Suppose you are in St. Louis, Missouri and you are planning a trip to Vancouver, Washington. Only two maps are available, the one given Lewis and Clark at the start of their journey, or a U.S. highway map from Walmart. Which map would you choose?
Let’s say I am a cabinetmaker specializing in high quality, world-class furniture. I want to be sure my work stacks up against the competition so I get out my trusty hammer, which is about a foot long, to measure the dimensions of my new cabinet. I drop the hammer on the surface of my labor of love, flop it end to end a couple of times, and decide my work meets my high standard because it is over 3 flops long.
Ridiculous? Yes, but this is precisely what we are doing when we attempt to use a blunt instrument like the WASL to measure the complexity of learning in an individual human brain. Test experts have been trying to tell us this for years but we have heeded the voices of the Business Roundtable and other “Blue Ribbon” groups who, in their uninformed reaction to alleged inadequacies in our public schools, have succeeded only in dropping a “hammer” on our children. To truly improve instruction we need precise classroom-based tests that provide teachers with the information they need to fine-tune instruction, just as the cabinet maker needs precision measuring instruments to ensure the “fit” of a top-quality piece of furniture.
“The WASL concept of subject matter testing as a basis for earning a comprehensive high school diploma seems intuitively obvious.”
It may seem obvious, but the people who design such tests and the experts who interpret their results suggest that they absolutely should not be used for such purposes.
For example, the WASL Technical Report, produced by the OSPI, states that “Scores from one test given on a single occasion should never be used to make important decisions about students placement, the type of instruction they receive or retention in a given grade in school. It is important to corroborate individual scores on WASL tests with classroom-based and other local evidence of student learning.” Why does the OSPI endorse a practice its own technical manual decries? Read more…
Here are some things that bother me about the WASL and Washington Standards:
1. I have attempted without success to discover an accepted framework of learning that supports Washington’s model of curriculum and assessment. OSPI references something called the “Carkhuff Conceptual Framework,” but I have been unable to find anything about it in the educational literature. Can someone send me to a reputable source of information on this framework? Or is there one? Read more…
Printed with permission of the author, Gerald W. Bracey
Near the end of the 1969 film, “Easy Rider,” Dennis Hopper extols all the fun and wonderful things he and biker buddy Peter Fonda have been able to accomplish with the cash from their big cocaine deal that begins the movie. Fonda looks at Hopper and says, “We blew it.”
I’ve lately been reviewing the data from charter school evaluations around the country. That scene kept coming to mind. If I could line up the zealots who’ve been touting charters for over a decade now, I’d say, “You blew it.” If charter schools had been invented by and championed by some part of the “education establishment” like the NEA, the Right would have long since proclaimed charters yet another failed fad (in fact, charters were first popularized by the AFT which later rejected them as having failed to deliver on their potential).
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Submitted by Juanita Doyon
“You can test some of the children all of the time. You can test all of the children some of the time. But there just ain’t no Lake Woebegone, man!”
Things Abraham Lincoln would say if he were a teacher in the twenty-first century.
I had the privilege of attending a free breakfast and school administrator training session put on by Washington State’s Partnership for Learning—education arm of the Washington [business] Roundtable—recently. The fruit and bagel were a privilege. It was downhill from there.
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I am lamenting the loss of diverse thought and the market place of free thought that once was the School District where I teach. About 15 years ago I was a 5th grade teacher. Most of us in the building belonged to one professional organization or another; PDK, ASCD etc. A common practice was for someone in the building to find a journal article espousing a particular slant on a current topic, e.g. whole language vs. phonics, and make several copies to be placed in the boxes of the other staff. It was great fun! If you disagreed you would find an equally compelling if differing article and in turn place a copy in every box. It caused one to THINK about what one held to as “educational gospel.” If nothing else it caused one to “formulate before you postulate.” Sadly, I fear that these days are gone for now. What I see now is intolerance toward teachers who might express a differing view from the administration/school board particularly with respect to standardized tests, discipline practices, pedagogy, etc. Not only is divergent thought discouraged now it is rather vilified. People have been told that if they “can’t buy in” they should “go to another building.” This seems all very remarkable to me in light of the fact that not too many years ago we believed that one of our primary tasks was to teach students to think and that in turn those thoughts and opinions had validity.
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