Re: "Growth Models" Alone are Insufficient NCLB Reform

[aburke5054@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Csubstance@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 3:31 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] "Growth Models" Alonare Insufficient NCLB Reform

Obviously, no teacher could "assess" and then reduce the "difficulty" 
of
questions "downward" immediately with present class sizes. That would 
be like
working invidually with children, in small groups, and recognizing that 
there
are
differences within the groups, among children, and, say, between those
students who have been in one school for all their years and the 
newcomers in a
school that has large "mobility."

Only a computer can make those distinctions among children, not a 
teacher.
_____________________________________________________________________
It's true that a teacher wouldn't have time to make up tests customized 
for each child as a daily matter, but teachers respond to differences 
between children all the time.  Some of them do it excellently.  That's 
the reason we have teachers in front of the classroom instead of 
computers.  And of course "growth models, adaptive tests, and other 
tweaks are by themselves insufficient NCLB reforms.  Better testing 
would be nice, but testing is really not the heart of NCLB - improving 
schools is.   Right now it's far more important to have a 
better-developed growth model for improving schools and an improvement 
model more closely adapted to needs in individual schools than it is to 
have growth models and adaptive tests for kids' achievement.

Art
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