assessment

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How to Uphold Online Learning Standards to Quality Education

October 30, 2012 | 10:41 AM | By

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As the number of K-12 students who take online courses continues to grow — more than two million are currently enrolled — the need to uphold rigorous standards to online education is becoming that much more important. And with criticism leveled at many online schools for poor academic performance, the online education model needs to create a more accurate way to assess the quality of the dozens of programs in the space.

That’s the premise of a new report published by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) entitled “Measuring Quality from Inputs to Outcomes,” which focuses on laying out a new system of metrics. The report advocates for a new assessment model that focuses on competency-based evaluations that measure a student’s learning trajectory – including proficiency and growth – rather than what the organization call “inputs,” as traditional schools do. Inputs include things like teacher licensing and curriculum and textbook standards. Those inputs are not tied to student achievement, the authors argue, so they fail as metrics for assessing whether an online education program is doing its job.

Instead, the report favors an approach focused on “outcomes.” Programs should be judged on student proficiency, as well as individual student growth over time. Most states have an annual end of year assessment to measure proficiency. But those tests only measure student achievement at one point in time – it’s just one snapshot that misses the bigger picture of that student’s learning trajectory.

Susan Patrick, President and CEO of iNACOL and the report’s lead author, contends that current assessments for online schools do a disservice to students who were lagging but have caught up, as well as those who have surpassed the learning standards of their current grade. At a minimum, Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Research, Teaching With Tech, assessment, iNACOL, online learning

Will the New Online Standardized Tests Be Different?

October 10, 2012 | 9:11 AM | By

Sarah Garland

Fifth graders at Townsend Elementary in the Appoquinimink district waiting to begin the state standardized reading test.

By Sarah Garland

New high-tech standardized tests are coming soon to schools across the country, but will these new tests really revolutionize how we measure whether children are learning? The designers of the new tests, which a majority of states plan to adopt in two years, are allowing a sneak peek at sample questions.

Two competing state coalitions have taken on the job of designing the new tests, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and both have posted examples of what’s coming on their websites.

In some questions, which the test designers have called “computer enhanced,” students will be asked to drag words or numbers across the screen, or to highlight phrases or sentences in a reading passage. In one example provided by Smarter Balanced to reporters during a conference call Monday, high school students can click on the screen to transfer water from a cube to a cylinder, which helps them solve a math problem about radius.

Fifth graders at Townsend Elementary in the Appoquinimink district waiting to begin the state standardized reading test. (Photo by Sarah Garland)

There will also be problems that require research and writing. Smarter Balanced officials gave an example of a multi-part question in which high school students are asked to imagine they are the chief of staff for a congresswoman. Before they start working on the test, their teacher is supposed Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, assessment, PARCC, SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium

Why Kids Need Schools to Change

September 21, 2012 | 11:51 AM | By

Flickr: Elizabeth Albert

The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive.

Most of us know this, and yet making room for the huge shift in the system that’s necessary has been difficult, if not impossible because of fear of the unknown, says educator Madeline Levine, author of Teach Your Children Well.

“People don’t like change, especially in times of great uncertainty,” she said. “People naturally go conservative and buckle down and don’t want to try something new. There are schools that are trying to do things differently, and although on the one hand they’re heralded as having terrific vision, they’re still seen as experimental.”

“I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education.”

During this time of economic uncertainty, especially, Levine said parents want to make sure their kids won’t fall into the ranks of the unemployed and disenfranchised young people who return home because they’re unable to find jobs. “There’s so much anxiety around the economy, they’re thinking, What can I do to make sure that my kid isn’t one of the unemployed”? she said.

Yet therein lies the paradox. It’s exactly during these uncertain times when people must be willing to try new things, to be more open, curious and experimental, she said. In education, although there are great new models of learning and schooling, they are the exceptions, and the progressive movement has not gained much momentum.

“I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education,” she said. “Like many academic areas, there’s a huge disconnect between what’s known and what’s in practice. It’s very slow moving.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, assessment, creativity, Madeline Levine, project-based-learning

What’s So Great About Schools in Finland?

July 12, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Screen Shot from Edutopia video "Finalnd's Formula for Success."

Monday’s Three Things to Unlearn About Learning elicited several comments about Finland’s school system. Here’s a recent post describing some differences between schools in the U.S. and Finland.

Finland has been hailed for exemplifying the ideal model of a thriving, innovative education system that prioritizes the most important stakeholders: students.

