I spent the day away from my students grading the writing portion of the 8th grade NY State Common Core ELA Exams. I got to grade one short response and one extended response. I've done this in previous years, but given all of the changes in the exam format and the standards being assessed, everyone was paying extra close attention to the way we were were trained to score the questions.

I have some serious questions about what I learned today, but unfortunately, that's about all I can say. That's because I had to sign a confidentiality agreement before the training and scoring began that said I would not share anything I saw or heard today in relation to the scoring of the test. (I wrote about this last year too--Must Teachers Keep Quiet About the Test?)

The way Pearson directs the scoring of writing pieces on these tests will impact the overall scores of our students this year as well as the way teachers prepare students to meet the demans of the test in subsequent years. The state released a rubric for the writing tasks in advance of the test on engageny.org, but the way the rubric gets applied to student work is where the rubber actually hits the road, so to speak, in the standardized assessment of these Common Core standards. 

Here's the problem. These standards are still new and experimental, and so are the standardized tests designed to measure them.  Inevitably, at this stage there are going to be glitches or issues with both the standards and the way they are being measured, especially when the people directly involved with them (teachers and students) did not have input into their design.  It seems that teachers are being forced to comply with new standards and assessments, but not given a forum to offer vital feedback about them and the transition process. 

I don't like being made to promise my silence. I don't understand what purpose it serves either, besides keeping problems out of the light. 

To NY State and Pearson--don't require our silence. Admit that there are flaws in the new system with potential to do as much damage as any other flaw in our education system, and invite teachers and school leaders into the revision process.  

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I have been a fan of the Common Core Learning Standards for ELA since I first read them a few years ago. By and large, the Common Core Standards represent a direction that is more in line with what I've always tried to focus on in my teaching. I actually quite like these nicely organized standards that push toward deeper thinking. 

I have a few concerns though. In no particular order, here they are:

• Not everything in the standards seems developmentally appropriate--analyzing author's purpose in the 3rd grade, for example? 
• Only one teacher was included in the team of 60 who wrote the standards. (Perhaps this accounts the above point--either way, it needs to be checked and revised.)
• No mention of poetry writing. How many teachers across the country will stop giving students the opportunity to write poems?  How is this good for kids?
• Fiction writing is downplayed, visible only as couched inside the general concept of "narrative" witing. This lessens our students' participation in a rich literary tradition.
• At least in NY, teachers have not been included in the design of assessments for the CCLS. Instead, Pearson is doing this work. And it shows in the product that teachers are not involved.  Lots to think about and improve upon if the intention is there.  
• Are standardized assessments going to drive the instructional shift toward Common Core? That would leave so much out!  That would be to take a great opportunity and diminish it significantly and unnecessarily. 

I've got a lot more to say about each of these points and I will be exploring them over the next several months. As I said before, I like the Common Core, but, as many educators are saying right now, I'm concerned about implementation. I see a need for some thoughtful revisions.  Can we make that happen? 

[image credit: leaguewriters.blogspot.com]

Any classroom teacher could have looked at Day 2 of the NY State ELA Exam that was administered last week on Wednesday and known that it was too much for students to do in the alotted 90 minutes. Unfortunately, it looks like neither Pearson nor the NY State Department of Education saw fit to consult (or listen to) teachers on this.  The result was a test that many students did not finish, which will yield data that does not tell us much about what students can really do, when it comes to the new Common Core standards.  (See this NY Times article for reporting on reactions to this test.)

As I looked through the test booklet to process each question, being a careful and not especially fast reader myself, I knew I would have struggled to finish in time. The test presented students with the following tasks to complete in 90 minutes:

• 3 lengthy passages, of 2-3 pages, with plenty of unfamiliar vocabulary for students to probem-solve and complex sentences for students to read and reread for understanding
• 7 complex multiple choice questions on each passage, which required students to look back at the passage and really think about what the question is asking and consider the implications of each answer choice to choose the best one. These were not straightforward, "did you understand what you read?" type questions and answers. There were several questions, for which neither I nor any English teacher on my team, was sure of the correct answer.
• 5 complex "short response" questions which require textual evidence in paragraph form. 
• an extended response to one passage (an essay)

A sixth grade teacher I know--who finds the new CC standards a natural fit to her teaching--said, "If critical thinking is what we're really emphasizing with the Common Core standards, why was there no time given for that on the test?"  Exactly.

The Common Core Language Standards say nothing about students needing to be able to read or write at a certain speed.  My fast readers (students who read significantly faster than I do) had no problem with the time, but even very high performing students who read at a more regular speed or who think a lot about each sentence they write had trouble finishing. A good number did not complete the test.  My students were not the only ones. An elementary school teacher I know reported that just over half of their students completed the test. One of my students with friends at NEST, a high performing, gifted and talented NYC school, told me her friends said only one person in their class finished the test. 

