I guess this piece does not surprise me at all. MP Good at Collecting but Not Using
RDale has historically given MAP tests in the Spring and Fall to help them know how the kids are learning. The results are available for the Teacher to use soon after the test is taken. Where as the MCA's are only given in the Spring and the results are not known until Late Summer.
The MCA's may work well to grade the schools, but they are a bit late to actually help the kids. Thoughts?
MP MCA vs MAP
RDale has historically given MAP tests in the Spring and Fall to help them know how the kids are learning. The results are available for the Teacher to use soon after the test is taken. Where as the MCA's are only given in the Spring and the results are not known until Late Summer.
The MCA's may work well to grade the schools, but they are a bit late to actually help the kids. Thoughts?
MP MCA vs MAP
23 comments:
Before one makes a choice, it's always a good idea to decide what one wants. What do you want tests to be? A measure of school performance? Or a measure of student performance. The two aren't the same; they really aren't even very much alike.
--Hiram
I disagree, I think the same base data can easily be used for multiple purposes.
It works this way. If you want to hype school performance you focus on the kids whose numbers can be changed. You ignore the winners at the top, and the losers at the bottom. You sift thorough the classroom and identify the kids who have a desire to do better, who are receptive to teaching and you focus on them. With your always limited resources, you allocate them to the kids who aren't necessarily the best learners, but rather the kids who are most persuadable. Really, what teachers can find is that they can improve school numbers just by teaching to a handful of kids in any given class.
Is this what you want them to do?
--Hiram
schools now get nearly instant MCA results, same day or next day. They are labeled something like preliminary or unofficial but they are very reliable.
we also use tests called OLPA which I believe stands for online practice assessment which are suppose to predict scores on MCA and also indicate where students are struggling such as algebra or geometry strand.
in my opinion MCAs provide no or very limited useful data very low students. When I see the scores of my special ed student, something like 512, I usually assume that the score is equivalent to random guessing. The tests have now become adaptive, but I don't think they adapt down to 2 years or more below grade level.
Should we identify those students most able to generate increases in test scores, and focus our resources on them?
--Hiram
"Should we identify those students most able to generate increases in test scores, and focus our resources on them"
schools actually do this, focus more attention on students that they are trying to move from "partial" to "pass" on the MCA
schools actually do this, focus more attention on students that they are trying to move from "partial" to "pass" on the MCA
Should that be our policy?
It's always an issue with accountability metrics. does the policy drive the metrics or do the metrics drive the policy?
It's like Supreme Court justice nominees who all have resumes that seem so much more impressive than their careers.
--Hiram
use of data to rate school has progressed so now schools get credit for high growth or moving students from "does not meet" to "partially meets' standards or from "meets standards" to "exceed standards" which makes focusing on all students more important.
low achieving schools like mine still want to bump up that pass number from say 20% to 25% or 30%
Hiram,
I think you are incorrect, I think districts spend a lot of money on the arts, sports and gifted programs. First, they need to attract students to get the funding. Unfortunately the unlucky kids are trapped and a low flight risk. However the folks like myself are a high flight risk, so they need to strive to keep us happy.
Also, please remember that folks like myself have the communication skills, time and money to lobby the administration when unhappy.
Maybe it is different in N Mpls where many folks like me ran away long ago, but I doubt it.
Laurie,
Good to hear the MCA data is accessible sooner. However it is still in the Spring right?
Now does it break the score down by topic like the MAP tests?
I think districts spend a lot of money on the arts, sports and gifted programs.
I am not taking the position that the goal of our schools should be to increase scores on specific tests, I am simply raising the issue.
I do understand the view that schools should have other goals besides raising test scores, but then using test scores to evaluate schools is inconsistent with those goals. And that raises that raises the old problem which is that why do we ask people to do which contradicts what we want to have done?
--Hiram
Please share. How would you evaluate schools to ensure they are "succeeding"?
What would you define as "succeeding"?
I think millions of kids not being able to read, write and do math at the base standards is a definite sign indicating that big improvement is needed in the system.
We will find out. As I understand it, the DFL is mounting a big push to define student "success" in a multitude of ways that downplay actual academic achievement as measured by academic tests. That way fewer public schools can be marked as "failing" because the kids brush their teeth, or something. Seems backwards to me. I say if the teacher can "teach to the test" and the kids pass the test, at least they are learning SOMETHING.
How would you evaluate schools to ensure they are "succeeding"?
Not that easy, and that's a reason why so many ways we resort to in an effort to evaluate are so inadequate. We give a lot of tests, and that allows us to think that we have addressed issues and solved problems. My attitude generally is to go along with that sort of thinking because it relieves political pressure and allows folks to move on to the real problems involved in teaching our kids.
