Testing As a Weapon

April 5, 2010 By 2 Comments

Photo credit: Robert King/Getty Images

A bill that will link individual teacher’s salaries to student performance and effectively destroy teacher job security was passed by the Florida state Senate last week.

Besides its obvious anti-unionism (pretty much business as usual for Florida politics), this bill will most likely serve to punish rather than help schools that are facing a number of difficult obstacles while rewarding those that are already relatively successful. It’s unfortunate that the war against public education in recent years is so often waged using the tools of accountability and evaluation, both concepts that might actually be put to good use. Even historian and former assistant secretary of education under Bush Diane Ravitch, a long-time supporter of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, seems to be reversing her position on the matter in her newest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

If the bill passes (as it most likely will given the comfortable Republican majority in the House and the willingness of Florida Governor Charlie Crist) notoriously inaccurate standardized testing outcomes will be used to evaluate teacher salaries and job security, essentially using one inaccurate form of evaluation as a foundation for another; however, it will also have a much more direct effect on learning. When Florida teachers begin “teaching to the test” in a desperate attempt to hold onto their jobs and a decent standard of living, it seems inevitable that the teaching of many important written and oral communication skills will quickly drop out of the curriculum.

Filed Under: Acacademic Integrity, Administration, Assessment, Politics

The Stressful CPE

March 5, 2010 By 2 Comments

184; Stress level: Midnight (please read description!)
Creative Commons License photo credit: Sara. Nel

After doing several workshops for students planning to take the CUNY Proficiency Exam (CPE) I’ve been thinking about some fairly basic questions about standardized testing that are nonetheless important ones. I’ve come to realize (as have other Fellows at Baruch) that one of the most important functions of these workshops is to alleviate student anxiety. While some students do not seem to worry too much about the exam, many (some of them excellent students) become rather anxious especially in regards to the time constraints. This raises a number of questions for me regarding the effectiveness of this form of assessment. Are we really setting up a situation that accurately measures student performance of these skills given the stress of the testing situation? According to this article, we aren’t.

As health blogger Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen points out, “Scientists have long known that long-term stress impairs brain cell communication, but they’re just now learning that even short-term stress – such as a few hours of anxiety – can negatively affect cognitive skills.” Pawlik-Kienlen cites research from the University of California (Irvine) School of Medicine as well as the Laboratory of Stress Research at Douglas Hospital Research Center to make this point. Given this negative affect of stress on memory it would seem that we are setting up students for failure. Of course, it could be argued that the anxiety-producing test situation is preparation for stress soon to be experienced by students in the work world. If this were the case, why wouldn’t we coach students on ways to manage this type of stress early in their educational careers? In general I understand the need for assessment of student learning; however, I wonder if it isn’t time for us to start thinking about some different ways of accomplishing this goal outside of the traditional timed exam.

Filed Under: Assessment, CUNY, Pedagogy

How personal is too personal?

November 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

Like a hip-hop video
Creative Commons License photo credit: Torley

Since my last two posts have focused on administrative kinds of issues (professional development and assessment) I thought maybe I should write about something a little more practical this time around, something more directly related to teaching. In attempting to incorporate more writing into my sociology/social psychology courses I often ask or at least encourage students to write about themselves as part of an assignment. Depending on the assignment this usually yields some interesting results and students seem to love writing about their identities and experiences. I think this especially makes sense when it somehow involves students learning to think critically through thinking about the individual in relation to the collective or applying sociological concepts. I also tend to think that assignments asking students to reflect on their experiences or place in the world are somehow more engaging although I’m not sure this is always the case.

Most of my students respond well to this type of assignment; others respond a little too well. While I do my best not to ask invasive questions or give assignments that might bring up overly emotional issues that are difficult to handle, there are always a few who write about some really intense personal issues. Suffice it to say my experience in human services has come in handy more than once. Although I have never had a student complain and many enjoy the opportunity to write about experiences or identities they’ve really never had a chance to talk about, I still end up feeling some anxiety about giving this type of assignment. Am I asking too much of them? What does this kind of disclosure mean for the teacher/student relationship? Of course, many of us in the social sciences are hyper-aware of these issues in our research but what about in our teaching? I would love to hear some reflections on this and, having pretty much taught only in the social sciences, I’m curious if this issue has come up for folks teaching in other disciplines.


