Archive for April, 2009
Thinking about assessment
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NCLB is bad. I know I won’t get many people arguing with that statement. However, it was created because people wanted to know that our education system was doing what we want it to. Of course, we could easily argue over what we actually want it to do, but ignore that for just a moment. Accountability is not a bad thing in itself. And if we’re spending time teaching people, we DO want to know whether we’re actually being successful, constructive, and making a difference. I mean, even if NCLB ceased to exist, that doesn’t mean we’d stop assessing our students, right?
SO. With that in mind… If you could wiggle your nose and make NCLB go away, how would you suggest we assess our students? Crazy ideas are perfectly acceptable here. BUT, you do need to consider that at some point there does need to be a way to compare information about the students. For example, when push comes to shove, colleges do need to know how students did. And parents are going to want to know how their students are doing versus other students, dogs and pet rocks in their district/state/country/continent/planet.
Whatcha think?
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