"define student "success" in a multitude of ways"
Sure, there are a multitude of ways of succeeding. In some schools, getting into junior college is a success, in others getting into Stanford instead of Harvard is a failure. I don't really understand the contrary view, that identifying one or two numbers can tell us whether we have succeeded or failed.
--Hiram
I think a good test is an excellent measure of academic success. You give the kids a test on day 1, to set the baseline. You give them a test near year-end to see if they have gained one year's worth of knowledge. If most students did that or better, the school is successful. Less than that, and it's a failing school. We cannot allow schools to deliver 6 months of learning every 9 months and expect them to graduate 12th grade knowing all they should. Last statistic I saw said that 20% of our high school graduates (plus dropouts) are functionally illiterate. NOT good enough.
Jerry,
Back when I used to look at the reports, RDale was doing good at meeting the 1+ year education for kids who came and stayed in the district.
Unfortunately when the Kindergarteners come to school already well behind... They never catch up. I mean kids like mine well exceed the 1 year of content each year.
Worse yet with the high mobility numbers amongst the poor, the schools don't even have the kids for a year...
Hiram,
Your answers were lacking in specificity and measurability... Remember PDCA.
Education is full of specifics, and there are lots of things that can be measured, but more often than not I am content to let others measure them. My general view is that a lot of numbers people come up with about various stuff don't tell them nearly as much as they think they do. There is an assumption that if we put a number on something we understand it, and about that I am skeptical.
--Hiram
Mobile students are a problem, but kindergarten kids are even MORE mobile, because they have NEVER been in school. The solution to both is simple. When the kid enters school (for the first time, or any time) they get a test to see what they already know. If they are behind they get extra help to catch up, before the obstacles become insurmountable. If that takes extra resources, so be it.
Mobile students are a problem, but kindergarten kids are even MORE mobile, because they have NEVER been in school.
Mobile kids are mobile kids. Schools do rather well with the kids who actually attend them. As the discussion of graduation rates suggest, they are really lousy with those who don't.
Tests make people smarter in the same way thermometers make the temperature warmer. And let's remember, if you think the temperature you thermometer shows is too high, you can always put it in the refrigerator. Problems do have solutions.
Meanwhile, back to our schools, sure student mobility is a problem. Kids move around a lot, and I just don't know what schools can do about it. When an airline exec living in Edina gets transferred to Atlanta, is it really feasible for the school board to order him either to refuse the transfer or to leave his kids behind?
--Hiram
Hiram,
Usually the children of airline execs do fine... I think RDale's mobility problems were those people who struggle to keep a roof over their head.
Jerry,
I like your concept, even with challenges it faces....
Usually the children of airline execs do fine.
They do, but that's why it's hard to speak of mobility as a universal problem. Kids who go to school do pretty well, actually. The problem is much more with kids who don't go to school or whose attendance at school is inconsistent, and this is another problem with evaluation metrics. We hold schools responsible for what they aren't doing, teaching kids who just aren't there. Of course there are strategies for dealing with this problem but they aren't perfect, and really what are they supposed to do? Hire truant officers again? And of course, always bear in mind the inexorable logic. Efforts to keep kid in schools are not cheap, they drive up the costs of schools that many complain are already too high. And the kids who are so expensive to keep in school or whose mobility issues need to be addressed are not the kids who are driving up test scores, and people complain about test scores too.
It would be quite easy to raise scores and lower costs and make the critics of our schools happy. But it would mean a return to the traditional method of either throwing kids away or denying them the opportunity for an education in the first place.
--Hiram
I think it would be quite easy to raise scores and lower costs if teachers focussed on those kids needing the most help until they were "up to speed." assuming, of course, that unruly kids were kept at bay and the union rules permitted it.
I think it would be quite easy to raise scores and lower costs if teachers focussed on those kids needing the most help
Who exactly are the kids who "need" help? The really smart kids bored by the existing curriculum who need programs offering them challenging advanced learning opportunities to learn? Such programs don't come cheap, and they don't improve test scores. What about the kids at the other end of the spectrum, the kids we work so hard and so expensively to keep up those graduation rates everyone is watching so closely? They need our help too, but that also costs, and the money that goes there lowers rather than raises test scores.
As for the teachers, who takes on the challenge of teaching hard to teach bad students? Bad teachers? Teachers who can't control a classroom? Teachers who phone it in? Are those the teachers who last in our educational system? Or maybe it's the good and idealistic teachers? And don't they have to be idealistic because if we compensate them on the test scores their kids deliver, kids who don't show up, or who are entirely different from the kids who started the year, their pay is going to lag behind their peers say in Edina where the ultimate tragedy kids face is not getting into Harvard? Is it really union rules that tell that idealistic teacher that sure put in your time in the tough schools, but after a couple of years why not move to a nice suburban school full of well behaved kids who want to learn?
--Hiram
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