How is a raven like a writing desk?

Is it like modern education "reform," in that no one has seemed to come up with a reasonable answer?

This post is, surprise, about standardized testing (which you're probably sick of hearing about, but that's essentially all we hear about now when it comes to education policy, and I'm going to talk about it at length and hope others do too in the hopes that policy makers will finally get on board and realize it's. Not. Working.)

I read this poignant article yesterday that I thought summed things up very nicely: "[The standardized test] is a fundamentally flawed tool that will only debase the good work we teachers do in the classroom, the work that districts do in designing and implementing quality curriculum, and the work our students do in learning to become enlightened critical thinkers."

One of the author's main points here is that the secrecy surrounding standardized tests make it extremely difficult -- perhaps even impossible -- for teachers to accurately gauge which skills students still need to improve once the tests have been graded. It seems to her as if the testing services, Pearson in particular, care more about their own security (read: profit) than about students actually knowing the material.

She also mentions the fact there are bad test questions. For example: "How does the narrator's point of view contribute to the mood of the story?" I am an English teacher, and when I read this question, my first thought was, "Huh?" because that doesn't make any sense. The writer of this article concurs; as she states, an author does not use point of view to develop mood. When tests are written by psychometricians and not educators, how can the test developers be held accountable (*ahem* another magic word in education reform *ahem*) in creating legitimate questions that test real skills?

I have noticed both these problems on the GED exam, since this is what I teach. It is extremely frustrating on both ends -- student and teacher -- when a student fails the test the first time, and I can't help them improve. The reason I cannot do this is because, like the tests in the previous article, there is great secrecy surrounding the GED exam, which was also developed by Pearson.

For example, when a student finishes his or her exam, the computer generates a score. The student cannot see which questions he or she got incorrect. Therefore, a non-passing score could be a result of a few skipped questions, or an accidental marking of "C" when the student meant to click "B," or even a misspelling on a fill-in-the-blank, since the computer grading system has no nuance.

Moreover, the GED Testing Service (which as far as I can tell is not "accountable" to anyone) lists a set of skills for the student to work on for next time, but this is not very helpful to the student, or to me as an educator, because without seeing how the student missed the questions that pertained to the skills, the student's only option is to essentially regurgitate what he or she has already been studying. It's very possible a student has these skills down cold, but could have missed a question due to an unknown vocabulary word, or was reading too quickly, or legitimately does not know how to solve the problem. These are all things that are essential for educators to know in order to better serve their students.

When I give quizzes back, the students can see immediately not only which questions they got wrong, but why. I think understanding this premise is, in some ways, more important than getting a multiple choice question correct. Also, I give students a chance to correct any wrong answers, and while I do not change their quiz grade, their corrections give them another opportunity to think critically and understand their own thinking.

I could probably type for another hour here about my issues with the GED Testing Service, and really, all standardized tests that employ the same level of secrecy, but I won't. Instead, I'll let this article about the more rigorous GED do the talking for me. In this one, a point is made that testing companies have a monopoly and seem to care more about their own profit margin than about students succeeding. This is especially the case with adult education, I feel, since these adults have a) been out of school for so long and b) were exposed to bad education in the first place, especially if they grew up poor and urban (which mine did). These students can often not handle the higher rigor of the new GED. I'm not saying we should eliminate rigor, of course; I'm simply saying there has to be a better way.

Perhaps instead of privatizing standardized testing, we can have schools and districts be in charge of what students should know and how to measure their knowledge.

How kids (and adults) learn

Many teachers and educational experts are against the standardized testing movement for many good reasons, one of which is because testing does not equal learning. One of the reasons why I believe that standardized tests are not accurate measures of what a student learns is because the brain naturally works in such a way that it forgets what it does not deem relevant. If memorizing an algebraic equation or analyzing a Shakespearean sonnet does not matter to the student, they may master this concept on a test, but they will not remember it for the long-term. Things that are irrelevant to students (and, for that matter, adults) have no meaning. This site has a great diagram (about 5/6ths of the way down) of what happens in our brains when something has no meaning for learners.

This theory is clearly observed when put into practice. We naturally gravitate toward what we enjoy. It should be no different in classrooms. In this blog post published almost a year ago, the author explains extremely well why students have trouble learning basic skills like spelling when teachers ignore (or don't know) how the brain works. She states that “[i]f spelling words are simply strings of letters to be learnt by heart with no meaning attached and no investigation of how those words are constructed, then we are simply assigning our children a task equivalent to learning ten random seven-digit PINs each week. That is not only very very hard, it's pointless.” Her idea about teaching morphemes so that a child will write “jumped” rather than “jumt” not only helps students develop meaning about words and therefore attach relevancy to them, but also helps them with deductive reasoning, which is a skill that is transferable to almost anything. But most standardized tests do not test deductive reasoning; most are based, instead, on rote memorizing, like spelling, which will likely be forgotten.

Teaching and testing methods that rely on this type of knowledge are not only ineffective, they are boring. This is one reason why children drop out of school. These children soon become adults, and since they have been out of school for so long, they often feel stuck, and they become unemployed and/or incarcerated. This is a problem particularly in DC, where more than 60,000 adults do not have a high school credential. The GED is designed in much the same way high school standardized tests are, so the problem remains: students must study for things they just don't care about. Can we blame them for not caring about quadratic equations and whether or not a character's mood changes in contrast with the setting? I don't think so. I think we should train teachers and test-makers instead to assess what is relevant. Students will be happier and more productive when we do.

What motivates you?

Yesterday I participated in Part 1 of 3 of a webinar training about Self Determination Theory. As this was the first session, we merely brushed the surface, but our primary objective was determining the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how we can encourage the former.

For those who don't know, intrinsic motivation happens when people want to do something because it appeals to their sense of relevance, values, and/or long-term goals. An example relevant to education would be people doing well in a subject because it interests them. An example relevant to all of us would be taking out the garbage because we don't want the house to smell. Extrinsic motivation is when people do something for external reasons, like getting a good grade or getting a promotion. So for example, if a parent tells a child to do their homework or they're grounded, the child has external motivation to do it, but isn't necessarily getting anything out of it because their internal motivation hasn't been activated. Thus, homework to the extrinsically motivated child is something they "must" do rather than "choose" to do.

The tough question is: how do we get students to "choose" to do something, thus propelling their internal motivation? External motivation alone won't cut it. This is the case regardless of your age. Yes, my adult students respond to candy in the same way my teenage students did -- but what's the bigger motivation that drives them? Getting their GEDs, sure, but there has to be something beyond that point. Part of my job is to steer them toward a more long-term goal, but this is challenging when they didn't grow up in an environment in which "long-term" was normal vocabulary. I'm eager to see if this webinar will uncover ways to help students reach this mindset.

At the end of the webinar, the instructor gave us an assignment to complete before the next session to get full PD points, to which one participant said it was external motivation that was making us complete the assignment -- but I think it's a little of both (if you're interested in this topic, that is). At this point I'm still chewing on what we discussed yesterday, and will hopefully have more to blog about next week.

I'm back!

I really have no excuse for being gone this long. In August, I took a job teaching GED classes to adults and it's incredibly rewarding and far better (for me, at least) than teaching high school students. I guess maybe I was using that change in my life to justify not writing about K-12 education, but that's a stupid reason, especially since if K12 ed were better, there would be no need for GED classes.

And then after a couple more months, I figured "well, I've stopped for this long. Might as well stop entirely," but that's an even dumber reason because that's essentially quitting for no good reason. So I have wised up, and here I am again.

I'm sure you're not asking what the catalyst for my return is, but I'll tell you anyway. I read this feel-good article in WaPo today about a student from Anacostia High (probably the worst school in the District) getting a full ride to Georgetown and my initial reaction was, "Awesome! Good for her!" But then I stumbled upon this article and thought, "Oh yeah, good point. High schools (especially those in urban areas) really need to ramp it up."

Finally, I read this article from The New York Times, and the TL;DR version of it is is that students from lower-income families have a lower chance of graduating from college which often has more to do with the culture shock and motivation required in college, not finances. A professor at UT-Austin is trying to figure out ways to help them graduate.

It's no secret that schools in "poor" areas are not as good as schools from wealthy areas, but I thought all three of these articles did a great job of pointing out the psychological endeavors students must go through when they transition to college, which lower-income students struggle more with. These are things you cannot measure. But these are things that are critically important to be aware of, and then attempt to fix.

As Rashema points out in the first article, "[E]ducation is the only way out [of poverty]." If an 18 year old understands this, why don't the people who make the decisions?

Adult Students

I have not updated for a while, because I just started a job teaching GED courses to adults. It is quite different from teaching in a traditional high school, but there are also many similarities. For one thing, there are many barriers that hinder these students' progress. Many of them have not been in school for a very long time, and they all feel that the traditional school system let them down. Is that because they felt they weren't learning anything relevant? Maybe. This article does an excellent job of explaining the learning process, and what can make it so elusive.

The adult students are also susceptible to lots and lots of testing. Because the GED costs money to take, our job is to make sure the students can pass the GED before they sign up to take it so we don't waste their money or the city's. Due to this, there are many pre- and post-tests which the students are subjected to. The center has a low retention rate, which is primarily due to the fact that the courses are more difficult than students were anticipating, and thus they quit. However, I believe that the barrage of tests they take is also a deterrent to many students.

I have only been here for a week, so we'll see what happens. I am eager, though, to work with adult students who, because of a poor public schooling system, fell through the cracks, yet still wish to succeed.