Posts Tagged Standardized Testing

Measuring Student Growth

On May 5, 2016 / Classroom Management

Testing anxiety is a major trigger of discipline issues at school and at home. When young people are stressed and anxious, they may act out more in an attempt to take control of their life. It’s normal for me to receive more requests for discipline help during testing times of the year.

When it comes to tests, many educators are familiar with the term “normative” as a testing term. This word refers to the process of comparing a student’s academic performance on a standardized achievement test with a group of students who took the test under similar circumstances in the past.

The test results of the original student group are taken as the norm. In other words, this group is … >>>

John Dewey on Education and Pragmatism

On June 29, 2015 / Learning

A little history about John Dewey, known for his approaches that promoted responsibility:

Dewey died in 1957 at age 92 in New York City. At his death, he was one of America’s most influential philosophers and educational theorists. He taught for three years but struggled with the expectation that he should be a knuckle-rapping disciplinarian.

After posts at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, he taught at Columbia University from 1904 to 1930. It was at Columbia where he became a major exponent of pragmatism and rejected authoritarian teaching methods. He espoused instructional approaches that built upon the interests of students and the challenge of solving real-life problems.

Teaching today has an emphasis on correct answers. However, … >>>

Washington D.C. Suspends Using Test Scores for Teacher Evaluations

On June 24, 2014 / Effectiveness, Learning

Chancellor Kaya Henderson, head the of the District of Columbia public school system, recently announced that the district would suspend the practice of using student test scores to evaluate teacher performance while students adjust to new tests based on the Common Core standards.

The District of Columbia public school system was one of the first in the country to evaluate teachers using student test scores. My hope is that others districts around the country will follow the district’s recent move, and that they will ultimately realize that evaluating teachers based on student test scores is an invalid measure of teacher performance.

Chancellor Henderson went on to say that it wouldn’t be fair to use the new tests until a baseline … >>>