Tag: Standardised Tests

Time to stop adjusting grades/grade boundaries?

If using an algorithm to adjust marks is unfair, as it has been deemed to be this year, then surely this practice must cease going forward.

The last few weeks have been filled with issues surrounding exam results.   One of these was being how the A-Level results were adjusted from centre assessed grades based on a statistical algorithm.   This was deemed to be unfair as it penalised some students or groups of students more than others.    The lack of equity was clearly evident due to the ability for schools to compare their centre assessed grades with the finally awarded grades.   It was therefore evident how the statistical adjustment, carried out in the interests of keeping results generally in line with previous year’s results, impacted on individual students.  The faces and lives of individual students could be attached to the grade adjustments.  This was deemed unacceptable.

My worry here is that this statistical adjustment has always gone on.   Normally students would sit exams with their resulting score undergoing adjustment in the form of changes in the grade boundaries.   Again, this was done in the interests of keeping results generally in line with previous years results and again some groups of students would likely be penalised more than others.    The grade boundaries changed due to the exam being deemed generally easier/harder.   The focus on the difficulty of the exam meant that seldom did we associate resulting grade changes with individual students; we don’t generally attach faces to this change, yet some students would have received lesser grades than had the adjustment not been carried out, the same as happened this year.    This seemed acceptable, and has been the way things have been done for decades, but I don’t see how this is any fairer that what happened this year.  

Maybe following this years issues, we need to take another look at how we assess/measure students learning and achievement including the associated processes.

Fitness Fail!

Day 7 and almost a quarter of the way through 29daysofwriting.  Am actually quite impressed with myself that at this point I am still going.  Its also Sunday which means a little bit of a relaxing day, including the wifes birthday then all finished off with #mltchat and #sltchat at the end of the day.

My posting today will focus loosely on assessment as a result of the below message which appeared on my phone this morning:

So although I may be doing ok at #29daysofwriting my phone is unimpressed at my fitness levels.   I have never been a particularly fit person and recently I have noted how much I struggle in terms of the health and fitness aspect of my life.     As such this was something I was trying to build upon and up until this morning I felt I was making some progress, then my phone provided me with this assessment of my performance.

I liken this message to the large and often standardized tests which we provide students.   I would suggest that students may end up feeling as I did today;  dejected, de-motivated, disappointed and disengaged to name but a few words beginning with “de” or “dis”.

Prior to receiving this message I thought I have been making progress as daily I was seeing an upward trend in the amount of exercise I was doing.     My measurement of exercise being steps taken as recorded by my phone.    I had also built up a bit of understanding as to how my exercise developed over the week, noting that my worst performance was at the beginning and end of the week, peeking with my best performance in the middle of the week.

This brought the realization that maybe I would have to focus on the start and end of the week with focused activities to improve my performance, whereas in the middle of the week when things were going ok, it might equally be ok to continue as currently.

Again looking at students this daily or regular feedback might be akin to assessment for learning with assessment data provided frequently and students required to use the data to drive improvement.   At least in me, this regular data did not dishearten or de-motivate, I as attempted to improve.

This makes me things that it is important to consider the frequency of testing and assessment, plus how we frame feedback.   I will admit that this isn’t anything new.

The issue here though is how I can get back to exercising following the de-motivational impact of my phones message.   The good thing is I consider myself to be quite resilient although I will leave that discussion for a later posting.

 

 

 

Pass or Fail….But be resilient.

The educational world is full of contradictions.   A perfect example is the recent discussions on the importance of developing resilience in students and even digital resilience as discussed at a recent conference in Australia.    I strongly agree with the need to develop resilience in students as throughout their life students are likely to encounter difficulties and even failure.   Teachers need to support and develop students such that they are able to get past such difficulties and learn from then, picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and marching onward.

The issue is that all of this is against a background of student examinations and standardised testing where students are either considered as pass or fail or in the case of standardised testing, above or below average.    I would question how possible it is for a teacher to develop resilience in a student who often hears and sees reference to how they are below average.   I would equally wonder how possible it is for the above average student.    Students invariably look at scores and grades and no matter how much we try to avoid categorising ability based on such quantifiable measure they will focus on these and make comparisons between themselves and their peers.    Students after all are often told by their parents about the importance of qualifications and of grades, and they see the focus put on these measures by their older family members including brothers and sisters.   Failure to meet expectations therefore has a significant impact and even more so where a student perceives it to happen regularly or even often.  No number of positive comments and reinforcement from teachers is likely to address this.

