Return-Path: <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id fAJ7KL024521; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 02:20:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 02:20:21 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <157.43db7c7.292a0bc0@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Nashansen@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:50] Re: question X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 115 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Status: O Content-Length: 11241 Lines: 193 On 11/11/2001 8:56:10 AM George Demetrion responded to the NIFL-ASSESSMENT:44] topic entitled "question". A few of my opinions follow. I apologize for taking some time to return to this listserv with my thoughts. (Note: And it got a little long.) The "question" that has been raised is whether or not there is merit in identifying progress through standardized testing. I'm not the first to respond. Later that same day, an e-mail arrived from Ellie Lemke telling George "Thank you for your in-depth response." She also wrote: <> I felt Ellie should be applauded for the flexibility to understand that there are limitations for adult learners who have *very* limited literacy skills. I praise her for the opinion that testers should be prepared to meet that learner's needs for additional thought-processing time - to "wade through the materials" if you will. She's meeting the accountability requirements by testing, yet isn't timing those whom cannot succeed in a timed testing environment. I am almost positive that the purists would not agree with that adjustment she made! And *my* question then becomes, does not timing the test invalidate the results, even though it has still stressed out the learner having to take the test? Isn't there a better way to determine the level of knowledge of that learner than testing him or her? Continuing my response, George, I think I will start pretty much at the *end* of the e-mail rather than the beginning, to keep the length of my response to a reasonable length, for one thing. George wrote in the final paragraphs: << … (referring to "approaching assessment from the view of focusing on program evaluation and broad-based comparability") would require a more sustained policy commitment to the public value of adult literacy …. I would suggest that one of the core problems is the capitalistic metaphor … "return on investment," which reinforces a somewhat narrow cost-benefits utilitarian, quantitatively-driven analysis that can be discretely and precisely measured, and would discount the value of the story with which I opened this message … it doesn't count in the real world. >> So, I guess what I wanted to bring to the forefront of discussion is the view that adult literacy may only be valuable in the view of policy writers if it can be quantified, analyzed, precisely measured - that it *be* a "return on investment" for the so reported $50 million that they **say** has been distributed to AELS programs -- that it *doesn't* "count" if a learner gains what the learners feel are huge "returns" on *their* investment in personal education and personal time. Does anybody but me, *this* practitioner, have a big problem with that?? (By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed your personal story of the grandma in your program. I hope everyone who reads this e-mail will have read her words first. She said, in part, "Most everything I be doing, she catch on with me." in relationship to her learning experience with her granddaughter. This learner's gains would mean much more to *me* than any grade level gain I have ever heard told. I would not want anyone to tell this grandma that what she has accomplished and is accomplishing "doesn't count in the real world." What a heart breaker that would be.) Back to the topic at hand: How serious *are* the policy-makers who lurk and listen as the rest of us argue and protest at length on this and other listservs about measuring progress through various standardized testing tools? Why don't they speak *up*?? I don't really care which test the state mandates me to use, they are all pretty much the same timed requirement. Whether it's CASA or TABE or ABLE, it doesn't matter. They all carry the stigma of "being a test" that hangs LD adults' feelings in a vise as they enter a literacy-level program! What do you suppose it would *take* for the authorities to be even *halfway pleased* with the numbers/measures as a "return on their investment"? Wouldn't they want *more* than the TABE scores will tell? I am of the mind that it is totally an exercise in futility to try to help these lurking policy-makers to see the point that standardized testing of literacy-level students at either entry in an AEL program or at a benchmark time means nothing. The test results will *not* identify need nor will it identify progress a few months or a year later! The question I always come back to is: "What in the world do you think you are measuring?" Are the lurkers reading this? Give me an answer. George wrote in the next paragraph: << … we know in the hard world of policy really, they (the stories) matter for absolutely nothing, which translates into an utter marginality of anything to do with literacy as expressing a human face that cannot be aggregated into a comparability chart.