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 iAOE8JQ05935; Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:08:19 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:08:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <2E029EA0.5AE8B40A.0004C68E@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: HthKar@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:770] Re: Grade Level and Adult Learners X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0 Status: O Content-Length: 2360 Lines: 11 This makes sense and it is most fundamentally on topic, and for an understanding of why I think like this perhaps you could look at some of the UK work on assessment and also I suppose the US chap called Messick has relevant things to say here. These experiences must almost be global. For example, here there is a 40 item multiple choice test which was first introduced as 'half' a qualification and then got co-opted and labelled as the NATIONAL LITERACY TEST. I have encountered adults and young adults who have recently passed this test yet when tested with the 'initial assessment' instrument supposedly based upon exactly the same standards and curriculum come out at a lower level. I would ideally like to utter some such soothing things as Katriona but more ideally I would like to explain something like 'the truth' as I see it about how these situations arise (lack of concurrent validity is my current buzz word) but of course there is no such thing as truth nowadays (the post positivists have long since disappeared with it up their own epistemologies) the 'truth' being that there is an unweildy and invalid system designed in theory to measure 'value added' and so on and that this is closely linked to output related funding, and we are all mere pawns on the chessboard of the big auditor in the sky/at the local LSC. I once tried to begin to explain to learners that I did not think it was valid to have multiple-choice testing of writing or of what they call, rather euphemistically I would suggest. 'aspects of writing' but this led to my line manager at the time becoming quite agitated, and this was of course wholly professional and correct and I was in the wrong. You see, we have to 'sell' the tests to learners and to anyone else in hearshot. If you read material put out by those who market tests, you will see that they are not dim and therefore they have an astute awareness that the best way to get their products accepted is to persuade tutors that they are worthwhile, and somehow they seem to have cut out the middle man, so government agencies are now hyping us up at sales-type conferences to go out there and sell the tests and hit our targets. My favourite sales line is the one that goes something like: 'Here's an English qualiication that you can get WITHOUT DOING ANY WRITING! How's that for a deal?' K
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