Filed Under: Pedagogy, Writing Instruction

Assessment: the dirty word

November 3, 2009 By 1 Comment

Now seems like as good a time as any to reflect on something that’s been on my mind for a while: assessment. While maybe not the most exciting topic, I think it’s a really important and prevalent one. To be clear I’m referring to program assessment here, not assessment of student writing. Until last year my only experience with and training in assessment was through working at community-based organizations, specifically programs for youth that incorporated education and work readiness as well as several other elements. While this experience had its ups and downs, last year I figured out pretty quickly that assessment means something very different in the university context. I, of course, saw assessment and the implementation of Writing Across the Curriculum at CUNY as a great marriage. Faculty in different disciplines trying out different pedagogical tools? Lots of written products, i.e. data? Opportunities for different people to get together and talk about their teaching experiences, what works and what doesn’t? Great! I really did not expect the resentment and lack of cooperation I received when I began to talk to faculty about these issues.

Rather than focusing on all of the problems and tensions around these issues within some (not all) universities, I thought I might mention a few basic elements often emphasized by community-based organizations:

First, assessment should be truly collaborative or it can quickly become extremely divisive. Transparency seems really important here. Asking for all kinds of information about someone’s classroom, students, and teaching without being clear about how that information will be used can be a great way to alienate faculty members.

This leads to the second point, which is that assessment should serve as a means of improving the overall quality of education in a particular department or discipline or university rather than as a policing mechanism. While it’s important to be aware of areas that need improvement, highlighting best practices is equally, if not more, important.

Finally it seems important to start and finish with the people actually doing the work, in this case, faculty members teaching writing and using writing as a teaching tool. Being aware of the needs of these folks allows the assessment to be more than charts and graphs. This way the information gleaned from this assessment project can be put to practical use. This is also a good incentive for faculty members to cooperate and provide useful data. It can even make it possible to enlist their help more directly. While faculty and administration often have different priorities, they don’t have to conflict. I think both groups have some stake in assessment and, if designed and implemented properly, it can help both meet their goals.

Filed Under: Administration, Assessment, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Writing Across the Curriculum

Developing Professionally

September 25, 2009 By 1 Comment

Lately I’ve been helping to organize a professional development event for CUNY Writing Fellows and have been thinking about the concept of professional development for educators in a university setting. While we have managed to find enough Fellows and faculty members to sit on the panel and to conduct workshops, I’ve been surprised by the number of experienced people who don’t feel they have much to offer.

It occurs to me that this may be symptomatic of a broader set of ideas about professional development itself. First I suspect that at least some people (wrongly or rightly) associate professional development with “climbing the ladder” or as tools for furthering one’s career without actually doing anything substantive. In this case it seems pretty obvious why people who take teaching seriously might be skeptical. Then there’s the problem of verbalizing our practice. This is a much more interesting issue to me as I often find it so difficult. How do we explain the nuances of communicating with our students or represent the complexity of understanding their needs in a few Power Point slides? Can the experience of years of teaching be easily written up in a technical assistance manual or condensed into a 45-minute workshop (despite the free coffee)?

Obviously there are more and less effective ways of accomplishing this but I’m not sure it’s ever effortless and certainly not perfectly generalizable. And, as difficult as this can be, it also seems necessary. Maybe another problem is the assumption that in order to facilitate a workshop or any other professional development activity we must speak from a position of authority. Yet this actually seems counter to the pedagogical approach that many of us have worked so hard to implement. When it comes to running a workshop so many of us (myself included) feel a certain amount of anxiety about telling others how they should teach. Of course, no one ever said professional development has to follow this authoritative model. Some of the best workshops and trainings I’ve attended have made use of the experience and skill in the room rather than starting with the omniscience of the facilitator who pretends to impart the one right way of teaching. (I’ve experienced this with training and professional development for community-based organizations as well) Now everyone sitting around in a room sharing their teaching experiences could come off as a little too warm and fuzzy, but I’m not arguing against specificity or structure. That said, I think there is something really valuable about hearing the problems that others face in the classroom and some of the solutions they have tried, whether successful or not.

Filed Under: CUNY, Faculty Development, Pedagogy