Picture a kindergartner or first grader heading to school, a mix of excitement, curiosity and fear as the child starts the school year. How would that child react to starting the school year with an exam containing words and concepts that she has not experienced? Is this “pre-assessment” of skills that a child will need to learn by the end of the current school year the first impression of education that we would want a young student to have? Sadness, apprehension, and feelings of failure are not the way we want our children to begin the start of the school year.
Welcome to the world of corporate education children. The pre-assessment is the ignorant idea from so-called reformers that we can measure a child’s academic growth by comparing test results at the beginning of the school-year to an exam towards the end of the term.
In New York State, we call the aftermath of the pre-assessment Student Learning Objectives(SLO):
“A Student Learning Objective is an academic goal for a teacher’s students that is set at the start of a course. It represents the most important learning for the year (or, semester, where applicable). It must be specific and measurable, based on available prior student learning data, and aligned to Common Core, State, or national standards, as well as any other school and District priorities. Teachers’ scores are based upon the degree to which their goals were attained.”
Educators who teach a course that does not have a state exam must use Student Learning Objectives to determine part of their evaluation. Here is how this process works: Teachers that need to use an SLO must give a pre-assessment to their students. This exam could be a district, regional or corporate created test that would assess the students in what content and skills the children should obtain at the end of the school year. Basically we are giving the students a version of our final exam. On the surface, this sounds easy for teachers: almost all the students will score poorly on the pre-assessment because they have not learned the curriculum yet and achieve a low baseline level. Could teachers be cheering for their students to do poorly on the pre-assessment? Hoping children fail: is that where the world of corporate education reform has taken us?
All around the country teachers are being evaluated by student test scores. Sadly in New York State, this process is being rushed at such a pace that presenters have likened the methods to the “building a plane in the sky” commercial.
Many educators have noted that it is the state education department officials who have the parachutes in the “plane”, while the teachers and students are left helpless. Nothing could be closer to this scenario than the Student Learning Objective(SLO) in New York. The SLO process is being used because the NYS Education Department could not figure out how to evaluate teachers who do not have a state exam for their course or grade level.
After the “pre-assessments” are scored, teachers need to make a prediction as to how their students will perform on the final assessment of the year. How can an educator who barely knows their students determine a goal for a final exam score for the class? If the teacher does not meet this “expected outcome of performance”, then that educator loses points on his or her evaluation score. Puzzled? Me too. The SLO relies on the fact that the pre and post-assessments are valid measures of learning, which we know is not the case.
The idea that giving a pre-test to students who have never been exposed to certain concepts would be good for a laugh if we were not conducting this cruel experiment on children. Here is another blatant example of the almighty importance of “the test”, not to mention more real learning time lost. At the SOS Convention I heard that we need an educator’s Hippocratic Oath similar to the doctor’s ethical pledge, which contains the phrase “do no harm“. I, for one, will never give this type of pre-assessment to my students for that very reason.
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Yep, the students really are SOL!
NYS third grade must create the SLO using our local measurment…that part is just like everyone else. However, our SLO will be measured by how they do on the NYS ELA and Math test. Comparison for growth will be based on TWO DIFFERENT assessment tools! Maybe I am missing something here…but this seems strange.
The point is more testing taking away from our children/student’s education. By using the pre/post exams, all the emphasis on growth is by test results.
A good idea from a NY Supt instead of using a SLO? http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/01/a-superintendent-added-to-the-honor-roll/
I gave a “pre-assessment” this week, and I can tell you it made the students who have had a lot of experiences of failure extremely anxious, even though they are in 9th grade and old enough to understand that they aren’t expected to know what is on the test.
And don’t forget that each and every SLO must be “negotiated”/approved by the building administrator. Administrators have already been told that low targets are not acceptable. So this should open up a “beginning of the year” battle royal. What a great way to start the new school year.
Sadly, this is why my students will be taking the STAR assessments in late September. Then, my “common planning time” will be used to analyze data and write my SLOs. The STAR assessment is a 34 question computerized assessment – they will take one for ELA and one for MATH. They will be given while my students are at their “COMPUTER TIME”.
It is insanity!
That’s the way it’s done here. Students take a version of the end-of-year tests at least three or four times before the real thing in the spring, beginning in the first weeks of school, for each subject to be tested (math, reading and social studies or science). There is always material that has yet to be covered, esp. on that first test, of course! Virginia at least refers to these tests by the proper term, calling them the “SOLs” for standards of learning. Occasionally, there is time for teaching to occur, too.
I was going to say that, aren’t the tests in Virginia already the SOLs? That’s funny.
SOL’s — I love it. Shows that the ed dept folks have no common sense. What’s next: Student Holistic Informative Test?