Re: Test Secrecy Hurts Children, Schools

[Deborah Meier <dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG>]

Yes, it does correspond to normal good pedagogy.  Feedback that starts with
trying to make sense of what the student/author/performer was seeking to
do, understood, etc.  But I'm also saying, George, that we can't understand
the meaning of a test score without doing this with a sample of students.
We should all be doing this to help arm ourselves with a better
understanding of what it is that is happening inside kid's heads.  It also
reveals a lot about the reasons for the social class, as well as race gaps
in test scores--assuming one is not simply interewted in seeing who gets it
right vs wrong, but what and why.

Deborah

>In a message dated 5/30/00 1:54:34 PM, dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG writes:
>
><< The only way to tell the difficulty of a multiple choice test is to give
>it--aloud--with kids, and discuss the reasons for their answers.  If the
>range of kids if wide and varied you'll see if it's testing what you think
>it is.
>
>Deb >>
>
>I agree.
>
>And it can be a really cool classroom activity (within its limitations).
>Before I was exiled for heresy, I would test my kids Fridays and go over the
>things Mondays (not the whole period). I did this unless I had gotten lazy
>over the weekend, in which case I had a one-day grace period and we had to go
>over the tests Tuesday. If we didn't go over their scores and the tests by
>Tuesday, they all passed because it was my fault, not theirs. After two days,
>the test is old and cold and nobody wants to know what that was about. It may
>be that college students can learn with long delays in these things, but in
>my experience neither younger children or adolescents profit from being told
>to wait for test results, then learn that they aren't entitled to know what
>they did right or wrong.
>
>I did that for the better part of 30 years, no matter where I taught, and it
>"worked" (insofar as anything works most of the time in real world
>classrooms). I've saved my grade books and have them going back more than 20
>of those years, page-after-page listing kids, sometimes so many names they
>overflowed on to the next page.
>
>But that Friday-Monday scenario worked in places where the classes had 25 or
>30 kids in them and there were five of those classes coming at you every day
>for ten months. In many case, the kids learned a lot, partly by going over
>the tests and getting the reinforcement then. I gave bonuses when they found
>mistakes in my test writing, which was often enough to keep them on their
>toes and me a bit humble.
>
>So it's good pedagogy. It's not as good as catching pitches from the kid and
>telling her after each pitch what didn't look good. It's not as good as going
>back over the videotape of each reading session. But when you're facing 140
>kids every day in the inner city, it's a reasonable compromise between ideal
>and real.
>
>But this can only be done if the test is available -- in its entirety -- for
>the teacher (parents, kids, local community leader, gas station attendant,
>bakery owner, etc.) to go over with the kids and anyone else when the
>"scores" come out. When tests are secret, learning is made mockery.
>
>When you give a kid a SECRET TEST, you damage the relationship between
>teacher (school) and student (family and in many cases, community). The test
>cannot become a mystery inside of an enigma wrapped in a paradox surrounded
>by puzzlements -- and the whole security thing is fundamentally undemocratic
>and unfair to teachers, children, and other decent human beings...
>
>...we all suffer.
>
>How can we stand around and tell kids, "You flunked the test" without telling
>the kids how they flunked by going over the tests point-by-point and
>step-by-step?
>
>This week our teachers here in Chicago are giving high school kids another
>round of CASE. Four weeks ago, high schoolers here took the TAP. End of last
>week and this week the little ones got their ITBS scores. Each school has its
>own disaster policy for dealing with the trauma. Now, the elementary
>principals are trying to figure out what to do with all the kids who
>"flunked" the ITBS and are walking around hanging their heads, sometimes
>being mocked by those who "passed".
>
>One quote (attributed to Paul Vallas, but with no data bases attached) says
>that in 89 Chicago elementary schools, the majority of the kids "flunked" the
>ITBS. But none of them will ever get to go over the ITBS and know what they
>did wrong.
>
>Seems like a fundamental question of values to me. Ban secret tests. If we
>want to require them of adults who want to be lawyers, doctors, or police
>officers (and who can pay for the privilege), fine.
>
>But for children as young as third grade, you've got to be kidding. Imagine
>what's happening to these kids who've now been through this for five years
>here in Chicago.
>
>TEACHER: You flunked.
>
>CHILD: What did I do wrong?
>
>TEACHER: That's a secret that I don't even know the answer to.
>
>CHILD: How can I do better?
>
>TEACHER: Just try harder next time.
>
>George Schmidt
>
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