not appropriate, however, as gatekeepers for graduation or promotion from grade-to-grade.

To ensure that assessment programs are valid, reliable and produce practical information that may be used in the development of high quality academic, career, vocational and alternate programs, it is necessary to work with parents, educators, the State Board of Education and interested stakeholders, to implement a new LEARNING ESSENTIALS ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (LEAP) for the State of Washington.

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Articles Assessment, Reform, WASL

“Standards!” “Accountability!” “Raise the bar!” “Rigor!” “No excuses!”

The slogans and catchwords of would-be school reformers are exploited by politicians, broadcast by radio talk-show hosts, plastered on car bumpers, underlined by newspaper editorialists, elaborated in the popular press, and taken seriously by much of the general public.

They’re also favorite themes of those leaders of business and industry who, in the1980s, began to elbow professional educators aside and work through Congress to take over education reform. There’s little or nothing wrong with American education, these leaders are certain, which can’t be made right by tightening institutional screws. Read more…

Articles Curriculum, Instruction, Reform

One way to get the attention of the public regarding our concerns about the WASL is to write letters to the editors of local papers. An occasional letter doesn’t count for much, but a concentrated effort around the State will influence not just the public but the legislature as well. This technique is being widely used by large political organizations but we have adapted it for grassroots groups. What follows originally was disseminated by Moveon.org and has been rewritten specifically to address the WASL. WRITE ON! Read more…

Articles Reform, WASL

The use of the WASL at grades 3, 5, 6, and 8 is completely inappropriate. The test is instructionally insensitive with only a few items sampling a broad range of EALRS. Because there are so many extended answer items, the total number of questions on any given topic does not provide sufficient coverage to fully define areas of weakness and/or strength. Turn-around time for scoring precludes any useful response to individual students and in any event the method of reporting student scores as a 1, 2, 3, or 4 does not provide the kind of data a teacher needs to plan appropriate remediation.

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Articles WASL

THE FOLLOWING WAS PRINTED AS AN OP-ED ESSAY IN THE TRI-CITY HERALD ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2006.

MYTH 1: Since introduction of the WASL and similar high-stakes tests in other states in the mid-1990s pressure of the tests has led to significant improvement in student achievement.

What do investigators report? Read more…

Articles WASL

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia where truth is determined democratically. If enough users agree that something is true, it becomes fact. Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report has coined the term Wiki-ality to describe the reality defined by such a process. This article will attempt to show that the WASL is based on Wiki-ality and does not stand up to investigation. To do this we will rely on the methods of another cable TV show, MYTHBUSTERS, wherein hosts Jamie and Adam use actual research to show what’s real and what’s fiction.

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Articles Assessment, WASL