Teaching to the Test???

                           After doing some reading about data driven instruction, I have thought and pondered about many things about what I have read. In the book I have been reading, its explains the value of teachers making assessments first in order to be able to teach students to the rigor of the test. When reading the book this information all seemed very convincing but I still wasn't completely sold. One thought I had was, well how often do or would teachers really make tests and then teach according to the test? I did some further reading and realized what this book was saying... TEACH TO THE TEST. What how can this be, is this really what data is about? I have learned over and over again in all my education courses that this is the worst thing ever, but really what is the difference about data? 

                     Teachers are supposed to analyze data, look for where students are struggling on the the test (where the data came from) and differentiate their lessons so there is improvement on the next test. However, maybe teaching to the test isn't as bad as we think. Maybe teaching to the test in a way that has the students use critical thinking skills and other valuable thinking tools could be beneficial to the students. In the article I was reading, What's so bad about teaching to the test? by Great Schools Staff, it talks about some different ways of thinking about "teaching to the test." If you have the time, it's entertaining read. 

Data, Data , Everywhere Data

                         Today students are consistently taking tests from elementary school through high school. After these students take all of these tests, where is the data? Who gets it? What do they do with it? What is the point of students taking all of these tests if the data isn't being put to some type of good for the students taking the test?
                         This weekend I was talking with some teachers and they were talking how students are taking tests from 3rd grade to 8th grade. One talked how their students had been taking different state test for two weeks straight! I thought how crazy! I asked if they ever received Professional Development (PD) days to actually sit down and analyze the data. The response I received was somewhat interesting. The teacher told me that they were actually having a PD day coming up. She was told that everyone was going to review the data except for the 8th grade English teachers( which she was). These teachers were being sent to the high school to help analyze other teachers data. How strange!? The teacher was very disheartened by this because she wanted to see the data her students produced in order to differentiate her lessons and help the students in her class.  However, this wasn't happening.
                        It is important for teacher to review and analyze their students data  because they are the ones teaching the students. Therefore, data driven only works when a school systems realizes this fact.

PSAT Time..Fun, Fun for everyone

                    Today, in school the students had to take the PSAT and I got to watch/help proctor it. Before the students took the test, I surveyed the room to see what their facial expressions were telling me. Some students look nervous, some seemed tired, some, well, were sleeping, and others could care less and were waiting for the teachers instructions. When the students started taking the test all faces looked them same...concentrated. They were all working hard and answering the questions in order to finish before time was called.
                    I was able to get my hands on one of the test and skim through to see what seemed to be so perplexing. The first section was a reading comprehensions section, I continued to look through, then it was math, then back to reading, then back to math, and so on for five sections. Each section was 25 minutes long, except the last section of reading which was 30 minutes. After looking through the test I wrote down some questions I was thinking. Is switching "subject" helpful to students or harmful? In other words, would having students do all the reading and then all the math be better than switching back and forth between the two topics?  Another thing I thought was that the most of the questions pertaining to the reading passages had the line number that the question was referencing and only 1 or 2 questions were asking about the meaning of the passage  Therefore, would kids score better if they used the strategy to read only the lines the questions were asking, answer those, and come back if they have time for the others? If they did score better with this strategy, then what are we really testing, a students strategy or their ability to comprehend a reading passage? One math question really sparked a thought in my mind. The question asked the students to read the words in a box and select from the four choices the corresponding equation that matched the words. When I first read it, I thought how easy is this, but then I thought well maybe not for an ESL learner or a student that has trouble reading. Well, this question really has nothing to do with math at all, if you can read, you will get it and if you don't read well, you might make a mistake. How is this assessing the students math skills?
                  Finally, since only 10th and 11th grade students take the PSAT, I was wondering where the 9th and 12th grade students where? I found out that the 9th grade students were at a career day assemble and the 12th grade student were coming in at 11, after the test was finished. I thought this was the strangest thing EVER? The seniors, the students that should be thinking about what career they want to pursue, were at home and missing all of the valuable information that many of them might have been interested in while the freshman where there to be "babysat" as one teacher put it to me. I did not understand the logic. But who am I, just a student observer, I guess.

Stressed OUT!

          On a different note other than data, today I had class and noticed that one of my peers was visible upset. I prodded a bit and they opened up to me. They were upset about where education was going and how many games, hoops or whatever you want to call it are involved these days.  They were upset about the strict regulations and policies when talking to students or dealing with them. How, today, if you don't cover your ass, you might get screwed by everyone; the students, their parents, other teachers, your superiors, and the list is endless. Why did education have to get to this point? How did so much nonsense get in the way of education?  I feel that being a teacher has become and is becoming increasingly more stressful and overwhelming throughout the years. Teachers are people,they have families, they make mistakes, have their own problems and at the end of the day teaching is their job. While teaching is an important job and they should know that their is a lot of hard work to do it correctly, what is the purpose of adding extra unnecessary stress? Teachers have enough stress trying to manage all the needs of a class and planing lessons that will cover content and interest students.
           

