May 2010 Issue Focus: Performance Assessment

Each month, the Rethink Learning Now campaign is featuring a new issue in K-12 education and providing specific things people can READ, WATCH, LISTEN TO, and DO in order to raise awareness, share their voice, and make a difference. For May, the topic is performance assessment. To learn more, read the following Op-Ed, written by Forum Convener Deborah Meier.

Read this Op-Ed by Forum Convener Deborah Meier:

"As the Obama administration explores new ways to support a national culture of learning – as opposed to our current national culture of testing – it faces a central dilemma: How to satisfy all of our country’s education stakeholders at once: our students, who need timely and instructive feedback that reflects what they really know and are able to do; our parents, who need accurate evidence about their children’s progress; our teachers, who need information that helps them improve the quality of their professional practice and better meet the learning needs of their students; and the general public, which needs to know if schools and teachers are helping children learn how to use their minds well."

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WatchThis short video excerpt from the Coalition of Essential Schools' EssentialVisions DVD series illustrates students at Quest High School (Humble, Texas) in the process of creating and presenting their senior exhibitions. A graduation requirement at Quest High School, exhibitions are interdisciplinary forms of performance assessment that demonstrate students' mastery of their studies and readiness to move onto life, work, and responsible citizenship.

Listen In this podcast, three Urban Academy alumni discuss how the performance-based assessment system used in their high school prepared them well for college and career. The Urban Academy is a public school in New York City and part of the New York Performance Standards Consortium. Listen to it here.

Do these things at the local, state and federal levels to make your voice heard:

Local

Across the country, networks of schools are using performance-based assessment systems to determine what students know and are able to do. Contact one of them to find a school near you and schedule a visit to see what performance assessment looks like in action.

Big Picture Schools
Center for Collaborative Education
Coalition of Essential Schools
EdVisions
Foxfire
National Network for Education Renewal
New York Performance Standards Consortium

State

Write to your State Legislator and ask them to include performance assessment as part of their Race to the Top Assessment Program application. Recommended language is here.

Federal

Write your Senator or Representative and ask them to support improvements to assessment provisions in the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, most recently know as No Child Left Behind. Recommended language is here.

Everyone has a powerful learning story: What's yours?

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Everyone knows the ultimate purpose of public education is to ensure that all children learn how to use their minds well.

Yet today, too many schools still reflect an Industrial-age philosophy about the proper management of human beings. In fact, although schools have changed some in the last one hundred years, most are still organized to impart a largely fact-based, rote-oriented curriculum through structures that do not allow long-term teacher-student relationships or in-depth study.

Over and over again, research and casual observation reveal that in too many of our schools, students feel alienated from teachers, who appear to have little time for students unless they are unusually ‘bright’ or ‘problematic.’ Teachers feel at odds with administrators, who appear to have little time for them unless their concerns pertain to contractual matters, mandates, or paperwork. And everyone feels victimized by the ‘system,’ which demands attention to reports and procedures when teachers, students, and administrators would rather devote their time to each other and to learning.

We can do better.

We can end the nationwide culture of testing, and create a national culture of learning instead. And we can start to do so by reflecting on what we already know to be true about powerful learning, seeing which elements are most essential to those experiences, and then holding ourselves and our elected officials accountable for supporting policies that empower educators to create those sorts of learning environments for all children.

Everyone has a powerful learning experience. What's yours?

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