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 i36K4Xm12494; Tue, 6 Apr 2004 16:04:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 16:04:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <Sea2-F46g2xIpR3Z6cy0005ac8b@hotmail.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: "Eileen Eckert" <eileeneckert@hotmail.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:469] good assessment X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Status: O Content-Length: 3431 Lines: 61 Marie asked what training in good assessment would look like (I hope I'm paraphrasing correctly). Assessment has become wedded to accountability, and that relationship is embedded in the rest of this message. I've seen, over time, across the country, and in different educational systems such as K-12, , that training that's provided is technical because that's the mandate and the funder's agenda. It's about how to administer and score standardized assessments, but not about how (and whether) to choose them in the first place, how to evaluate their quality, or how to tell if they're doing what you need them to do--or even how to differentiate your needs from students' needs from funders' and politicians' needs. Here's what I see: A political agenda on the part of those in power is a given, and affects assessment policy differently at different stages in an administration, and in different ways depending on what that political agenda is. The agenda is reflected in federal policy about the relationship between assessment, reporting, accountability, and funding. The political agenda is translated into assessment and accountability mandates which the states generally have to implement in order to get federal funding. Assessment and accountability policy mandates at the state level include regulations about acceptable ways to assess and report student learning. Here is where the political meets the pseudo-scientific. Just yesterday I read in Robert Sternberg's Successful Intelligence (1997), "What's frightening is that people make important decisions on the basis of pseudoquantitative precision--information that is numerically precise but conceptually inaccurate" (p. 34). At the test-choosing level of the process, there is rarely any interaction with students in the classroom, let alone as they try to function in daily life at their current or desired level. Programs and teachers get to implement the mandates. This includes "training" about how to give tests regardless of their usefulness (or more likely uselessness). Implementation also may include creative fudging to reconcile student needs with mandates from above, for example by ignoring the time limits on the test, although training will probably not include creative fudging ; ) I think educators need: 1. Our own bottom-up (learner to educational system) model of how assessment and accountability demonstrate what adults learn, and what they do with what they've learned. 2. Knowledge of purposes and methods of both doing assessment and judging its quality, especially comparative knowledge of the "standardized testing" model vs. the "authentic assessment" model, so they can judge for themselves where their own model fits, and critique the mandates they're getting. 3. Knowledge, skill, and attitudes necessary to advocate <with learners> for an adult learning system of services, assessment, and accountability that meets learners needs, not politicians' agendas. That's a lot to know! What could we leave out and still have an adult education assessment/accountability system that works? Or what do we need to add or revise to have an assessment/accountability system that works? _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfeeŽ Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
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