Comments on: Toilets on the Shuttle

By: Karmi Gross

Karmi Gross — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:27:47 +0000

Your words certainly ring true and should be read carefully by all those seeking to equate good teaching to high standardized test scores. As I mentioned in my blog, this is most certainly true in an age when thinking and research skills become incresingly more important than any specific piece of information.

By: Debra Buffington-Adams

Debra Buffington-Adams — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:34:08 +0000

There was a time that teachers had the freedom to just teach. They used their creative juices to help us to take ownership of the subject matter. If only they had such freedom today. Classroom activities would be far more interesting which would help students focus more. I have observed teachers using scripted text to teach reading and language arts. The scripted programs teach to the test for the most part. The children hate them and it sets them up for failure. Give the students an excellent foundation, use all media necessary to touch the many ways that students learn and raise the bar to the point that the test is automatically covered. That is not impossible to do. Principals and Superintendents, just let us do it!

By: Michelle Enser

Michelle Enser — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:45:47 +0000

Good testing is created by actual living, breathing teachers! Teachers use tests, of course, to see what their students have ‘learned’. The current atmosphere is full of tests to which teachers have no idea about how the scores were determined. If a test is actually going to be used to shape instructional decisions, teachers must be able to do an item analysis – you know, we do make mistakes when we create tests and that would show us where we messed up.
Good tests are NOT multiple guess tests!
Finally, there are formative assessments, anecdotal records, and numerous other ways to ‘assess’ our students than through a high stakes multiple guess test!

By: Cecilia Villabona

Cecilia Villabona — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:53:28 +0000

Test are needed as a part of accountability. We need to know if students are learning and inform our practice whenever they are not learning.
Too much testing has turned teaching into test-prep, and also all the political pressures to show results leave teachers and principals fixated on the test.
Good teaching does much more than high test results: knowledge, love of learning, curiosity, thinking and critical thinking skills, all of these and others are important for smart citizens and can be re result of good teaching.
In addition, rote test preparation does nothing else that that, namely get you to pass the test. Learners with no concepts and little understanding might do better on the test but will still struggle because of lack of understanding and knowledge.
I hope we can find balance in teaching and learning with assessment included but not as the only goal of teaching.