Focus on the kid, not the assessment

With state assessment time rolling around, I thought I would re-post something I wrote a year or so ago that fits here.

—————–

It’s a story many of you already know. But perhaps on a Monday late in the school year with state assessments staring us in the face, it bears repeating. I was reminded of the story while browsing through an old teaching strategy article from the Organization of American Historians.

Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Adams and son of John Quincy Adams, served as a Massachusetts state senator, a US Congressman and ambassador to Great Britain under Abraham Lincoln. He was also very conscientious about keeping a daily journal and encouraged his children to do the same.

Henry Brooks, fourth of seven children, followed his advice and began journaling at a young age. A particular entry written when Brooks was eight has continued to catch our attention. Following a day spent with his father, he wrote

Went fishing with my father today, the most glorious day of my life.

The day was so glorious, in fact, that Brooks continued to talk and write about that particular day for the next thirty years. It was then that Brooks thought to compare journal entries with his father.

For that day’s entry, Charles had written:

Went fishing with my son, a day wasted.

Now it’s possible that Charles was upset that they came home empty-handed, having caught no fish. But even so, he seems to have forgotten that the process is sometimes more important than the product. That the time spent with kids is usually more important than what we do with them.

It’s easy to forget the powerful impact we can have with our students just with the time we spend with them. So a gentle reminder during the assessment season . . . make it about the kids, not just their test scores.

“Why do we have school after the state assessments are over?”

Mmm . . . great question.

It’s even better when a middle school kid asks it.

A teacher friend of mine passed on the question from one of her students and I figured I would pass it on to you. So I really want to know. Why do we have school after state assessments are over?

And, even though we all believe it, you can’t say

there is still a lot to learn.

Because apparently the secret is out. Even the kids have figured it out – school is not about learning, it’s about test scores.

Once we’ve taken the test, there’s no longer any reason for school.

The kid may have a point. Right or wrong, many teachers feel compelled to cram in all of their content in six or seven months rather than nine because the assessment schedule starts in March. And, yes, good teachers continue to teach and kids continue to learn after the assessments. But I’ve been in too many classes where it’s busy work till the end of May.

So . . . what do we tell the kid? What do we tell ourselves?

Bribes for learning

I admit it.

I bribed my kid.

When nothing else seemed to work, we used a variety of stickers (mostly Thomas the Tank Engine) to encourage our two year old during potty training. And while we didn’t do a lot of scientifically-based research, it seemed to have a positive effect.

Giving kids stuff to modify their behavior is a time-honored parenting tool that’s been around forever. Schools have used similar techniques in the past but as the educational stakes have gotten higher, the “stuff” used to modify behavior has changed to include actual cash. A recent Time magazine article documents the trend:

In recent years, hundreds of schools have made these transactions more businesslike, experimenting with paying kids with cold, hard cash for showing up or getting good grades or, in at least one case, going another day without getting pregnant.

The question is does it really work? And, more specifically, can similar strategies be used to encourage long-term learning?

The Time article highlights the work of Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. who distributed 6.3 million dollars of private funds to thousands of students in Washington, D.C., Dallas, New York and Chicago.

The results?

Like any large educational research project, the results are mixed. You can read for yourself but in one city,

the experiment had no effect at all — “as zero as zero gets.”

In another,

something remarkable happened . . . Statistically speaking, it was as if those kids had spent three extra months in school, compared with their peers who did not get paid.

Robert Marzano’s research on what works in schools discusses the concept of rewards.  At Building Better Instruction:

It is equally important to reward students for achieving specific goals. Though there are many ways to tell a student he or she has done well, recognition is most effective when it is abstract (e.g., praise) or symbolic (e.g., tokens such as coupons or stickers) and contingent on students’ attaining specific performance goals. (see Classroom Instruction That Works, pp. 73−74, for a list). 

So we have some newer Fryer research partly supporting older Marzano research. The problem some are having is that cash is not “abstract” or “symbolic.” Larry Ferlazzo of Websites for the Day is concerned about using cash rewards for certain types of learning:

As Daniel Pink and others have described and demonstrated much more ably than I can do here (see A Few Reflections On Daniel Pink’s New Book, “Drive”; On Rewards & Classroom Management; and New Study Shows That Paying Students For Higher Test Scores Doesn’t Work) extrinsic rewards do work — for mechanical work that doesn’t require much higher-order thinking. But it doesn’t work for anything that requires higher-order thinking skills and creativity. And, in fact, these incentives reduce intrinsic motivation over the long-term.

Claus von Zastrow who writes for Public School Insights agrees, remarked that Fryer’s team noted that students getting cash for scores naturally grasped at test-taking strategies rather than, say, better study skills or deeper engagement in class materials:

Students [who were asked what they could do to earn more money on the next test] started thinking about test-taking strategies rather than salient inputs into the education production function or improving their general understanding of a subject area…. Not a single student mentioned reading the textbook, studying harder, completing their homework, or asking teachers or other adults about confusing topics.

