The 47th PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released on August 24, 2015. The poll is an invaluable barometer of changing sentiments about K-12 education, and this year the results included an extensive review of attitudes toward testing in America.
Among the key findings:
The majority of parents said they would not excuse their own children from tests, yet this same majority feel there is too much emphasis on standardized testing, and believe they should have the right to opt their children out of those tests.
Nearly one-third of African-American parents say results from standardized tests are very important to improve schools and compare school quality, while only 15% of white parents said the same – a perspective supported by the ongoing advocacy by the NAACP and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights for the inclusion of accountability measures in the reauthorization of ESEA.
One read of these results is that they reflect a growing negative public perception of testing due to the time and money spent on mandated accountability tests, and the painful rollout of new versions. A logical reaction is to reduce this burden, but there is a risk of an overreaction.
America’s students deserve a system where accountability does not trump learning – a comprehensive approach to ensure that kids get their needs met, and that we as a society are fulfilling our obligations to our most vulnerable learners. Significant improvements must be made – and the PDK/Gallup poll underscores the urgency of the issue.
In fact, these data highlight a critical gap in public understanding about assessments and the different ways they serve the learning process – a topic we have been researching for several years. Public opinion research conducted for NWEA showed parents clearly value assessments when they support student learning, provide timely results and take minimal time to conduct. When students were asked, they showed a sophisticated understanding of the difference between assessments that help them grow, and those that do not.
For this reason, NWEA is announcing a major initiative focused on improving assessment literacy for all. The initiative includes a Task Force comprised of both in-service and pre-service experts that will guide efforts to improve assessment literacy nationwide, a newly expanded AssessmentLiteracy.org website offering extensive resources to foster understanding of assessment and its role in learning, and professional learning opportunities for educators.
As a mission-driven not-for-profit, NWEA is committed to helping teachers, education leaders and parents build assessment systems that efficiently and effectively measure student mastery and growth. We are equally committed to helping ensure families, communities and our nation as a whole have the data we need to support each student’s success.
As President and CEO, Matt Chapman leads the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) in achieving its vision for student-centric education grounded in research-based evidence of what helps students learn. Since joining in December 2006, Matt has led NWEA in nearly quadrupling the number of students served, to over 7 million, and introduced new products and services while continuing NWEA’s focus on its mission.
College and Career Readiness Standards require that students be able to apply the knowledge and skills that they learn during academic instruction. One way for students to demonstrate the skills that they have learned, in a safe environment, is through games. Games require critical thought, strategic thinking, and rapid responses. Games motivate students by making learning fun, they promote teamwork that identifies each team members’ strengths, and they encourage exploration of new concepts. These are skills that employers say they need the youth of today to possess, so I would like to suggest some strategies that allow teachers to easily incorporate games into their daily content.
Use old board games as a way to incorporate academic content.
Do you have an old Monopoly board, Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, or a checker board? Convert these board games into learning games within the classroom by using Velcro to attach vocabulary words, phonics sounds, math facts and formulas to the board. As students move around the board, they interact with the content that they land on, providing drill and practice in a fun way.
Play war with a deck of playing cards.
Use a deck of playing cards to play war for math facts. Students work in pairs for this activity. Each student draws a card, places it face up, and the first student to add or multiply the numbers that are face up, gets the cards. The “winner” is the student with the most cards.
Use choice boards to encourage creativity and exploration.
Choice boards can also be used to create a “game-like” environment for learning. Choose the standards that you want to address, create a theme, and then give students a choice of how they learn the content. For example, if the standards to be addressed are reading for understanding, perspective taking, and understanding historical events, then the theme could be based around Dr. Martin Luther King. Students could choose from activities that allowed them to read and write about Dr. King, read and re-enact an event from Dr. King’s life, create a game based on the life of Dr. King, or conduct video interviews with people that lived in Dr. King’s era.
Use drama as an option for expressing ideas
Have students create a monologue for an historical or contemporary figure and then enact the monologue for the class. Another option for this is to have them use mime instead of a monologue when they present their character. This is a great activity for students that have limited language skills. As students present their monologue or mime, the audience (the rest of the class) tries to guess the name of the character they are presenting. This can be done and points awarded or simply for the challenge. Think of this as a game of charades.
Use video games as learning tools
Mind Craft for the Classroom is one tool that could be used to provide students with elements of choice and exploration. Within the game, students are encouraged to “build” in various environments. When building, students are learning about architecture, proportion and ratios, and programing skills.
By using MAP data, Learning Continuum statements, and Skills Navigator’s Skill Locators to determine the content that students “play” with, teachers can rest assured that students are working on the appropriate skills that are in their zone of proximal development, so that they can make growth.
The 47th PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released on August 24, 2015. The poll is an invaluable barometer of changing sentiments about K-12 education, and this year the results included an extensive review of attitudes toward testing in America.