I was proctoring my students during the standardized tests last week and thinking of how we try to train them to try to eliminate a couple of obvious wrong answers before guessing. Then I remembered the Monty Hall Problem. You
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That’s Not How Students Write
I spend most of Thursday pulling staples out of the wall, trying my hardest to keep the student work intact. Art work and thought-provoking writing are replaced by emptiness. Whitewashed walls extract the color, vitality and voice of our classroom
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Vulgar and Perilous Reforms
In 1790, conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” Clay Shirky, expert on the role of social media and
Read MoreThe Problem with VAM Scores
Before the district kill-and-drill benchmark test, a student says to me, "You look stressed." "I'm fine," I lie, offering a grin that looks more like a grimace. "I normally blow off the test, but my mom says you could lose
Read MoreWhat If? (Part 2)
How could providing test or quiz proctoring change the way we use our time as teachers?
Read MoreAssessing Learning Versus Taking Assessments
I once tried to create a stop motion feature called "Phil in the Bubble." Here, the protagonist is a student who sits alone in a black and white silent classroom taking a test. Bubbles emerge from his multiple choice test
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Wigs, Statues, and the Rest
The state department of education grades schools based on student performance on a yearly standardized test. My school also monitors student progress in reading and math with quarterly assessments provided by a commercial testing service. Questions on the quarterly assessments
Read MoreWhat If Assessment Was a Verb?
I often get the urge to say, "Ignore the dots on the wall, kids. Those dots don't demonstrate your value as a learner or your identity as a student." Instead, I hope they walk past it, ignore it, and walk
Read MoreAll that is Unsolved in our Hearts
At the end of the day, I could produce the spreadsheets, and get the thumbs up (and the bonuses) from my evaluators, but I knew that I hadn’t grown professionally at all. Not one inch.
Read MoreInvisible Data
I indulge my yearning to simply immerse myself in teaching and with my students without having to collect easily-reportable data for folks not involved in my classroom. One solution is to provide funding or change the school day to allow teachers more time to gather data for public consumption and for use in the classroom.
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