[Fwd: [DEOS-L] Deborah Meier shows how students can be "assessed"withoutstandardized testing]

[Rick Parkany <rparkany@borg.com>]

Arnish Folks:	here, below, in-line, is a review of dear Deborah Mier's work
and present thinking from the DEOS (Distance Education list @ PennState) that
includes, again, the Winerip article from 11June03 that Lisa Guisbond sent
along, last week (thank you, Lisa!).

This article, I think, goes to show that we need assessment in curriculum like
birds need the atmosphere to fly, BUT that *testing*, using *measurement
theory* is ONE of but a vast resovoir of assessment used in the process we
commonly call judgement (aka evaluation).

FYI:	I am currently finalizing my proposal for research on similar assessment
devices/processes concerning my own teaching/assessment practice for my
dissertation, such as Deb Meiers demonstrates in hers.

In particular, I hope to demonstrate that an alignment of curriculum (that is,
the organization of educational processes around a foundation of principals
derived from the interplay of Learning Theory / Pedagogy (it is more rightly
called androgogy for post-adolescent educational activities, literally meaning
*the leading of peers*/ and Evaluation Theory, including Assessment).

Such an *alignment* of the curriculum should FIRST and foremost be established
in terms of frameworks justified in research and theory, consistent with
common experience and everyday *world views* concerning how it is that we
humans become our culture and vice versa (social constructivism, that *C* word
(c-c-c-c-Communism<=>Constructivism? that refers to the *S* word,
S-s-s-s-Socialism? IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, can it?), and THEN according to
appropriate standards of performance and process, etc., all consistent, that
is, with fundemental principals concerning the way we humans BE with each
Other in-the-world, in our everyday lives.
<REFs>:
Schools of the Future (Guests: Deborah Meier, Roger Schank, Lynn Olson;
Recorded: December 21, 1999) - The Merrow Report
http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tmr_radio/transcr/future.pdf
The Carnegie Scholarship of Ted Nellen - The Ecology of Learning:
http://www.tnellen.com/carnegie/index001.html
Study Map: Inquiry Concerning the Asynchronous Classroom Space:
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/ETAP778/index.htm
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/pr03000.htm

Our thinking, message, and mission, this list (and beyond it's more narrow
focus of FairTestish accomodation of *testing*, a far more restrictive
methodology that other *assessment* processes, like Deborah's, Ted Nellen,
oft-times correspondent this list, and my own humble work, see REFs, above)
will not withstand the riptide of hypocrisies, already in the shadows of the
national political debate for 2004:

								...the Failure of the Bush Educational NCLB Plan and its cynical
unfunded mandates considered my Joe & Jane Sixpack all within an overall
context of catastrophic State-level bureacratic economic collapse (accelearted
by the devolution of *Federal Social Mandates* to State resonsibilites),
represented by the current financial crisis in 2003-04 State budgets,
unheralded since the end post-WWII military stand down and that massive
economic *dislocation* (releived by the *War Booty* garnished under the
Marshall & MacArthur Plan(s) and its hegemonous relocation of European and
Pacific wealths and economies, MISSING in these present post-Iraqi times,
despite and in the face of the oil-grab *gone bad*!

Things are lookin' good, IF Bush permits the 2004 elections AND their debates
to occur...remember what the Rand Corporation told the Nixon Administration
when they inquired into the *hypothetical* effects of cancelling the 1972
elections (in the face of an impending Constitutional crisis such as we
presently face)? the Rand Report (ca. 1971) concluded that no substantial,
negative, long term social or security concerns would (be) risked and the
American electorate would not be radicalized by such a cancellation...		;-}
rap.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [DEOS-L] Deborah Meier shows how students can be "assessed" without
standardized testing
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 15:10:33 -0000
From: DEOS-L <berge@ptdprolog.net>
Reply-To: deos-l@lists.psu.edu
To: DEOS-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU

From: Steve Eskow <drseskow@cox.net>

 Deborah Meir is widely considered an educational genius, and somewhat
of a saint: her receipt of the MacArthur award is but one of the many
tributes to her dedication and imaginative service to students and
learning.

On June 11 the New York Times carried  this article which might help to
explain why she is but one of many experienced academics who deplore
the impact of standardized testing on education. More importantly, she
shows how our schools can provide for a rigorous and challenging
curriculum that includes ways of judging student learning and
performance that avoid the warping that accompanies standardized
testing.

Steve Eskow

Going for Depth Instead of Prep

June 11, 2003
By MICHAEL WINERIP


BOSTON

IMAGINE a school where the principal hates tests as much as
the kids do. Easy school, right?

"A lot of work," said Jonathan Howell. "I stayed up a lot
of nights to finish my reports." Last year, as a seventh
grader at Mission Hill elementary and middle school,
Jonathan failed social studies on his first try. His oral
presentation did not impress the school's adult assessment
committee and he learned a hard lesson. "I learned it's
good to use note cards," he said. "If you forget, you can
look at cards and get back on track."

