Friday, April 11, 2008

"Justice Not Just Tests"

The first night of the conference, Creating Balance in an Unjust World, was dedicated to discussing authentic alternatives to standardized testing. The event was titled "Justice Not Just Tests" and was hosted by Vanguard High School, New York, NY. The very first speakers were from Urban Word Poets, an after-school poetry program for inner-city youth. Two students performed poems as a kick-off for the evening.

Then the Executive Director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), Monty Neil, spoke as the feature speaker of the evening. The organization he works for is working to overhaul federal education law (especially the No Child Left Behind Act). Neill said that standardized testing should have a very small role in schools, but that it is taking them over. He said the controversy over standardized testing is both a pedagogical and political issue. It is pedagogical because we are trying to find out how best to teach and assess our students, and it is political because state and national laws are involved and the government wants to hold schools accountable for teaching students. Neill is part of the Performance Testing Consortium which advocates for formative projects in which students review, edit, and share their work, instead of taking one test and then the process being over. He says that performance based assessment supports learning for understanding and is also more instructive for teachers in knowing where their students are at.

The next part of the evening we attended youth-led workshops on mathematics performance based assessments. The presenting schools were the Greater Lawndale/Little Village School for Social Justice, from Chicago, Illinois, the East Side Community High School, from New York, New York, El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice from Brooklyn, New York, the John Muir Middle School from Los Angeles, California, SAT Bronx from Bronx, New York, the Urban Promise Academy from Oakland, California and our hosts, Vanguard High School. We were able to attend three sessions, each one lasting a half hour.

My first session was presented by two students from Vanguard High School. Vanguard is a public high school which is part of New York's "Empowerment Zone", which allows schools to write their own assessments. Vanguard High School chose to make their assessments portfolio based. In doing research the school found that some of their students performed higher on the Regents exams, but lower on performance based testing, indicating that they were good at memorizing, but had low understanding and/or communication skills. By using performance based assessments at Vanguard, teachers felt that they were able to learn which teaching strategies were most effective and they were able to see wholes in student learning. Students said that they became able to explain the concepts they had learned to people they didn't know, and who had little exposure to the concept they were presenting. They said that it raised their confidence. They felt that doing portfolio work was much more difficult than any other assessments, but that they preferred it. Vanguard High School has three components to their performance based assessments. The first component is in written format. The written component begins with a cover letter which tells the reader more about the student and where they are coming from. Other elements of the written component include the steps the student took to come to their understandings and what their understandings are. Then the students must communicate their understanding visually through a PowerPoint, poster or some other medium which visually represents a problem or idea they were working through. Finally the students must present their project orally in a presentation, which is given to five evaluators. The evaluators include one teacher in the subject area of the project, one non-subject area teacher, one non-school professional in the subject area and two students. The students must communicate their understanding effectively to the people present, who in turn evaluate them. Evidence of their project is submitted to their portfolio. In order to prepare for their individual evaluations, students participate in round-table evaluations throughout the year. In round table evaluations four students are working together to problem solve and are evaluated on the skills in solving the problem as well as their team work abilities.

Next I saw a presentation from a teacher and a student from El Puente Academy. El Puente is a social justice based high school. There are 160 students and 23 staff in the school. Each year the entire school focuses on a theme, which is integrated throughout all subject areas. This year the theme was coming of age. Issues which could be included in this is youth empowerment, the right to vote, military recruitment, teen pregnancy, etc. As you can see the themes can be understood broadly, but the connections between the individual issues are studied and linked through the overall theme. The students perform project-based assessments which are completed over a semester and then at the end of the semester the students are required to present it to a committee of staff and students who evaluate their project. This particular presentation showed how this social justice-themed project-based assessment was applied within a math classroom. In math class students use statistics to examine social justice issues. The students choose a population and topic, which must be an issue that concerns that population directly, as well as corresponding with the theme for that year at El Puente. Then they write a survey and design a method for distributing the surveys (i. e. sampling methods). The survey must be administered to a minimum of 150 participants. Then they perform a data analysis including frequency tables and graphs. They write key findings (generalizations/statistics that can be drawn from the analysis). Then they write a report based on their findings, which includes four major sections: Introduction, Methodology, Results and Analysis, and Conclusion and Recommendations. The students learn how to and are required to incorporate the following elements of data analysis:
  • Use of rates and averages
  • Standard deviation
  • Five-number summaries and box plots
  • Correlation
  • Interpretation and Extrapolation
  • Margin of Error
  • Various types of graphs to strategically illustrate the information from the frequency tables.
All of these procedures are covered in class through individual and group work, so when the time comes to apply it they have a firm grasp of the concepts. The students have to consider bias within their study, including their own bias and the limits of their study. The students must create visual representations of their findings as well as a written summary of their findings including knowledge gained and recommendations based on their findings. And, as mentioned above, then they must present it to a committee.

The next school that I saw present was the John Muir Middle School. A teacher and two of her 6th grade students came to present on performance based assessment. In this teacher's math class, her students studied surveys, sampling methods, bias and statistics. The class began with students reading about other surveys and using the data from those surveys to learn to convert raw data to percents, decimals and fractions. For the survey project the students were required to choose a topic that affects them in their community. They designed their survey questions and structure and then went out into the community to gather their information. Then they took the raw data and used statistics to evaluate them. Then they had to write up a summary of their process. They had to explain why this topic was important to them, what sampling methods they used and what their results were. Then they had to present their results visually using graphing techniques. And finally they had to present their project orally to the class. The students had to make sure to say whether their sampling methods were biased or representative. The students said that most of the students in the class chose a "convenience"/biased sample, i.e. surveying their friends and families. The two students did such a wonderful job communicating their results and the process to the participants. The teacher spent only the first five minutes talking and the rest of the 25 minutes the students led the presentation and fielded questions effortlessly. It was really inspiring to see a middle school class that uses performance based assessment, because all of the other groups were in high school.

The evening was very exciting and intriguing. The best part was seeing the students present their own work. It truly was evident how comfortable they felt in their understanding of the subject and the process, even in front of a room full of math teachers. Performance based assessment is definitely something I will include in the classroom.

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