In the near future, California students will be thinking a lot more and filling in fewer bubbles when they take standardized statewide tests.
At a news conference Tuesday morning, state Superintendent Tom Torlakson unveiled a new testing system for schools statewide.
The new tests follow the guidelines set forth in the Common Core State Standards. Those recommendations were put together last year by a task force that studied new testing methods under a mandate by the state Legislature.
If approved by state legislators, the new testing system would begin in the 2014-2015 school year.
The superintendent is planning to suspend STAR Program assessments for the coming school year unless the exams are specifically mandated by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) or used for the Early Assessment Program (EAP).
This change would suspend STAR testing of second graders and end-of-course exams at the high school level.
Torlakson said the current testing system has improved student learning throughout the state, but it's time to move to a different kind of assessment.
“We're moving to a new dimension, a higher dimension,” said Torlakson.
Torlakson has made a dozen recommendations to the legislature for the Statewide Pupil Assessment System.
One of the keys is to move away from memorization of knowledge and focus more on students' critical thinking, analytical skills and problem solving.
State leaders said the new tests will measure the ability of students to understand and use what they have learned.
“Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests alone simply cannot do the job anymore and it’s time for California to move forward with assessments that measure the real-world skills our students need to be ready for a career and for college,” said Torlakson.
What do you think? Should the state testing system be revamped? Should we leave it alone? Should we be doing statewide testing at all? Tell us in comments.
http://www.smarterbalanced.org/sample-items-and-performance-tasks/ the links are toward the bottom of the page - give it a try - not as "dumbed down" as some think... These computerized tests are planned to be "adaptive" so that if a student gets an answer correct the next question is more challenging and less if the miss one. Many of these questions are "open ended" not multiple choice so students will need to type in their answers. As with any state testing done in school classroom instruction will need to change and "teaching to the test" will take on a whole new look - but maybe the skills needed to do well on this type of test will be able to better transfer into useful skills rather than just drawing pretty little bubbles...
I am concerned, however, with the possibility that the test writers will get carried away with the critical thinking and rigor expected of our kids on the Common Core Standards Exam. In today's Bee, there's an article on the issue. In the article, there was a "possible language arts activity" for 6th graders: "trace the line of argument in Winston Churchill's 'Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat' address to Parliament and evaluate his specific claims and opinions in the text, distinguishing which claims are supported by facts, reasons and evidence, and which ones are not." 6th GRADE! They've got to be kidding!
Also, Adaptive testing will allow teachers to see where each student actually is in their understanding, instead of just whether they know the one question or not. Currently, a students understanding of a concept in, lets say a science CST, is only tested by one or two questions. If they don't know those two, does that mean they know nothing? How are teachers to use that information to adjust teaching the next year?
Get rid of Star. Get rid of teachers unions. Implement Khan Academy. Get rid of homework(allow reading or lecture only) Writing every day. Reading: one hour at school, one hour at home. One stand-up presentation per student each month. Next
I like the idea of adaptive testing. More difficult to cheat and requires students to use more of their reasoning skills. It can also be used as an analytical tool to determine a student's learning strengths and weaknesses.
I would expect ongoing district assessments are used more than CSTs for placement for intervention given that there are more of them and they are more closely aligned with what is going on the classroom. If its true that schools are using CST results for individual intervention decisions, then I think parents should know that (and realize its probably a bad idea). Your school site council should have info on that since its job is to monitor things like that. In any case, anyone who wants to opt out should also ask their child. They should have a say in the matter.