International and American media are fascinated by the Scandinavian country’s approach to designing the education system. The fact that Finland manages to score among the top three countries on the PISA survey is a tribute to its success, and worth following closely, observers say.

So what makes the Finland story so compelling?

  • THERE ARE NO PRIVATE SCHOOLS. Technically, there are a few independent schools, but they’re financed by the state and don’t charge tuition, according to a wildly popular article in the Atlantic about the school system. “The primary aim of education is to serve as an equalizing instrument for society,” said Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture who was visiting New York. “Here in America, parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It’s the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same.” The Atlantic article also notes that all Finnish students receive free meals at school, and have “easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.”
  • ALL ADMINISTRATORS HAVE WORKED AS TEACHERS. “We have very carefully kept the business of education in the hands of educators. It’s practically impossible to become a superintendent without also being a former teacher,” Sahlberg told the Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, assessment, Finland, professional development

Three Things to Unlearn About Learning

July 9, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

flickr:CDsessums

“If you’re not feeling uncomfortable about the state of education right now, then you’re not paying attention to the pressures and challenges of technology,” said Will Richardson, a veteran educator author and consultant, at a talk at ISTE 2012. “We need to acknowledge that this is a very interesting moment, and even though in a lot of ways this isn’t what we signed up for when we went into teaching… as educators, it’s our job to figure it out.”

Seeing the balance move from a place of scarcity of information to over-abundance on the web — and the ability to “carry around the sum of human knowledge on our phones” — Richardson said educators must start thinking of schooling differently. “This abundance has the potential to be amazing, but it’s not amazing if we don’t do anything with it,” he said. “What is access to all this stuff if you don’t know what to do with it?”

To that end, Richardson proposed a challenge to educators to unlearn three important things that have been taken for granted as immovable, unchangeable ideas.

1.   DELIVERY: The notion of delivering knowledge and information from teacher to student has already been upended. “Kids will not put up with delivery too much longer. They’ll expect something much different,” Richardson said. Rather, educators must hand over control of learning to kids, and understand that there are lots of ways to learn what they need to and want to learn.

“This is a very interesting moment, and even though in a lot of ways this isn’t what we signed up for when we went into teaching… as educators, it’s our job to figure it out.”

“We have to stop being in charge of the curriculum and allow kids to create their own education,” he said. Educators should ask themselves: how am I helping kids develop important skills, dispositions, and literacies they need to create their own curriculum, to find their own teachers, to create their own artifacts that will more closely align with ways they’ll work when they leave school? “The delivery method we use in most schools, what we own and deliver to kids, that will have to change,” he said. “We have to relearn in a way that allows kids to own and drive it.”

2.   COMPETITION: Rather than comparing test scores and grades of schools and of teachers, we should drive education forward on the basis of cooperation. We should use the best ideas of what Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, assessment, inquiry learning, ISTE 2012, Will Richardson

Will More Prominent Colleges Abandon the SAT?

June 4, 2012 | 11:48 AM | By

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By Chris Thompson

For college-bound students, scoring high on the SAT has always been imperative to getting admitted into universities and colleges of stature. Admissions offices traditionally weigh SAT scores as one of the predominant factors in offering acceptance letters to students. And though that’s still the case for many elite universities, more higher ed institutions are taking the SAT and ACT off the criteria list for admission.

The most recent addition to the list of “test optional” institutions is the prominent Ithaca College, which announced that it would abandon test score requirements for admissions last month.

Ithaca College, averaging 12,000 yearly applicants, will now base an applicant’s ability on predictors other than SAT or the ACT test scores. The college has been rethinking standardized tests for some time, according to the vice president of Enrollment and Communication Eric Maguire. Not only do these tests fail to give a truly accurate assessment of a student’s ability, but they also bar diverse range of students from applying, he says.

“Standardized test scores add remarkably little to our ability to predict a student’s success.”

“Standardized test scores add remarkably little to our ability to predict a student’s success beyond what their high school GPA and course schedule already tell us,” Maguire claims. “We believe our new test optional policy better aligns with our holistic and careful reviews of student applications. We also believe the policy will encourage more students to consider Ithaca College and help further diversify our applicant pool.”

Though Ithaca is perhaps the most prominent institution to abandon standardized testing as a key element in the admissions process, the test optional movement, as it’s called, has been around for more than 40 years. It began in the late 1960s, when alternative schools like Vermont’s Burlington College rejected standardized testing – or even letter grades. Civil rights groups posited that standardized tests harbor a cultural and racial bias, and that they screen out qualified students Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, assessment, SAT, standardized tests, test optional