I just spent two days at a training for my school building to become an accredited International Baccalaureate (IB)school. IB is a worldwide movement that promotes global learning and student learning from their own inquiry and discoveries. It's very involved, but to me it looks like it may put some joy back in the learning process after over a decade of making learning (and teaching) only preparing to take tests. We still have to give tests, but IB concepts have spread throughout the world for the past several decades and is now spreading through the US.
The following is text from a video you can view on You Tube if you'd prefer. It closely relates to this way of learning. Either way it's worth knowing.
If you're 1 in a million in China there are 1300 people just like you.
China will soon become the #1 English speaking country in the world.
The 25% of India's population with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of the US - translated - India has more honors kids than the US has kids.
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't been in invented in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.
The US Department of Labor estimates that today's learners will have 10-14 jobs by the age 38.
1 in 4 workers has been with their current employers for less than a year. One in two have been there less than 5 years.
1 out of 8 married couples married in the US last year met online.
The #1 ranked country in Broadband Internet Penetration is Bermuda. US is #19, Japan #22.
WE ARE LIVING IN EXPONENTIAL TIMES.
There are 31 billion searches on Google every month. In 2006 this number was 2.7 billion.
The first commercial text message was sent on December 1992. Today the number of text messages sent and received everyday exceeds the total population of the planet.
Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million:
Radio - 38 years.
TV - 13 years
Internet - 4 years
Ipod - 3 years
Facebook - 2 years
There are about 540,000 words in the English language - about 5X as many as during Shakespeare's time.
It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime on the 18th century.
The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
For students starting a 4 year technical degree this mean that half of what they learning their first year will be outdated by their 3rd year.
By 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain.
While reading this 67 babies were born in the US. 274 babies were born in China. 395 were born in India ----and 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally.
COEXIST: Poetry, Books, and Essays by Diane Vogel Ferri
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Monday, October 10, 2011
Testing Children
Once again, I am feeling frustrated in the age of "blaming teachers" for everything from students underachieving(regardless of the circumstances)to making too much money that has ruined the state budget.
I would like to share some excerpts from an article by Diane Ravitch, a former US assistant secretary of education, a historian of education and a professor at New York University. the article addresses the failure of No Child Left Behind, the ten years of testing students grades 3-12.
Maybe standardized tests are not good predictors of future economic success or decline. Perhaps our country has succeeded not because of test scores but because we encouraged something more important than test scores - the freedom to create, innovate and imagine.
Instead of sending the vast amounts of money that schools needed to make a dent in this goal, Congress simply sent testing mandates that required that every child in every school reach proficiency by 2014 - or the schools would be subject to sanctions. If a school failed to make progress over five years, it might be closed, privatized ,handed over to the state authorities or turned into a charter school.
The fundamental belief that carrots and sticks will improve education is a leap of faith, an ideology to which its adherents cling despite evidence to the contrary.. . experts who concluded that incentives based on tests hadn't worked.
. . . testing every child every year and grading teachers by their student's scores - is not found in any of the world's top performing nations.
Piece by piece our entire public education system is being redesigned in the service of increasing test scores on standardized tests at the expense of creativity, innovation and imagination that helped this country succeed.. . competition produces winners and losers, not equality of educational opportunity
I would like to share some excerpts from an article by Diane Ravitch, a former US assistant secretary of education, a historian of education and a professor at New York University. the article addresses the failure of No Child Left Behind, the ten years of testing students grades 3-12.
Maybe standardized tests are not good predictors of future economic success or decline. Perhaps our country has succeeded not because of test scores but because we encouraged something more important than test scores - the freedom to create, innovate and imagine.
Instead of sending the vast amounts of money that schools needed to make a dent in this goal, Congress simply sent testing mandates that required that every child in every school reach proficiency by 2014 - or the schools would be subject to sanctions. If a school failed to make progress over five years, it might be closed, privatized ,handed over to the state authorities or turned into a charter school.
The fundamental belief that carrots and sticks will improve education is a leap of faith, an ideology to which its adherents cling despite evidence to the contrary.. . experts who concluded that incentives based on tests hadn't worked.
. . . testing every child every year and grading teachers by their student's scores - is not found in any of the world's top performing nations.
Piece by piece our entire public education system is being redesigned in the service of increasing test scores on standardized tests at the expense of creativity, innovation and imagination that helped this country succeed.. . competition produces winners and losers, not equality of educational opportunity
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
21st Century Education
The children I am teaching today have not lived in a world without the Internet. The children I am teaching today have experienced school mostly as a place to hear about tests and take tests with a paper and pencil - and yet, the way they see the rest of the world communicating and gathering information is through Skype, Facebook, iPhones, iPads, teleconferencing and the Internet.
In 1898 The Committee of 10 came together to create education standards for America. They were learned educators who decided there should be 8 core subjects, that students should be in school for 180 days a year with 6 hours of instrcution, that they should graduate with so many years of math and English etc. Sound familiar?? That was over 100 years ago and we still operate by the same standards.
Then a decade ago we threw in No Child Left Behind. The intentions sounded good, but beyond the poor funding by the government that decreed it, this law has been at the expense of preparing children for real world skills. Research shows we have turned out a decade of young people completely unprepared for 21st century employment. They all may be great at taking bubble tests, but this has not taught them critical thinking and problem solving. Tests have taken the joy out of school and removed any opportunity for teachable moments. Teachers have not had any time to delve into any non-tested subjects.
