great assess strategy per dan meyer
shown here in a jing per kim novak

portfolios/google-ability

how to assess public school



per clay christensen in disrupting class - in the past - testing has been used to do 2 jobs for students, teachers and admin:
1) determine the extent to which students have mastered a body of material and are ready to progress
2) compare students against one another

conventional way doesn't do 1st one well. p. 108 - story of steven spear and his work with toyota and chrysler "it makes no sense for us to teach you subsequent steps if you cna't do the prior one correctly. testing and assessment (has to be) and integral part of the PROCESS of instruction. (not just at the end.) at chrysler time was fixed, at toyota time was variable.
p. 111 80% teacher time spent on prep of lesson, teaching lesson, and testing entire class. less than 20% to help students individually.
a profession who work primarily was in tutoring students one on one was hijacked into one where some fo the teacher's most important skills became keeping order and commanding attention.
tight closed feedback loops

when students learn through student-centric - testing doesn't have to be postponed - and we can start looking not at what percentage of the material kids have mastered, but how far they have moved through a body of material

per anatomy of a successful school year

per paul at yale
any good assessment has to satisfy 2 conditions:
1) reliability - no measurement error over time
2) validity - measures what it's supposed to measure


per zpd:
so, a good way to test kids would be this:
1/ let them work/play with an expert, or a more developed person
2/ let them play by themselves
3/ compare both
that could be an interesting example of collaboration - start from uncertainty

I was thinking about the Washington educational bureaucracies that with a stroke of the pen determine how schools have to test their students.


Then we started talking about forming a nation-wide ring of teacher communities that are looking to change things. Here's my suggestion. It's not perfect and there's a lot to be said against acting on it. Anyway, here is goes:


After an official exam, or a big official test, let teachers organize a shadow exam. Draw questions which are materially different from the official exams, and where students really have to think and demonstrate actual learning. In other words, students that are doing well in your class should be doing well in this exam.


Then, invite students to take this exam voluntarily and explain to them that the point is to send a message to Washington. If they'd rather stay home, that's completely ok. Then hold the shadow exam nation-wide, turn it into a big media thing, and send the results to DC.

tom peters on standardization: