Re: Darling Hammond article

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Nations' educational systems differ along more dimensions than whether 
they have national curricula and how local and wide their assessments 
are.

If we want better teaching we need better teachers.  We do, of course, 
need better tests , but better tests won't give us better teachers.  
Trying to make everything into a testing issue is an exercise in 
silliness.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:10 am
Subject: [arn-l] Darling Hammond article


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/14/IN9GSOEUC.DTL


This is the article Priscilla Gutierrez described in a recent post.


High-quality standards, a curriculum based on critical thinking can
enlighten our students

Linda Darling-Hammond

Sunday, October 14, 2007


One of the central lessons of No Child Left Behind is that if school
sanctions are tied to test scores, the testing tail can wag the
schooling dog. And a key problem for the United States is that most
of our tests aren't measuring the kinds of 21st century skills we
need students to acquire and that are at the core of curriculum and
assessment in high-achieving countries.


While a debate rages about whether our tests should be created at the
national or state level, this argument is focused on the wrong issue.


We need to focus on the quality of our standards and assessments
rather than fighting over who administers them. Unless we change the
way we think about learning and testing, it won't matter who makes
the tests. They will still be a major part of the problem of American
education, rather than the solution.


The plain truth is that the United States is falling far behind other
nations on every measure of educational achievement. In the latest
international assessments, the United States ranked 28th out of 40
countries in math - on par with Latvia - 20th in science, and 19th in
reading, even further behind than a few years ago. In addition, these
other countries surpass us in graduation rates and, over the last
decade, in higher education participation as well.


Although 60 percent of our high school graduates go off to college,
only half of these are well-enough prepared to graduate with a degree
- far too few for the knowledge economy we now operate. So, while our
own youth are often unprepared for modern employment, Silicon Valley
lobbies for more H-1B visas to bring in skilled workers to fill 
high-tech jobs.


Among the highest-achieving countries, some - including Japan and
Singapore - have national standards and tests. Others - such as China
(where Hong Kong and Macao score well), Australia and Canada - have
state-level standards and tests. Top-scoring Finland focuses
primarily on local assessment. While these countries manage their
systems differently, they have in common a curriculum focused on
critical thinking, problem solving and examinations that require
students to solve complex real-world problems and defend their ideas
orally and in writing.


In most cases, their assessment systems combine centralized (state or
national) assessments that use mostly open-ended and essay questions
with local assessments given by teachers, which are factored into the
final examination scores. These local assessments - which include
research projects, science investigations, mathematical and computer
models and other products - are mapped to the syllabus and the
standards for the subject and are selected because they represent
critical skills, topics and concepts. They are generally designed,
administered and scored locally.


By contrast, our multiple-choice tests - which focus the curriculum
on low-level skills - are helping us to fall further and further
behind. Another part of the problem is that the standards used to
guide teaching in many states are a mile wide and an inch deep: Most
high-achieving countries teach (and test) fewer topics each year and
teach them more thoroughly so students build a stronger foundation
for their learning.


Whereas students in most parts of the United States are typically
asked simply to recognize a single fact they have memorized from a
list of answers, students in high-achieving countries are asked to
apply their knowledge in the ways that writers, mathematicians,
historians and scientists do.


In the United States, a typical item on the 12th grade National
Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, asks students which
two elements from a multiple choice list are found in the Earth's
atmosphere. An item from the Victoria, Australia, high school biology
test (which resembles those in Hong Kong and Singapore) describes how
a particular virus works, asks students to design a drug to kill the
virus and explain how the drug operates (complete with diagrams), and
then to design and describe an experiment to test the drug - asking
students to think and act like scientists.


Locally, students in other countries also complete required
assessments like lab experiments and research papers that help
evaluate student learning in the classroom. These assessments, which
together count at least half the total examination score, allow the
testing of complex skills that cannot be measured in a two-hour test
on a single day. They ensure that students receive stronger learning
opportunities. And they give teachers timely information they need to
help students improve - something that standardized tests that
produce scores several months later cannot do.


These assessments in other nations are not used to rank or punish
schools, or to deny promotion or graduation to students. (In fact,
several countries have explicit proscriptions against such
practices.) They are used to evaluate curricula and guide
professional learning - in short, to help schools improve.


By asking students to show what they know through real-world
applications of knowledge, these other nations' assessment systems
promote serious intellectual work that is discouraged in U.S. schools
by the tests many states have adopted under No Child Left Behind.
Although some states, such as high-scoring Connecticut, Maine,
Vermont and Nebraska, have created assessments that resemble those in
other countries, the requirements and costs of No Child have led an
increasing number of states to abandon their challenging performance
assessments for more simplistic machine-scored tests.


A growing body of research has shown that as more stakes become
attached to such tests, teachers feel pressured to teach a
multiple-choice curriculum that does not produce skills as they are
used in the real world. Fully 85 percent of teachers in a recent poll
said they feel the tests encourage them to teach in ways that are
counterproductive.


As one teacher put it: "I have seen more students who can pass the
(state test) but cannot apply those skills to anything if it's not in
the test format.


I have students who can do the test but can't look up words in a
dictionary and understand the different meanings. ... As for
higher-quality teaching, I'm not sure I would call it that. Because
of the pressure for passing scores, more and more time is spent
practicing the test and putting everything in test format."


Studies confirm that as teaching looks more like testing, U.S.
students are doing less writing, less science, less history, reading
fewer books, and even using computers less in states that will not
allow their use on standardized tests.


Indeed, as state test scores have gone up under No Child Left Behind,
scores on other tests measuring broader skills have not. Data on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the rate of
improvement in math achievement has slowed considerably since No
Child was passed in 2002, and reading achievement has completely
stalled, with declines at the eighth-grade level. This is likely
because a test prep curriculum in the early grades does not provide
the foundation that students need to do higher-level work later on.


We need to encourage our schools to teach and evaluate the
higher-order thinking and performance skills that leading nations
emphasize in their systems, and this requires major changes in No
Child Left Behind.


The draft House bill for reauthorizing No Child, under the leadership
of the chairman, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, would begin to
rectify this situation by permitting states to use a broader set of
assessments and encouraging the development and use of performance
assessments, like those used abroad.


These changes, though not yet as far-reaching as they ultimately need
to be, are a necessary step in the direction needed to create a
globally competitive curriculum in U.S. schools.


As the House bill is revised and the Senate bill is drafted in the
coming weeks, creating the incentives for a 21st century education
system - rather than one pointed at the factory model of the past -
should be a leading priority.


Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun professor of
education at Stanford University, where she has created the Stanford
Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network.
Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/14/IN9GSOEUC.DTL


This article appeared on page E - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle


At 03:30 PM 10/27/2007 +0000, Priscilla Gutierrez wrote:

> Last week, Linda Darling Hammond had an interesting commentary in
> the San Francisco Chronicle discussing the United States' obsession
> with standardized testing and the movement towards a national
> curriculum.  She compared our efforts to produce students on "grade
> level" with what other countries are doing.  Here are some highlights:

>

> Among the highest achieving countries, top-scoring Finland focuses
> primarily on local assessment.  Other countries who use either a
> national test (Japan & Singapore) or a state-level test (China, Hong
> Kong, Macao) also were at the top of the achieving countries.  What
> all had in common is a curriculum focused on critical thinking,
> problem solving, and exams that require students to solve complex
> real-world problems.  They also require students to defend their
> ideas orally or in writing.





George Sheridan






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