Leading curriculum expert Heidi Hayes Jacobs has researched our educational system and determined that we are preparing out students today for the world of 1991.
Along with integrating the rapidly changing use of technology, schools need to be graduating critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators. Author Daniel Pink says the future will be ruled by right-brained thinkers. He says that American will never lead in manufacturing again, Those days are over. So if America wants a successful future we will value the creators, those with imagination, the problem solvers. (Maybe MFAs will be more desirable than MBAs?)
The building where I teach is working to become an International Baccalaureate School. We will spend the next year as a candidate school and then become official. I am very new to this process, but my first impressions are positive. Sometimes It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and I am not one to jump into every new fad - I've seen too many fail miserably.
But here is the gist: Education in our building will be student-centered, not teacher-led with teachers giving the answers and students regurgitating them out on a test. It will be research-driven, not textbook-driven. It will encourage the use of all available technology and be project-oriented. It will integrate subject matter just as it is in the real world. We're moving from passive learning to active learning. Does this sound logical to you?
The big drawback is that our students will still be taking standardized tests until our legislators come to their senses and admit that these tests have been mandated to measure teacher performance, not student learning.
How will our kids fare after spending a few years actually learning to think and solve problems? That remains to be seen,but I actually feel some inspiration at this new turn in education - something I haven't felt for a long time.
In 1898 The Committee of 10 came together to create education standards for America. They were learned educators who decided there should be 8 core subjects, that students should be in school for 180 days a year with 6 hours of instrcution, that they should graduate with so many years of math and English etc. Sound familiar?? That was over 100 years ago and we still operate by the same standards.
Then a decade ago we threw in No Child Left Behind. The intentions sounded good, but beyond the poor funding by the government that decreed it, this law has been at the expense of preparing children for real world skills. Research shows we have turned out a decade of young people completely unprepared for 21st century employment. They all may be great at taking bubble tests, but this has not taught them critical thinking and problem solving. Tests have taken the joy out of school and removed any opportunity for teachable moments. Teachers have not had any time to delve into any non-tested subjects.
Leading curriculum expert Heidi Hayes Jacobs has researched our educational system and determined that we are preparing out students today for the world of 1991.
Along with integrating the rapidly changing use of technology, schools need to be graduating critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators. Author Daniel Pink says the future will be ruled by right-brained thinkers. He says that American will never lead in manufacturing again, Those days are over. So if America wants a successful future we will value the creators, those with imagination, the problem solvers. (Maybe MFAs will be more desirable than MBAs?)
The building where I teach is working to become an International Baccalaureate School. We will spend the next year as a candidate school and then become official. I am very new to this process, but my first impressions are positive. Sometimes It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and I am not one to jump into every new fad - I've seen too many fail miserably.
But here is the gist: Education in our building will be student-centered, not teacher-led with teachers giving the answers and students regurgitating them out on a test. It will be research-driven, not textbook-driven. It will encourage the use of all available technology and be project-oriented. It will integrate subject matter just as it is in the real world. We're moving from passive learning to active learning. Does this sound logical to you?
The big drawback is that our students will still be taking standardized tests until our legislators come to their senses and admit that these tests have been mandated to measure teacher performance, not student learning.
How will our kids fare after spending a few years actually learning to think and solve problems? That remains to be seen,but I actually feel some inspiration at this new turn in education - something I haven't felt for a long time.
Monday, April 19, 2010
My Testing Rant
This is the week I like to call Official State of Ohio Torture Children Week. It is the week, as a special education teacher, that I get to hand out a reading test on the fourth grade level to students who are reading at a 1st-2nd grade level. It will have no less than SIX 3-4 page stories that I will ask them to TRY to read (with 2-3 pages of questions attached) They will stare up at me like I am crazy and they will wait for me to help them as I have been for the past 30 weeks. But I will say - go ahead - read it yourself! I imagine it's similar to being handed a book written in Russian and told you can read it if you just TRY HARDER!
The next day I will give them a math test that includes algebra, reducing fractions, elapsed time, probability and those great story problems. The thing is that some of my students are still struggling with skills in addition and subtraction.
To me this all reinforces their belief that they are stupid and failures before they get out of elementary school. Then we wonder why they drop out.
I am all for schools being accountable, for special ed kids too, because they CAN learn. They have learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities, may have been exposed to drugs and alcohol prenatally, or struggle with ADHD every day which interferes with their learning, but states insist that they should take the same tests and progress at the same rate as all the kids who have none of those handicaps.
I will say that the state is beginning to introduce value-added status which measures yearly growth. This is good start - but my students are still expected to PASS the TESTS. If they don't I look bad, which makes my principal look bad, which makes the district look bad, which gives us an inferior rating, which is published in the paper, which causes the citizens not to vote for levies, which puts the district behind - again.
Maybe someday it will all make sense - but it will most likely be long after I am retired. My simple solution is to give them tests on their skill level and the next year show growth.
(There are also science, writing and social studies tests - and we all know you cannot possibly have a successful life without passing a social studies test. )
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