The most unfortunate part of this is that we'll have no real way of knowing how our students would have done, had they finished the test.  The data won't tell us much about our students' performance on the new types of tasks included on the test.  I don't personally need such data to tell me what my students can and cannot do--but I know this data will be used to evaluate what my students' skills, as well as the impact of my teaching.  

Though I have many criticisms about the use of standardized testing to measure teaching and learning, today I simply draw the line at a test that was impossible for many skilled readers and writers to finish. All they had to do was show some teachers that test... gross negligence, willful ignorance, or just mean? Any which way, students and teachers should not be guinea pigs for high stakes experiments.  

[image credit: www.prevention.com]

Fellow TransformEd blogger and co-author of Teaching 2030, Renee Moore, makes an argument in this recent post, Learning Unchained, for getting rid of class schedules and grade levels!  I've heard Renee talk about this before, and, as jarring as this may sound, I totally agree with her.  At the end of her post, she asks readers if we know of schools that have replaced these models with more fluid ones. 

I thought of two NYC schools that are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of teaching philosophy--extreme constructivist and extreme data-driven instruction. I cannot imagine either model being the optimal answer to Renee's question, but the juxtaposition is quite interesting! 

I'm painting with gross generalizations about these schools here, for the same of argument, but I would certainly welcome clarification on the models from those who know better:

1. Brooklyn Free School: Kids determine the shape of their own education, literally choosing to show up and learn whatever they want, whenever they want, and how they want, with guidance from teachers, and rules about not infiringing on the rights of others. Sounds awesome for a certain kind of kid, but seems too loose for an entire school system. I could be wrong, though. 

2. School of One: Based on the idea of personalized instruction, in response to instantaneous assessments administered and graded through computers. Kids are sorted based on mastery of skills as seen in these assessments and move on to the next skill only when they are ready.  The reliance on technology to teach and assess a large group of kids seems like it could be a limiting factor here, though I know teachers do work face to face with small groups of students. Not sure students have any agency in determining what they learn or how they learn it, and the emphasis on individualized instructionmakes me wonder whether students get experience as members of a learning community. 

But... could we get these two schools talking to each other?! Both models seem to be designed to address the same limitations of traditional schools. What if? 

[image credit: overclock.net]

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about what I would be doing with my classes if the test wasn't coming.  

I recently received this comment from commenter, Becky von St. Paul:

"It's been my experience (32 years worth) that if you teach the curriculum and make sure that students have mastered skills, the test scores come. I know many teachers who fall back on test prep, etc., but these things are truly NOT necessary if you have really taught the kids what they need to know."

I've been interested in the question of whether good teaching really leads to good test scores for some time.  I appreciate Becky's comment and believe what she says must be true in her context.  Though I'd love to believe that it's always true that good teaching leads to good test scores, I don't think it's that simple.  

For example, standardized tests--while always narrow and blunt instruments (to which I'd say goodbye in a heart beat)--can be reasonably appropriate measures of learning for some students... but not for others. A student who enters my 8th grade class with a 2nd grade reading level should not be taking the 8th grade ELA test.  And good teaching for one year that helps said student grow will not lead to a "good" score on the 8th grade test.  This is where context begins to matter.  

Another piece of context that can affect teaching, learning and test scores are the conditions for students at a school and in their home environments.  I've had certain classes and certain years where students' social emotional needs were so high, due to conditions both in the school and outside, that I spent a lot of class time working on skills that would allow students to process what they were going through so that they could begin to turn their attention to academics.  The end result of this work?  Many students grew in their ability to simply be students and see themselves as students.  This, in the face of 50% odds they would not finish high school. I taught less traditional academics with those classes, but felt like we made tons of progress in the ability to self-reflection, problem-solve and collaborate.  For some students, more motivation meant better test scores. For others, they would need much more practice than that year provided to improve the skills that were tested. 

Using a single, narrow test as a measure of student learning--which is still what is being done with these tests, no matter how much proponents of testing speak of multiple measures--supposes that all students need to learn the same things in a year and arrive at the same point.  That pushes teachers to teach material that is often not appropriate for all of their students. It also pushes teachers to adhere to THE curriculum, even when that may not be the most appropriate learning experience for a particular group or sub group of students. 

Finally, what kind of good teaching are we talking about? Fellow blogger, Bill Ferriter, and NBCT who is highly skilled and committed to teaching his students to be global citizens, leveraging digital media, has written before that despite his success with students around his goal of teaching them 21st century skills, his students' test scores were never as high as the teacher's down the hall.  This was because of the choices he made about what kind of learning was most important. 

What do you think?  When does good teaching lead to high test scores? When doesn't it?

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