Pre- Assessment

Yesterday, I was student observing and was talking to some teachers about the pre assessment test student's  took. When I asked how the students performed on the assessment, the teacher smiled and said they did terrible which is exactly what we wanted. It's funny to me for teachers to express that they want their students to perform negatively on assessment. I understand the reason and logic behind wanting their students to perform poorly, but how does that affect the students self-esteem. I think administering old regents tests as pre assessment tests means nothing because both the student and the teacher realize that they're going to do bad on it due to the fact they have never taken the subject before. Using NWEA tests as a means of pre assessment is a better alternative to using old Regents. However, I also understand that not district and its staff understand the benefits of this and data a produces. I'm really not sure how to solve the problem but it was just a thought.

Teachers and Data

               As I was talking about before, the data that is formulated from these NWEA test is very extensive. Therefore, I think that it is important for teachers to have time set aside for them to analyze there own data. For example, after students take the NWEA test, teachers should have one school day where they can look over the reports produced from the test and determine where each of their students are struggling. Then the teacher will be better prepared to design their lessons in order to target the needs of each student.
              Teachers should interpret their own data because they are the people who directly work with the students, they are the people who need to use the information in their lessons, and they are the people who can see if the changes are working.

Data and The Race to the Top

According to Wikipedia:
Race to the Top, abbreviated R2T, RTTT or RTT, is a $4.35 billion United States Department of Education contest created to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education. It is funded by the ED Recovery Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and was announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009. States were awarded points for satisfying certain educational policies, such as performance-based standards (often referred to as an Annual professional performance review) for teachers and principals, complying with nationwide standards, promoting charter schools and privatization of education, and computerization.

State applications for funding were scored on selection criteria worth a total of 500 points. In order of weight, the criteria were^[1]:

• Great Teachers and Leaders (138 total points)
  • Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance (58 points)
  • Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals (25 points)
  • Providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals (21 points)
  • Providing effective support to teachers and principals (20 points)
  • Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs (14 points)
• State Success Factors (125 total points)
  • Articulating State's education reform agenda and LEAs' participation in it (65 points)
  • Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans (30 points)
  • Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps (30 points)
• Standards and Assessments (70 total points)
  • Developing and adopting common standards (from the Common Core State Standards Initiative) (40 points)
  • Supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments (20 points)
  • Developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments (10 points)
• General Selection Criteria (55 total points)
  • Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools (40 points)
  • Making education funding a priority (10 points)
  • Demonstrating other significant reform conditions (5 points)
• Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools (50 total points)
  • Turning around the lowest-achieving schools (40 points)
  • Intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs (10 points)
• Data Systems to Support Instruction (47 total points)
  • Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system (24 points)
  • Using data to improve instruction (18 points)
  • Accessing and using State data (5 points)

In addition to the 485 possible points from the criteria above, the prioritization of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education is worth another fifteen points for a possible total of 500.^[1]

After viewing this i thought it was interesting that a states effort to include Data systems to support Instruction was only worth 47 points from the totally 500. Also, I was wondering how a state would prove that they were implementing some of these points. For example, how would a state prove that they are Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps? The best is improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance (58 points). How then do you show that teachers are improving. Should this improvement be based on the data? Not all schools are using NWEA so what data are they using. Is this data even useful?

Hanging out with Data

          Have you ever heard about Northwest Evaluation Association commonly known as NWEA? This is a company that tests students knowledge on a desired subject matter and complies the results instantly. Students use the computer to test how well they answer the questions the computer program proposes to them. If the student answers the question correctly they receive a harder question, but if they answer incorrectly, the receive a less difficult question. Over the course of the test, the student will level off and this is how their score is determined.  After the students are finished with the test their results are immediately analyzed and the amount of data that is obtained is astounding and can seem quite overwhelming.

           Tonight I had a Google hangout with my professor and went over some of the many different reports NWEA computes. In his school district they use the data, that was obtained a few weeks ago, to help teachers address the needs of their students. The administrator and each teacher has a meeting to discuss what should be done with the data for their classes.

          When I first wrote about "data" I was not sure how students test scores could be used to measure students performance accurately or help make decisions about instructions but now I am not so sure. After looking at some sample reports, the students are broken down into different score ranges. A teacher can actually see where all students fall on average in comparison to the class. If they wanted they could further look at each individual student and see where they excelled and where they struggled by topic within a subject. Since the teacher has this type of assesses to what the student knows and doesn't know they could better differentiate their lessons. Also, if teachers had this type of knowledge they would be able to pin point what areas to cover more thoroughly with each student.

          I wonder though, when will a teacher have the time to sit down and think about all of this data for each student? Yes, I said earlier  they meet with the administrator, but that just an overall meeting. If a teacher wants to really dive into this data they would have to do it on their own time.  Is this fair to the teacher? Or how then should all of this data be used?