This excellent article from TeacherMagazine.com became a premium article in Education Week Teacher. Now with a larger audience, perhaps this important topic an be addressed seriously. In our current system, only students IEPs or 504 programs are allowed extra time in taking standardized tests. Why should students have to go through M-team evaluations before being allowed more time in testing. Educators know that time is a false metric so why do we allow this to continue to happen?
Maybe, maybe this topic will get the headlines it deserves and in the current environment of new test creation, the matter can be dealt with fairly. Amen!
As you can tell, I am convinced that timed tests do not offer a reliable way to assess student understanding of a topic. I do agree, however, that some skills do need timed tests to achieve automaticity....prime examples: basic math facts or basic sight words. What are your feelings about this topic? More importantly, if you agree, how do you think timed testing could be permanently dropped in student assesments?
Please share your thoughts.
Off the Clock: Giving Students More Time to Demonstrate Learning. Kyle Redford. Education Week Teacher - premium article courtesy of TeacherMagazine.com
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/10/30/fp_redford_time.html?tkn=LRCFk6ssIGZ72TeypHQyZHd90J6cq3QYe2wY&cmp=clp-sb-ascd
As always, I enjoyed reading this perspective. This article really got into the intersection of two topics: the systems we have in place for identifying students with special needs and the ways in which those systems might not be ideal, and the question of whether timed tests are a good instructional choice or not. As far as the first topic goes, I don’t believe the research supports the author’s position, but as far as the second topic goes, I think both the research and my personal experiences align with what this individual has to say.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of compelling research on why minority and low-income students are much more likely, in some districts 3 or 4 times as likely, to bear a label and have an IEP. The author makes the claim that “many such obstacles point to limited resources,” and “the expensive price tag,” prohibits many students from being able to undergo testing, but in most public schools across the country, research suggests these students are actually over-tested. I would challenge the author a little bit on this, because I don’t believe these students really benefit from IEPs that are assigned to them based on their cultural differences. Yes, they qualify for additional services in certain cases, but does getting a couple extra minutes to finish your WKCE really help you succeed in life? Does it help you overcome the challenges of your disability? I don’t believe so.
Resource on disproportionality: http://www.futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/06_01_02.pdf
As a math teacher, I do see a justification for the use for timed facts test in certain circumstances. I think the issue is more with how we prepare students for them and how we use the data we gain from them. The reason we give students timed facts test is to assess whether they have internalized certain concepts, or whether they must work to solve each fact. This parallels reading instruction, when we time sight words to find out if students actually know them immediately or if they must use decoding strategies to “solve.” One of my students was really struggling with timed tests and I noticed that whenever she would solve in addition, she would always use the counting on strategy. For instance, to find 8+ 10 she would start at 8 and count 9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18. If this student truly understood place value, she would recognize that one group of ten plus eight ones is the same as the number eighteen. No adding is really necessary. You only need to combine the digits into a single number. In her case, using a timed test helped me see that what she really needed to do was review place value, and that she lacked a fundamental sense of how our base ten system works. It would be a poor instructional choice to continue drilling her on timed facts using flash cards, because it would not access the underlying misunderstanding she has. Other students, especially those with disabilities, may have internalized the facts but still process at a slower speed than most students. The important thing to me is what their method is. As long as they are using a process that demonstrates an understanding of our number system and they have a reliable strategy they can use on their own to solve accurately, I don’t really see a problem with letting them work a little longer.