I am a firm believer that children SHOULD NOT be assessed by Standardized Testing in this, or any other Country. I think that children should be looked at as a "whole person". What makes him learn? What does he know about himself, others, the world around him? An algebra equation does not tell you who a child is or what he/she knows. I think a combination of teacher anecdotes should be compiled and assessed so that each child's intelligence is measured fairly by the teacher that spends the day with him.
In my District, we use something called Work Sampling System, WWS for short. This is an assessment tool that is a combination of anecdotes and work samples that we put in for each child every day. We measure their individual strides. I observe three children a day and focus on different areas of development....Social/Emotional, Language/Literacy, Math/Science, Social Studies and Health. I fill out checklists that eventually tell me what the child knows and what he doesn't so that I may differentiate for him to become proficient in particular areas.
I teach preschool and there is no testing which is why we have this program in place. I love it and think that if we used that in higher grades it would be a better evaluation tool that a standardized test.
In Cuba, like in many countries around the world, there is an assessment program called PISA. Pisa is an international study that was launched by the OECD in 1997. It aims to evaluate education systems worldwide every three years by assessing 15-year-olds' competencies in the key subjects: reading, mathematics and science. To date over 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA (www.pisaorg). So like us, they are also being assessed by standardized tests.
References
www.pisa.org
Janet,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your post! You said it perfectly! :) I am going to check into the Work Sampling System. Does this work for infants and toddlers also? Keep up the great work!
Jodi
Your District has to purchase the program, but you should definitely check it out. There are checklists for 3, 4 & 5 year olds.
DeleteJanet,
ReplyDeleteI really like the sound of your work sampling system. How much time does it take? When do you do the observations? I find it very difficult to keep up with my written records.
It's definitely time consuming, but not if you manage yourself well. What I do is input my observations everyday after lunch on whatever three kids I observed. That way by the end of the week, each of the 15 kids got some kind of anecdote in the system. Focusing on three kids a day, five days a week, really works for me. I also hit a lot of different domains in each observation which saves me a lot of time too. For example, if I observe and take an anecdote of a child reading a book to another child, I can click on language and literacy, but also on social/emotional domains. Kills two birds with one stone sort of speak! HOpe that helps!
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