December 2005 — Policy/Advocacy
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Building a Better Assessment Program
Now is the time to utilize the technology we have, to create a system that encourages students to learn—rather than just pass—a test.
HAVEN’T WE ALL WANTED to be governor for a day with unlimited powers? I have. But only for a day. I just want to institute two simple policies in the state of Washington that could apply to any state. To wit:
- The state’s assessment program will live online and consist of a variety of material, including performance measures, open-ended items, and essay questions. There will be no multiple- choice problems. Said program will be accessible 24/7 to everyone on the Web, and its purpose will be to help teachers, students, and parents understand the extent to which individual students and aggregations of students are learning.
- The program will have no name and cannot be referred to as an aspect separate from any other component of the teaching/learning process.
As with many policies, each of the two has a genesis and each requires some explanation. Let’s start with the second policy, which grew out of a front-page article I read in October’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, titled, “Prepping for the WASL: Seattle puts new teaching tools in place for students, educators.” (The WASL is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, the state testing program.)
I confess that I sat slack-jawed with coffee dripping down my chin as I read the article. The story was all about the policies, tools, and support the Seattle Public School District was implementing…to help kids pass the test. Passing the state test has become a proxy for actual learning. This isn’t a problem unique to Seattle. I am not so naïve to think that the mantra of “All we do is teach to the test” isn’t chanted daily in schools across the country. It’s even worse in states where students must pass a test before they can graduate. I did not think, however, that the emphasis on the test, as opposed to student learning, was as bad as portrayed in this article. Below are sample quotes from the article.
- “Recognizing that math is the weakest WASL subject for many students, the district is in the process of reviewing instructional materials and establishing a standardized curriculum.”
- “The WASL requires students to both reach the correct answer and explain how they got there, necessitating what [a school official] said is a major shift from how teachers used to teach.”
I must say that the district is taking some excellent steps toward improving teaching and learning. Ensuring students have mastered certain skills and knowledge before they move on; reviewing instructional materials; establishing a standardized curriculum; and helping teachers change how they teach so students not only get the correct answer, but also understand the concept the answer represents and how they got to the answer—all these activities, and many more the district is working on, demonstrate good policy. But it took the threat of a test to get the district to do this? As my parents used to say in looking at my grades: I am disappointed.
