Re: Kozol to Kennedy

["Peter S. Campbell" <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>]

Even in using more valuable kinds of assessment, e.g., classroom-based formative assessment, there's a tension between assessment for learning and assessment of learning for documentation and accountability purposes. In other words, it's hard to care about students when you're so busy writing down observable performance data about them that ties into State Standards CA42.A1, SS16.B12, and M27.J4. Learning vs. proving you have learned are two different objectives. In the former, both the student and the teacher may actually care about the outcome. And they may care less whether it can be quantified and recorded.

But in this new quantifiable game, "proving I have taught well" or "proving I have learned" are euphemistic covers for "please don't fire me" and "please don't fail me" respectively. Under NCLB, even really good assessment practices, when operating under the weight of "accountability," can become about covering one's derriere. Inevitably, and quite logically, students may focus only on those things they can demonstrate they know and that they are good at. Teachers may focus only on those things they can demonstrate they can teach with predictable, positive outcomes. Neither can afford to show process or ambiguity, and certainly neither wants to show a lack of knowledge or competence or even – heaven forbid – that they are wrong about something. Moreover, if the measures they use to capture and record knowledge and performance are biased towards reliability instead of validity, such measures as "process" and "growth" do not even register as possible options.

Peter Campbell

----- Original Message -----
From: PRISCILLA GUTIERREZ <pgutpgut@msn.com>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2008 11:31 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Kozol to Kennedy

> 
> 
> Last month I wrote to Kozol, suggesting he introduce the term, Body 
> of Evidence, into the discussion.  I received an email from one of 
> his assistants stating Kozol considered it "tremendously good and 
> apt" and will attempt to bring the concept into the discussion when 
> he meets with the Senator next week.  We shall see...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Priscilla Gutierrez
> Outreach Specialist
> New Mexico School for the Deaf
> 
> ...change is inevitable, growth is optional...
> 
>