"After all these years of common schooling, we still have no real way of knowing if students are learning." Dr. Tuck made this comment in her blog this week and it has really gotten me to think. I know that children go to school, complete a variety of activities or tasks that are hopefully helping them build the skills they will need to succeed (pass the standardized test), and then go home and possibly complete some work outside of school. This all builds up to the standardized state tests the students have to take to measure what they have learned in school. Is this an accurate way to measure what our students are learning? Are our students learning from this method of teaching?
In my opinion this is a terrible way to measure what your children are learning. I don't think that standardized tests accurately measure what they say they are measuring. In my assessment class with Dr. Salend, we had a conversation about standardized tests. In particular we looked at the NYS teacher certification tests. I remember someone commenting on how they felt like most of the answers on the test that they were looking for were common sense and if you were good at taking multiple choice tests you could probably pass the test without ever stepping foot into an education class. I felt similarly about the tests. I also didn't think that they were a fair way of measuring what I had learned in my time at school.
Another class I took at SUNY New Paltz discussed the concept of Multiple Intelligence. Howard Gardner has proposed 8 (recently added a 9th) way that people are intelligent. Standardized tests DO NOT provide a way for students who are not linguistical or logical/mathematical smart to show what they've learned. Also, as Hilliard points out in his article, not all students have access to the same vocabulary. Standardized tests are presented in a format that is "One Style Fits All".
Also, standardized tests give us an idea of what measurable learning is. The curriculum is built around what we can put on the standardized test, what we can measure. It determines what is important to be taught in our classroom and gives children the impression that the immeasurable learning is not important or the concepts that won't be on the standardized test are not important. Carini's reading really focused in on this idea of the immeasurable. "The immeasurable also makes me think of those events that arouse in us awe and wonder, perhaps rendering us speechless." How do we incorporate the immeasurable into what our students are learning? I believe these moments to be the most important ones of all and need to be counted as student learning.
I believe that changes need to happen in the education system, especially in the way that we measure students learning. I think that there is a place and time for tests and we can't rule out the use of them completely. I do think that we need to include some new ways to look at what our students are learning in the classroom. I have learned a bit about portfolios as a means of alternative assessment. This is a lot of work to create, but I find it to be more meaningful than a test. Also, project based learning is an incredible way to measure students learning. Throughout the entire course of the project, students learning is being evaluated. This is done using formative assessments and then looking at the final project that students have created. This project can be evaluated using a rubric. I believe that you will be able to see progress in students from the beginning of the project to the end. I will be watching several different project based lessons happening this summer at Say Yes to Education in Syracuse. I believe the learning the students will be doing this summer will be some of the most meaningful, "immeasurable" learning the children have ever experienced.
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