State | Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle

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Class Standards and Finals: Mixed Signals

A colleague emailed me a bizarre story. Her college is part of multi-college educational system. She teaches a course that is required for all entering students. All of the colleges have the same outcomes for this course. However, they all have different finals; the finals do not resemble each other in any way. One college requires a research paper; another requires a timed proficiency test and another requires certain assignments. How can a class be outcome or proficiency based and not have the same or very similar final? How can the final not be based on the specific outcomes?

How does your course’s tests and final reflect the specific standards/outcomes/proficiencies? Giving a state exam or benchmark should not be a final in your course but simply be a small sampling of evidence of the outcomes. How strong is your standards-based learning signal? Does it reach to the final?

State Assessments, Rubric Scoring, and Technology

Published June 16, 2007 Assessment , ELA , English , Rubric , Rubrics , State , technology , word process 1 Comment

The NY State English Regents (state assessment) has a six point rubric. If I co-graded with a low scoring teacher, a student could get a 3 when I gave the student a 4. If I co-graded with a high scoring teacher, the same student could get a 5 when I gave a 4. A two point variance on a six point scale negates the whole rubric.

Likewise, one year the department chair informed us that we were grading to tough so that we should go to the higher score for any student. Now students that would have gotten a score of 4 got a score of 5.

No matter how we help students to write better for the state assessment through technology, their scores on the state assessment are dependent on other conditions.

Likewise, if we have students word process their writing during class like they will do in the world outside of school, and then have them handwrite their essays, there is a very different process involved. Handwriting takes away the brainstorming, quick editing, spell checking, and moving around of text that word processing allows. Handwriting an essay is much harder and more academic than real world writing.

What examples do you have of how your state assessment prevents students from doing technology-infused real-life activities with your subject area ?

Systemic Student Assessment -Probably Not in Your District

Published April 6, 2007 Accountability , Assessment , Grade , Standard , State , Student Leave a Comment

Most schools do not have systemic assessment of students during the course of a year or over years. Most schools keep track of grades but not of students’ standards progress. Grades do not represent students’ standards based learning. For most schools, the only record of progress on subject area standards such as English Language Arts is the the scores on state assessments given every three to four years in that specific subject area. Very few schools actually look at a student’s growth on all of that student’s state ELA assessments.

If your school district does not have any other way to measure the students’ growth in the standards, then you basically have a school district that is not accountability for students’ standards growth. They just pretend they do!
In your course, how do you assess students’ growth in the standards through technology? How can you prove that your instruction/learning experiences have caused an improvement in the students’ progress toward the standards?

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Preparing Students for State Math Benchmarks

Published January 17, 2007 Assessment , Benchmark , Math , Prep , State 2 Comments

Math Resources for Math Test Preparation

Prepared by Harry Tuttle, Jan. 2007

This list is to help those teachers who feel that need to do some last minute preparation for the state Math benchmarks. These sites provide handouts for students, tutorials, online activities, or old state benchmarks.

Math Resource Guide
http://accelerateu.org/resourceguides/Math/Intro.htm

NYS Math Standards
http://nanunet.lhric.org/NYSstandards/NYSMST/NYSmst3.htm

Math 8 Resources
http://mathforum.org/library/levels/8/

Math Online – many online activities organized by category
http://skonline.org/website/mathonline/

EdInfomatics has old math benchmarks
http://www.edinformatics.com/testing/ny.htm

Elementary Test Prep
http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/math4.cfm

Math Magician-Math fact practice for speed
http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/mathmagician/maths1.html

Number patterns
http://www.netrover.com/~kingskid/patterns/demo.htm

Room 108 Elementary Math – listing of math activities mostly primary
http://www.netrover.com/%7Ekingskid/Math/math.htm

Aplusmath creates worksheets for your students
http://www.aplusmath.com/Worksheets/index.html

FunBrain has a collection of online games
http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/getskill_s.cgi?A1=selects&A2=math&A4=0&A7=0

NCTM math practice by Pre-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12
http://standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/index.htm

CoolMath4Kids has many math tutorials with good examples
http://www.coolmath.com/home.htm

CoolMath4Kids also has many math problems organized by topic
http://www.coolmath4kids.com/

NCTM Illuminations has online math activities by grade level
http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivitySearch.aspx

Educatellc’s Bookmarks has many online sites organized by category- scroll down to find the math
http://www.mybookmarks.com/public/educatellc/exo_folders/

3orhigher.com has many problems organized by grades 1-6.(I think they are more difficult than the grade level given.) The problems are organized by categories.
http://www.3orhigher.com/

KidsZone Dare to Compare let’s you select the subject, grade level, and number of questions. Questions are from TIMSS and CivEd
http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/eyk/index.asp?flash=true

Scholastic’s Max’s Math Adventure has about 20 categories each with an online activity
http://teacher.scholastic.com/max/index.htm

So what other good Math Review sites do you know of?

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State Reading Summative Benchmark Panic: Why panic if we do formative assessment all year?

Published January 8, 2007 Assessment , benchmarks , Formative , Reading , State Leave a Comment

Whenever I talk to elementary and middle school teachers, I hear wait until the state ELA is over. Teachers are preparing students like crazy. Panic is felt in the elementary and middle schools.

Why?

The panic tells me that teachers are not fomative in their usual classroom reading activities and assessment. If they were assessing students all year on the required reading skills from the state assessment, they would not have to prepare students at the last minute. If the teachers had montored and adjusted instruction during the year, then their students would be prepared. Yes, teachers do need to give students the testing taking strategies for this particular assessment but that will only take a few minutes.

Avoid panic and incorporate formative assessments during the year. These assessments will mirror the state assessments. Incorporate learning peace into your classroom instead of panic.

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Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle

Archive for the 'State' Category

Class Standards and Finals: Mixed Signals

State Assessments, Rubric Scoring, and Technology

Systemic Student Assessment -Probably Not in Your District

Preparing Students for State Math Benchmarks

State Reading Summative Benchmark Panic: Why panic if we do formative assessment all year?

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