>> If we are not here to help the real "human faces" we serve, why do we even exist? Are we AELS providers instead here to put the learning disabled adult into yet another "box" for the benefit of documenting the "why the money was spent"? If so? I am opposed! It's another system abuse that adults who are already caught up in a multiple of Systems' Abuses do not deserve to have put on them. George wrote: << I believe it is particularly the task of community-based literacy programs to play a significant role in telling that story as well as the responsibility of state and national ABE directors to provide full scope for such programs and not try to place the entire field under one tent …>> George, if the stories "don't count" then why bother to even tell them? I could document as much as I wish and my opinion is that it just isn't going to matter to anybody. Our state official has already told me that if it isn't standardized test documentation, it isn't going "to count". And as far as being "under one tent" is concerned? I would far rather be under the Dept. of Education "tent" than the Dept. of Labor "tent". Our literacy program may in some cases focus on workplace issues, but not all. Almost our entire adult student population says they are "going back to school" though! So the DOL "tent" doesn't come close to fitting our needs here. I agree with George regarding being more flexible about batching literacy within other programming. I feel literacy programs have their own needs and should be a separate entity. Our community-based program works very well having its own identity and serving as a partner instead to the ABE programs in our community-at-large. The only time we end up in the proverbial Tent is if we apply for DOL funding. And that funding that will now require me to change the essence of my program by TABE testing instead of using the LLA evaluation tools that I *have* been using amounts to $2200 in FY2001-02. I already save examples of the students' progress (maybe not *hundreds* truthfully, but *some*!) in Student Progress Portfolios, what you called, the "thick description" of the incidences of personal life enhancing learning experiences, which brought our learners new literacy skills plus personal hurrahs of everyday moments of pride. Included in that Portfolio are examples of their lessons. We have saved the Check-Ups tied to the completion of books in the series, the writing samples and journaling experiences in this personal record. (One student who came in the office last week gleamed as he told me that he and his Tutor had written the final draft of a Thanksgiving letter to his parents on the East Coast! Can you guess? He's never been able to write a letter before.) But you see, it doesn't *count* I am told. So the question is: How do we get the AELS Directors to believe the message you have communicated, George? I believe the opinions of the federal policy-makers have to be swayed. *They* are mandating the AEL Directors to use standardized testing. My gut feeling right now is that for the minimal percentage of the $50 million that *our* council gets makes testing definitely not worth the squelching of adult learners' self image for the sake of quantitative documentation! It's bologna!! I'm a realist. I am just a really small, minnow in the big pond and I will not make a bit of difference to the sharks abiding there at the national level. I believe it isn't data documenting the value of literacy programs they are attempting to accumulate. I believe the value in literacy and adult education has become just exactly what George stated - they are looking for a return on their investment. And the sad part? That $50 mil never even *made* it to the grass roots programs like mine! On another listserv I believe they reflected on it being two pencils and a notebook for every adult in programs nationwide. *That* didn't even happen! George, in my opinion, the federal authorities aren't even interested in the diversity of programming that we are able to offer. You watch. Not one of Them will even respond to this opinion. How will we ever prove to anybody the benefit of individualized programming and diverse education if they aren't even interested? I am going to end with A Story - even though I feel as though nobody really cares to hear one. Each of the hierarchy should have traveled with me on the long 4 ½ hour road-trip to the Capitol of South Dakota recently. The trip was *not* written into the lesson plans of the three learners' who went along to give The Issue the voices of adult learners, but it *was* very important to each one of them. We are in pursuit of Election Reform in our tiny little corner of the world. As we sat in a conference room in the Secretary of State's office complex, near the end of a rather long afternoon with elections officials of our state, one of our women learners turned to the Secretary of State and said, "I really learned a lot this afternoon, Secretary Hazeltine. Us adult learners - we are **always** learnin', ya know? Everything we do we're learnin'! " accented by the biggest grin on her face. How does a director document **that**??? Our Secretary of State did get the message, but would the hierarchy with their comparative graphs and tables? At another point in this trip, I discovered that this was the very first time that the two other adult learners had even been inside our state capitol building. The 36-year-old male with the group gazed up into the mosaic tile in the domed front hallway, with the Governor standing nearby, and said, "This place feels like it is so *filled* with history! I'm just glad to *be* here *in* it!!" The Governor was the one grinning at *that* moment. I think *he* got the message! Measuring successes comes in many ways. I personally do not believe that standardized, timed testing is the route to determine the success (or *failure*, for that matter) of literacy-level learners throughout our nation. And it surely doesn't prove the success (or failure) of programs either. Nancy Hansen Sioux Falls Area Literacy Council Sioux Falls, SD (605) 332-BOOK Council: sfliteracy@mcleodusa.net Home: Nashansen@aol.com
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