Today’s podcast is about my immediate reflections on today’s Curriculum Summit. Short written form: An amazing day that will impact SLA in powerful, powerful ways.
Longer reflection: Podcast 2: SLA Curriculum Summit Reflections.
A View From the Schoolhouse
Today’s podcast is about my immediate reflections on today’s Curriculum Summit. Short written form: An amazing day that will impact SLA in powerful, powerful ways.
Longer reflection: Podcast 2: SLA Curriculum Summit Reflections.
The context for this entry: Science Leadership Academy Curriculum Summit Briefing Book — (29 page PDF file.)
Tomorrow (actually in about nine hours), forty people will come to the Franklin Institute for our second curriculum summit and our first really big, inclusive one. On a really fun blogosphere connection moment, David Warlick will be giving the keynote address in the morning, and Will Richardson will be there for the morning session. I really can’t think of anyone I’d rather have than David leading off the conference to get folks excited and energized about what is possible.
It really is an exciting meeting of many of the top folks in Philadelphia and many of the people I’ve been lucky enough to work with, dialogue with and just plain know in my ten years in progressive (and technology) education. If all goes well, we’ll come out of it with a road map to September and beyond.
The general framework of the day is that we’re spending the morning looking at curricular issues and spending the afternoon looking at the school life / school governance issues that need to be in place to help us reach those curricular goes. And to that end, I’ve spent a few dozen hours writing up the briefing book for tomorrow’s summit in colaboration with a few Philly folks who were invaluable in the process. And of course, in reality, I’ve spent much more time on it than that, because much of what is in there is a reflection of the writing I do on here… and of what I’ve learned from many of the people attending tomorrow summit… and what I’ve learned from the students I’ve been lucky enough to work with over the years.
For folks who may be interested, I’ve uploaded the briefing book for anyone who may want to take a look at it. I think it is a pretty clear explanation of what we’re up to… what challenges we face… what questions we need to answer and what we hope to accomplish. If not, ask away — all questions at this point force me to further clarify our vision.
I’ll report on the summit this weekend. Enjoy the briefing booklet. As always, feedback is always welcome.
I’m going to let Ms. Frizzle’s words connect the dots here, because I’m still writing the briefing book for Friday’s Curriculum Summit…. but I couldn’t let this pass.
The other day, Ms. Frizzle made a call for accountability for standardized test makers. You should read the entire post, but the short version is that she creates the principals of accountability for high-stakes tests:
And she closes with this:
Taxpayers, how can you expect less?
Problems with tests ought to be highly publicized, like the lists of failing schools. Don’t provide any details; just list the name of the testing companies, the names of the responsible departments within the city and state government, and list ’em under the headline: Failing. And then – do schools and teachers and students get to transfer out, to find alternative ways to assess?
Spread the word!
I thought it was a brilliant post — a call to arms, if you will. And my overwhelming thought was that if we ever held the test-makers to this standard, the days of high-stakes standardized tests as a movement in this country would be over. And then, today’s NY Times exposes major problems with the 7th grade ELA:
The roughly 65,000 seventh graders in New York City who took the statewide English test yesterday might have anticipated a challenging question or two. What they did not expect was to be stumped by the answer sheet.
But for five questions, the letters labeling the answers on the multiple-choice test did not correspond to those on the answer form. In some cases, the exam booklet directed students to choose F, G, H or J as possible answers, while the answer sheet offered only A, B, C and D as options. In other cases, the reverse was true.
And yet, the results will stand. When I’ve screwed up an assessment in my own classroom, I didn’t let my mistakes affect the kids. One year, I realized that most of the kids in a class really misinterpreted what a writing prompt was about for an in-class writing assignment. I looked at the way I phrased it, and I realized that it was an easy mistake to make, so I adjusted the scores accordingly. It was the only fair thing to do. But it was also the kind of thing a teacher can do in a classroom, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that a large bureacratic organization will have a hard time doing.
These tests will determine if students are promoted or not. Don’t we owe it to them to at least get the answer sheet right?
(Or better yet, stop relying on standardized tests to determine promotion… but hey, I’m talking crazy again.)