5 ms·

PARCC testing in Colorado has disastrous first day

3 points by alexcasalboni 12y ago

swasheck 12y ago
PARCC, Common Core, and the heightened focus on (even more) standardized tests is an unmitigated educational disaster. My children have been wasting their time taking practice tests instead of actually learning. The school has to jump through the distict's hoops. The district has to jump through the state's hoops. Kids don't actually get educated because everyone's afraid of failing the tests so they're overpreparing. My kids are only learning how to game the system and take tests and not actually learning information analysis and synthesis.
- timw0j 12y ago
  Common Core doesn't really have much to do with the glut of standardized testing. Common Core is more about setting a guideline for lesson planning, allowing teachers across the country to share lessons and techniques to teach. It was developed by teachers for teachers. Standardized testing is a completely different problem. There's this strange desire at the state and district level to boil everything down to a single metric that says "this kid was taught something" without looking at any of the data that can be provided by their day-to-day instructor.
  - swasheck 12y ago
    I agree that there's no link between CC and standardized testing, I was just attempting to note that all of these things when taken together with how they're being implemented are a collective disaster.
    - timw0j 12y ago
      Except that there's really nothing wrong with Common Core and if you talk to most teachers they're for it (disclaimer: my wife, sister, and sister-in-law are all teachers, and my parents are retired teachers). Common Core is used as a political boogeyman against people who don't really understand what it's trying to accomplish.
germinalphrase 12y ago
Why do we pay The College Board to assess whether students can, say, make logical inferences when teachers are already doing this every day? Trust. We will move beyond this current paradigm once we develop a way to accredit (through national scale use/vetting) assessment materials on a much smaller scale. PARCC, ACT, et al. will maintain their current level of influence (functionally, not politically) so long as we can't assure that teachers are assessing their students against agreed upon benchmarks. If these benchmarked assessment materials could be integrated into everyday instruction (which, as a teacher, they surely can be) AND we can accredit them as accurately assessing student ability on "competency X' then we will no longer need centralized, high-stakes assessment. This accreditation will come from a decentralized exchange of classroom instructional materials/artifacts which will allow for the 'cream' (i.e. materials that accurately assess 'competency x") to be used, assessed, modified, re-used and finally accredited. Currently, teachers are silo'ed and rarely exchange learning materials beyond person-to-person contact or by physically gifting photocopies. Google docs facilitates exchange with real gains in productivity, but only within your immediate department (which could 4 people, could be 20 - but will hardly be >1000). We need the ability to fluidly exchange learning and assessment materials from all over the country/world that can be easily personalized for our classrooms. The potential of such a platform could have far reaching benefits beyond assessment, but I'll cut it off now. I can work the ledger, guys - but what I want is Visicalc...
cafard 12y ago
Dead link.
- alexcasalboni 12y ago
  I can still see it.

3 points by alexcasalboni 12y ago

PARCC, Common Core, and the heightened focus on (even more) standardized tests is an unmitigated educational disaster. My children have been wasting their time taking practice tests instead of actually learning. The school has to jump through the distict's hoops. The district has to jump through the state's hoops. Kids don't actually get educated because everyone's afraid of failing the tests so they're overpreparing. My kids are only learning how to game the system and take tests and not actually learning information analysis and synthesis.

timw0j 12y ago
Common Core doesn't really have much to do with the glut of standardized testing. Common Core is more about setting a guideline for lesson planning, allowing teachers across the country to share lessons and techniques to teach. It was developed by teachers for teachers. Standardized testing is a completely different problem. There's this strange desire at the state and district level to boil everything down to a single metric that says "this kid was taught something" without looking at any of the data that can be provided by their day-to-day instructor.
- swasheck 12y ago
  I agree that there's no link between CC and standardized testing, I was just attempting to note that all of these things when taken together with how they're being implemented are a collective disaster.
  - timw0j 12y ago
    Except that there's really nothing wrong with Common Core and if you talk to most teachers they're for it (disclaimer: my wife, sister, and sister-in-law are all teachers, and my parents are retired teachers). Common Core is used as a political boogeyman against people who don't really understand what it's trying to accomplish.

germinalphrase 12y ago

Why do we pay The College Board to assess whether students can, say, make logical inferences when teachers are already doing this every day? Trust. We will move beyond this current paradigm once we develop a way to accredit (through national scale use/vetting) assessment materials on a much smaller scale. PARCC, ACT, et al. will maintain their current level of influence (functionally, not politically) so long as we can't assure that teachers are assessing their students against agreed upon benchmarks. If these benchmarked assessment materials could be integrated into everyday instruction (which, as a teacher, they surely can be) AND we can accredit them as accurately assessing student ability on "competency X' then we will no longer need centralized, high-stakes assessment. This accreditation will come from a decentralized exchange of classroom instructional materials/artifacts which will allow for the 'cream' (i.e. materials that accurately assess 'competency x") to be used, assessed, modified, re-used and finally accredited. Currently, teachers are silo'ed and rarely exchange learning materials beyond person-to-person contact or by physically gifting photocopies. Google docs facilitates exchange with real gains in productivity, but only within your immediate department (which could 4 people, could be 20 - but will hardly be >1000). We need the ability to fluidly exchange learning and assessment materials from all over the country/world that can be easily personalized for our classrooms. The potential of such a platform could have far reaching benefits beyond assessment, but I'll cut it off now. I can work the ledger, guys - but what I want is Visicalc...

cafard 12y ago

Dead link.

alexcasalboni 12y ago
I can still see it.