Assessing ProgressThe Importance of Social Class and Social Status

Chapter Twelve

Rationale for Broadened Definitions of Assessment

Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, the debate about how well our children are learning has become both ubiquitous and emotional.

This is the case despite the fact that the assessment of student progress has always been of central importance to educators.

Accountability and the Educational Standards

MovementThe movement emerged as a result of a

large number of studies of schooling in the 1980s.

President George H.W. Bush convened a national governors conference in1989.

This group produced a document called Goals 2000, with suggestions for improving America’s schools in eight specific areas.

Continued…

The National Council on Education Standards and Testing, convened by Congress in 1992, concluded that creating national standards and assessments was both feasible and highly desirable.

In1994, the goals from Goals 2000 were written into the Educate America Act, which awarded states additional money for education and gave them considerable flexibility in how the money could be spent.

Continued…

The Educate America Act was based on five principles:

All students can learn.

Lasting improvements depend on school-based leadership.

Simultaneous top-down and bottom-up reform is necessary.

Strategies must be locally developed, comprehensive, and coordinated.

The whole community must be involved in developing strategies for improvement. Continued…

Central to the whole idea were several beliefs:

State and local districts should set high standards for achievement.

Testing should be conducted to see how well students were achieving.

Schools, teachers, and students should be held accountable for results.

The Case for Standardized Testing

It is based on the belief that American students are not competing well with students from other industrialized nations.

One argument for why this is so is that American schools are too child-centered and have too much variety in curriculum.

A second argument is that poor, immigrant, and minority students are not being served well by American schools; testing is perceived as a means to improve that service.

Continued…

The appeal of “objective” and standardized tests is strong among business and government leaders.

The belief in standardized tests rests on a conviction that they actually measure learning.

Requirements for the reporting of standardized test scores now include reporting scores by race and income.

Reports are also required to indicate the gaps between and the progress of various subgroups.

The Case Against Standardized Testing

Concerned educators and some well-informed politicians question the benefits of standardized tests based on:A gap between the stated purpose of a test

and what it actually measures

A possibility of cultural bias in the questions on a given test

Questionable uses of standardized tests

The narrow approach and application of tests

Continued…

Critics also argue that standardized tests cannot measure complex thinking skills; that they often neglect the context in which knowledge and skills can be used; and that they cannot measure the ability to connect one idea to another.

Two results are common:

Students don’t recognize out-of-context questions.

Thinking skills, the ability to solve problems, and the ability to synthesize information are not well tested.

The Case for Multiple Forms of Assessment

Three ideas are central to the argument for multiple forms of assessment:

Students must leave schools with more than low-level basic knowledge.

Young people must learn the skills of cooperation and collaboration for life in an interdependent world.

Greater accuracy in assessment across cultural groups must be achieved.

Continued…

Proponents argue that teachers are most often the best judges of student performance.

Teachers, however, must develop the skills necessary to make informed and accurate judgments in a variety of contexts and across a variety of groups.

Comprehensive approaches and methods of assessment must be developed.

Characteristics of Classrooms that Use Multiple Forms of

Assessment It is important to distinguish between

assessment and testing:Assessment implies a comprehensive,

individualized evaluation of a person’s strengths and weaknesses; it is formative, used as feedback for both teachers and students.

Testing implies standardization; it compares an individual’s scores to others’ scores; it tends to be summative, a final statement.

Pedagogies: Old and New

Teaching and learning activities are often project-based, open-ended, and ongoing.

Students and teachers discuss progress on complex problems.

There is an assumption that the entire community might have access to student work.

Roles: Old and New Students have a substantial hand in

determining their own work and evaluations.

In the development of portfolios, teachers and students work together to select the elements of the student’s work that best demonstrate learning and/or mastery.

Parents may become active in the evaluation process by reviewing their child’s work and making comments or suggestions to the teacher.

Place of Content Knowledge: Old and New

In classrooms that use multiple forms of assessment, content knowledge is most often acquired in the pursuit of other, project-based goals.

Effective teachers provide a context and environment in which students acquire knowledge that goes beyond their current experience—even beyond any perceived “need” to know something.

Student work may be used as content to teach others.

Assessment: Old and New Often, teachers and students work together to

arrive at acceptable standards for good work.

Students are evaluated on their ability to solve problems, their ability to clearly demonstrate how thinking was done, or on how well they have collaborated with others.

Time limits and criteria of acceptability are often broader or more flexible.

Multiple conferences with parents are often an ongoing part of the assessment process.

Perspectives on Means for Assessing Student Learning

Among all the issues involved in assessment, several stand out as truly basic. Chief among these are the importance of criteria in any kind of assessment and the reasons for grading.

The Importance of Criteria

Determining the specific criteria for satisfactory performance is critical because in alternative forms of assessment there may be more than one “right” answer.

Educators must ask themselves:

What does it mean to master a specific ability or skill?

What would a student who has mastered a concept or skill be able to do?

Continued…

Making judgments about the appropriateness of student responses and other work requires that teachers a) know the criteria well, and b) are able to “see” student work from a variety of angles.