One recent morning, Dennisse Rorie arrived at school and
was given two hours to prepare an oral presentation on
Eleanor Roosevelt as part of her final history grade. She
was required to use at least two library books plus the
Internet for her three-minute talk. The committee wants to
be sure students - not their teachers or parents - can do
research. Glancing at note cards, the seventh grader spoke
expertly of Mrs. Roosevelt's work with the National
Consumer League, her push to make labor leaders more
receptive to blacks, her newspaper column, and it was easy
to tell this was Dennisse's report. Asked how Mrs.
Roosevelt had accomplished so much, Dennisse said, "She had
great connections because her husband was president."

Dennisse also presented her three-month-long research paper
on the women's suffrage movement, discussing Lucy Stone,
the Grimkes, Elizabeth Stanton and, of course, Susan B.
Anthony, who "had respect for herself, she carried herself
as a woman, she didn't walk around like Christina
Aguilera."

At Mission Hill, if teachers want to know how Catherine
Taylor has progressed in reading, they have a more reliable
measure than standardized test scores. There is a tape of
Catherine reading aloud several times a year, starting in
kindergarten on Sept. 20, 1997, when she cannot pick out a
single word in "Caps for Sale," and progressing to November
2002 in fifth grade, reading <object.title class="Movie"
idsrc="nyt_ttl" value="26422;26423;26424;139857">"Johnny
Appleseed"</object.title> fluently.

This small, predominantly African-American public school in
one of Boston's poorest sections, has the markings of a
top-flight private school and is the latest master work by
Deborah Meier, a past winner of a MacArthur "genius" award,
founder of the Central Park East elementary and secondary
schools in Harlem and one of the more original thinkers in
American education. Children here are pushed to examine
topics in depth, whether it is ancient Egypt, social
justice or the moon. And when it is time to assess whether
they are ready for high school, a committee of teachers and
community people questions them as if they are middle
school doctoral candidates.

How do you make Susan B. Anthony as real as Christina
Aguilera? You go deep and give it your all. In January, a
blue, plastic, footwide Nile River appeared along the
400-foot main hallway (emptying into the Mediterranean by
Kathy Clunis's kindergarten) and for the next three months,
every grade studied ancient Egypt, according to its
ability. For the social justice unit, Matthew Knoester's
class researched famous African-Americans, then turned
themselves into a wax museum, that included 11-year-old
Grace Zutrau with a fake mustache in a freeze pose, as
Thurgood Marshall. To understand the moon, a teacher, Joyce
Stevens, took small groups into a dark closet (the
universe), spun them around in a swivel chair (the rotating
earth) and shone a flashlight (the sun) on a foam ball
impaled on a skewer held over their heads (the moon), and
thus helped Walter Pultinas, a seventh grader, finally
grasp why people never see the dark side of the moon.

Priscilla Rorie, a parent, who has two daughters at Mission
Hill, believes it is a major improvement over the Agassiz,
a Boston public school that the girls attended through
fifth grade and where Ms. Rorie is a teacher. "Everything
at the Agassiz is teaching to the state tests," she said.
"It's deadening for teachers and kids. They follow the
state testing curriculum block by block."

This is what Ms. Meier, 72, is fighting, "top down
standardization," bred by state testing programs that she
sees as pushing public education toward mediocrity. She is
offended that many politicians leading the standardized
testing charge, including President Bush and his brother
Jeb, the governor of Florida, (graduates of Phillips
Academy in nearby Andover, Mass.), are products of private
schools that are exempt from state testing. "It's like
they're saying a safe, mediocre education is good enough
for public schools. After 35 years, I'm not willing to
settle for that. We can make city schools as good as good
private schools."

In the mid-1990's, she almost got her shot. In the wake of
the "genius" award, plus her Central Park East fame, she
was given an office by New York City officials and a
mandate to open a network of small schools that would
create their own assessment systems and serve 50,000
students. But before she could get it off the ground, the
tide changed, there was a new city chancellor, Rudy Crew,
and a new state education commissioner, Richard Mills, both
big testers.

Today Ms. Meier is back where she was in 1974, principal of
a small urban school. She still gets out the word, through
her latest book, "In Schools We Trust." Hundreds of
educators visit each year to see how it is done. She lives
next door to the school and does what she can to protect it
- from the state tests. While Massachusetts has one of the
most aggressive testing programs, Ms. Meier has studied the
law, concluded that elementary and middle schoolers do not
have to take the test, and so only those children whose
parents want them to take the test, do (about half). The
school does virtually no test prep.

Still, if there is one thing they learn at Mission Hill it
is that just because you are not prepping all the time, it
does not mean you cannot get smart. Every year from a third
to half of the eighth graders pass the city exam for the
elite public high schools - including Jonathan Howell and
Julie Rorie this year. As Julie says: "At my other school,
we prepped like crazy, we'd take the test and forget it.
Here, we always take a step back and look at the work we
did. We just don't throw away the history we learned last
year. We bring it back."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/11/education/11EDUC.html?ex=1056537482&ei
=1&en=833b95d208ad281c


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