If resilience is as important as is claimed, and I believe, then we need to re-evaluate what we currently do particularly with regards constant testing, grading and examinations.   If resilience is just another fad then we need to drop it now and concentrate on what really matters, whatever that is.

Photo courtesy of Sira Anamwong at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Building Testing Machines.

Around 4 or 5 years ago while working in the Middle East as an educational consultant I asked around 200 colleagues as to what they considered the purpose of education to be via email.     I then analysed the words which those who replied used in their response.   At the time the word which came out as the most frequently used was “knowledge”.

At the time I wondered about this given access to the internet and its apparently boundless “knowledge”.     At the time 21st century skills were widely talked about as important however when it came down to it those working in education still clung to the importance of knowledge.   Words such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication appeared significantly less frequently.

It is a recent blog (See full blog here) which makes me reflect on my findings back then as it raises the issue of identifying what the purpose of education really is.        Mr Ferriters argument focuses on EdTech use although beyond this he goes to suggest that the superficial usage of EdTech may be the result of the pressures being put on teachers to achieve high student results in the terms of standardized tests.

This use of tests including PISA tests to measure the success of teaching and of education in a wider sense seems to imply that the purpose of education is to get students high test results.     I have very strong beliefs that this narrow view on education is damaging to student learning.    As educators is the purpose of education not to prepare students for the future, with the skills required to deal with the largely unpredictable and the often changeable.     Is education not about developing students as adaptable, resilient, self-aware, responsible members of local and global society?   And if this is the case how do a series of test questions fit into the equation?

The big question is how we balance the requirements of accountability and the need for quantifiable and comparable data such as that presented by testing with the requirements to develop students as individuals prepared for what lies ahead, and the qualitative data this produces.    I would suggest that I don’t know what the answer is to this dilemma however we are currently progressing steadily more towards the quantifiable end of the balance, with the continuing focus being put on exam results and standardized tests.   I believe we need to re-establish a balance here before we lose sight of the importance of some of the less quantifiable but equally (and possibly more) important activities carried out within classrooms across the world.     After all are we in the business of building students into test taking machines that regurgitate facts and knowledge or are we trying to develop individuals capable of life long learning?

 

http://www.teachingquality.org/content/blogs/bill-ferriter/blaming-and-shaming-teachers-low-level-edtech-practices    Bill Ferriter   (Sept 2015)

 

 

Education: Time to consider the customer?

I have recently been listening to Sir Richard Branson’ s audio book, The Virgin Way, and it has got me thinking about a number of things.   In one particular chapter of the book a number of companies were discussed, where each had been highly successful however then went through a period of significant loss.   Sir Richard suggested that these companies lost significant amounts of money due to a mistaken focus on “challenging” financial targets as the key indicator and focal point for performance discussions, at the expense of the overall good of the company and its organisational culture.    Having recently done a study on culture within international schools operating in the UAE, this made me consider possible parallels between the business world and the world of education.   Deal and Peterson (2009) in their book suggested that schools could learn from the business world in terms of developing culture.

In Sir Bransons book the focus on financial targets is identified as an error contributing to losses in the financial results which are being examined.   He suggested that the finances are a bi-product of the business as opposed to its sole aim, indicating that within his organisations the aim is to deliver excellent customer service and to look after the customers first.   He goes on to explain that if he looks after his customers, they will look after him and that positive financial outcomes will be a bi-product of this.

Drawing comparisons between Sir Branson’s comments with regards business and education I would suggest that the financial results examined to assess the success of businesses may be similar in nature to the standardised test results being examined to assess the success of schools.    Within education in recent times there has been a significant amount said and a significant focus put on standardised test scores.  Based on PISA results for example, Finland has been proclaimed by some to be the best education system in the world.

The question is whether education, like the businesses which suffered significant losses, is too focused on these specific standardised measures of educational performance at the expense of the culture of schools or the good of education in general.     Has education lost its focus on why education, schools and teachers exists;  Our purpose?

Now I know the above is very much general in nature and therefore does not apply to all schools or education systems.   My point is that in general I believe we need to step back and relook at what is important and our overall reason for teaching.     We need to look at the cultures of schools rather than standardised test results.    Sir Richard repeatedly discusses the importance of a focus on customer service.    Should we do the same and re-evaluate what we see as most important, maybe showing a little less attention to the standardised test results and a little more to our customers; The students!

 

Image courtesy of cooldesign at freedigitalphotos.net