Communicating achievement to students and parents is also important.

Conferences are useful, as are collections of work over time.

Assigning a single grade, however, is often difficult, if not impossible.

The Issue of Grading

Grading and reporting were virtually unknown until the middle of the 1800s; for most of western history, students were questioned orally, in part to see where they needed more work.

Grading emerged as school populations grew, and as new ideas of scientific measurement gained popularity; the purpose of grading was to see a “finish point” in the student’s acquisition of knowledge.

Continued…

Grading may have multiple purposes:

Grading to sort, to categorize students into groups, sometimes for instruction and sometimes for promotion

Grading to motivate, the idea that students will work harder to “get” a better grade

Grading as feedback so that students can learn more effectively

Continued…

Questions to ask when thinking about grading (Kohn):

Level I: superficial—how to grade a student’s work; the assumption is that everything a student does must have a grade

Level II: begins to question whether grading is really necessary or even useful

Level III: moves beyond a discussion of grading and begins to question the real purposes of evaluation

Perspectives on Social Class and Social Status

Most Americans believe they live in a classless society.

Upward mobility is clearly possible through hard work.

Nevertheless, we know there are variations in economic standards of living, in status of different occupations, and in expectations or life chances among American citizens.

Definitions of Social Class

Social class is one kind of a stratification system that “layers” the population in terms of worth or value.

“Assignment” to one social class or another is often done by outside observers of the population.

Continued…

Traditional social class markers include:

Family income

Prestige of one’s father’s occupation

Prestige of the neighborhood one lives in

The power one has to achieve one’s ends in times of conflict

The level of schooling achieved by the family’s head

Continued…

For purposes of analysis, American society can be divided into five social classes:

A very small upper class or social elite

A somewhat larger upper middle class—professionals, corporate managers, or leading scientists

A large middle class—white collar workers, small business owners, teachers, social workers, nurses, sales and clerical workers, etc.

Continued…

A somewhat smaller working class—blue-collar workers, employees in low-paid service occupations, temporary employees, and those whose income level means relatively constant struggle

A lower class, sometimes called the working poor—those who work at low-paying jobs, as well as those who may not work at all. The latter are sometimes called the “underclass.”

Social Class and Minority Group Membership

The issue of class is complicated by a fairly large overlap among lower-middle class, working class, and lower class membership and membership in minority groups.

The issue here is that it may not be individual initiative that results in lower class status, but structural oppression of particular groups of people.

The Working PoorDefined as those people who do work,

but in jobs that are minimum wage or slightly above with no benefits and little job security

Recent changes in welfare laws, while encouraging many to enter the workforce, may also account for the increased number of working people facing poverty.

Social Class and Child-Rearing Practices

People who share similar socioeconomic status often share similar cultural knowledge, attitudes, and values.

Parents from different class backgrounds emphasize different values when raising their children.

Social class does not necessarily determine success in school (or in life); but, in general, there needs to be some other influence that strengthens a child’s will to succeed and expectation of success.

Definitions of Social Status

Social status refers to a hierarchical position in society (or one’s social group) determined not by income but by prestige, social esteem, and/or honor.

One’s status may differ from the viewpoints of different observers; star athletes, for example, may be accorded different status by students and teachers.

The Importance of Teacher Expectations

Teacher expectation refers to the attributions that teachers make about the future behavior or academic achievement of their students.

When a teacher expects a student to do poorly (or well), and the student does in fact live up to that expectation, it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Perspectives on Multiple Forms of Assessment: Demand vs. Support

Kohn suggests that certain classroom orientations distinguish between what we expect (demand) students to do, and what we as educators can do to help (support) student learning.

Continued…

In the demand model:

Students are perceived as workers who are obliged to do a better job.

Students who do not succeed are said to have chosen not to study or not to have earned a given grade.

Responsibility is removed from the teacher and attention is deflected away from the curriculum and the context in which learning is supposed to occur.

Continued…

In the support model:

The assumption is that students are active contributors to the learning process.

Teachers are responsible for guiding and stimulating students’ natural curiosity and desire to learn.

Teaching and learning become child- or student-centered.

The goal is to help students build on their desire to make sense of and become competent in their world.

Ethical IssuesAll assessment is inherently subjective,

which may not be an entirely bad thing.

When subjectivity becomes bias, however, ethical issues emerge:Labeling of children for special education

services, for example, may be necessary, but can also result in overrepresentation of ethnic and language minority students.

Standardized testing often results in the assignment of inaccurate labels.

Continued…

Attributions made on the basis of any kind of assessment may, like attributions made in order to categorize anyone because of culture, or language, or disability, be flawed by prejudice.

Any assessment should take into consideration the fact that children develop at different rates.

Assessments made too quickly on insufficient data can also be inaccurate, misleading, and damaging.

Something to Think About

In many ways, an individual’s cultural experiences (defined broadly) determine the kinds of abilities that are important and are therefore learned, as well as the context and strategies in which they are expressed.