I'm amazed at the ignorance tied to the "county" exams.
Most of them are the same exam for the last 10, in some cases 10+ years. They haven't changed in that time, they're the SAME exam. Anyone who thinks that the answers to these exams aren't out there for the right price is kidding themselves.
The written part of the exams are provided to the kids in advance of the exams, and if you Google the questions you can find the written response answers online. If a kid gets less than 100% on the written response it's because they were too lazy to find the answers.
MCPS doesn't want to address that the final exams are a joke and hardly measure anything worth bragging about - in NY state the Regents exams are changed every year, a virtual industry has built up around them similar to what you see with the AP exams, and that's a state test that's worth thinking about as being a measure (assuming that indeed this is a way to measure) preparedness for college.
MCPS is simply doing away with something that has been a joke for some time. Parents, though, seem to have it in their head that this is somehow undermining their kids education in spite of the fact that there's zero evidence to support that any of this measures anything, other than, in the case of the written responses, laziness on the part of their children.
The concern I would have it what standard will be applied to keep widely varying standards for quarterly completion being applied throughout the county. A pass at RM may not be a pass at Kennedy, or vice versa, and that presents a problem.
Without BOE discussion/analysis of historic discrepancies in performance using countywide formatives, Bowers' recommendation for MCPS-wide marking period exams puts the cart before the horse and imports some of the same problems that final exams had. Countywide assessments, whether at the end of a semester or embedded within will continue to confirm what we already know: Not all teachers (successfully) teach the full/same curriculum. Students in these teachers' classes are denied learning experiences. And then, through the countywide testing system, these students are again penalized through test scores for not having mastered what their teachers have failed to teach.
If Bowers wants to use countywide testing as a teacher evaluation tool, it may have a function for that. However, to evaluate students countywide, an algorithm needs to be built into the scoring system to adjust scores for fairness, as needed. We need to know that when students' scores demonstrate that an entire teachers' classroom did not learn specific information, the items on the assessments for those students will be eliminated from scoring, and other adjustments will be made accordingly.
It's time to hightail out of the County while there is still time left.
ReplyDeleteWe're dealing with myopic visionaries and intellectual dwarfs.
I'm amazed at the ignorance tied to the "county" exams.
ReplyDeleteMost of them are the same exam for the last 10, in some cases 10+ years. They haven't changed in that time, they're the SAME exam. Anyone who thinks that the answers to these exams aren't out there for the right price is kidding themselves.
The written part of the exams are provided to the kids in advance of the exams, and if you Google the questions you can find the written response answers online. If a kid gets less than 100% on the written response it's because they were too lazy to find the answers.
MCPS doesn't want to address that the final exams are a joke and hardly measure anything worth bragging about - in NY state the Regents exams are changed every year, a virtual industry has built up around them similar to what you see with the AP exams, and that's a state test that's worth thinking about as being a measure (assuming that indeed this is a way to measure) preparedness for college.
MCPS is simply doing away with something that has been a joke for some time. Parents, though, seem to have it in their head that this is somehow undermining their kids education in spite of the fact that there's zero evidence to support that any of this measures anything, other than, in the case of the written responses, laziness on the part of their children.
The concern I would have it what standard will be applied to keep widely varying standards for quarterly completion being applied throughout the county. A pass at RM may not be a pass at Kennedy, or vice versa, and that presents a problem.
Creative solution: If you cannot make the goal simply remove the goalpost!
ReplyDeleteWithout BOE discussion/analysis of historic discrepancies in performance using countywide formatives, Bowers' recommendation for MCPS-wide marking period exams puts the cart before the horse and imports some of the same problems that final exams had. Countywide assessments, whether at the end of a semester or embedded within will continue to confirm what we already know: Not all teachers (successfully) teach the full/same curriculum. Students in these teachers' classes are denied learning experiences. And then, through the countywide testing system, these students are again penalized through test scores for not having mastered what their teachers have failed to teach.
ReplyDeleteIf Bowers wants to use countywide testing as a teacher evaluation tool, it may have a function for that. However, to evaluate students countywide, an algorithm needs to be built into the scoring system to adjust scores for fairness, as needed. We need to know that when students' scores demonstrate that an entire teachers' classroom did not learn specific information, the items on the assessments for those students will be eliminated from scoring, and other adjustments will be made accordingly.