For me, it comes down to this. When all we worry about is test scores, about the short term, about meeting AYP, about meeting NVLB reqs, it seems as if paying kids for performance might be part of the answer. And I know that every school and situation is different and short term solutions may be what’s needed in some areas.

But if we want to kids to think critically, to apply content in creative ways and to be true 21st century learners, I’m still not convinced.

Finished a day of teaching, “a day wasted”

It’s a story many of you already know. But perhaps on a Monday late in the school year with state assessments all around us, it bears repeating. I was reminded of the story while browsing through an old teaching strategy article from the Organization of American Historians.

Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Adams and son of John Quincy Adams, served as a Massachusetts state senator, a US Congressman and ambassador to Great Britain under Abraham Lincoln. He was also very conscientious about keeping a daily journal and encouraged his children to do the same.

Henry Brooks, fourth of seven children, followed his advice and began journaling at a young age. A particular entry written when Brooks was eight has continued to catch our attention. Following a day spent with his father, he wrote

Went fishing with my father today, the most glorious day of my life.

The day was so glorious, in fact, that Brooks continued to talk and write about that particular day for the next thirty years. It was then that Brooks thought to compare journal entries with his father.

For that day’s entry, Charles had written:

Went fishing with my son, a day wasted.

Now it’s possible that Charles was upset that they came home empty-handed, having caught no fish. But even so, he seems to have forgotten that the process is sometimes more important than the product. That the time spent with kids is usually more important than what we do with them.

It’s easy to forget the powerful impact we can have with our students just with the time we spend with them. So a gentle reminder during the assessment season . . . focus on the kid, not just her test scores.

Are you smarter than an elected official?

David Williamson Shaffer, author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn, recently wrote about a November 2008 article detailing how a group of elected officials flunked a civic literacy test. The test is being conducting by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute American Civic Literacy Program.

The article claims that the average score of public officials was 44% – making my 94% look totally awesome. So, as Shaffer asked, if I were an elected official, would I be twice as effective? Twice as likely to solve that whole Arab – Israeli problem? Twice as successful at balancing the budget? Twice as competent at dog catching?

Test results don’t lie. Based on the 33 questions asked by the ISIACLP, I’m ready to lead.

Perhaps looking at how the questions were selected can give us a few clues about why public officials did so poorly:

Thirteen of the 33 knowledge questions are taken from previous ISI surveys developed by ISI faculty advisors from universities around the country. Nine of the civic knowledge questions are taken from the U.S. Department of Education’s 12th grade NAEP test, and six from the U.S. naturalization exam. Two new knowledge questions were developed especially for this new survey and three are drawn from an “American History 101” exam posted online by http://www.InfoPlease.com.

Oops. Guess not. According to their test scores, they can’t pass the high school ISIACLP equivalent of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

Okay . . . let’s back up a bit.

I’m pretty sure that there is no way I could step into a legislative role and perform twice as well as the person already in that position. (Though some days I’d like to try.)

So we’ve got a problem. I’m assuming that the point of releasing results from these types of tests is to try and predict, using 33 multiple choice questions, how well someone will actually do out in the big, bad world. So if elected officials average 44% on a civic literacy test, we assume the results are correct, i.e. the elected officials aren’t ready to lead.

They failed the test and the test can’t be wrong.

Shaffer suggests:

This is, of course, one of the most fundamental fallacies of our regime of high-stakes tests: we take performance on the test as an end in itself, never bothering to ask–much less test–whether the exams actually tell us anything useful about whether students can really do anything useful in the world.

He claims that these studies have been done and that they “routinely show that exams don’t give us much useful information.”

He quotes from his book:

Even students who do well on school tests cannot apply their knowledge to real-world problem solving. For example, one classic set of studies shows that students who have passed a physics course and can write Newton’s Laws of Motion down on a piece of paper still can’t answer even simple problems like “If you flip a coin into the air, how many forces are acting on it at the top of its trajectory?” Which is, of course, a problem that can be solved using Newton’s Laws.

So we need to start asking questions about a test’s validity. What kinds of questions are we asking that ensure a test is actually measuring what we want to measure?

In this case, probably not. We’re trying to make connections between knowing the name of FDR’s New Deal programs with the ability to competently run a government department.

“Passing” the multiple choice test becomes the issue and so, because our test data is flawed, our conclusions are just as flawed.

So is there an answer? A balance between core knowledge and 21st century skills? I think so.

I spent yesterday at the Kansas MACE conference speaking and listening to a whole bunch of very smart people who said the same thing. A foundation of basic social studies knowledge is vital to creating successful citizens but just as important is asking kids to apply that knowledge in ways that allow them to solve real-world problems, not just ace some multiple choice test.