Taking a break from my break today... :)

Hey Roper:

SO how do you tell if your children are doing well? Do you use standardized tests? And if so, how do you keep your teachers from just "teaching to the test" out of fear of being sacked?

--Ray

Yes but she cares about what George Bush is doing in Iraq and South Africa so that trumps her obvious lack of education.

rayb wrote:

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Hey Roper:

SO how do you tell if your children are doing well? Do you use standardized tests? And if so, how do you keep your teachers from just "teaching to the test" out of fear of being sacked?

--Ray

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Teachers have many assessment tools.  Standardized test are just one of them.  Standardized tests are all about accountability--the community wants some kind of measurement to help them feel good that their money isn't being wasted.  Standardized tests are getting better, but they still don't measure higher-order thinking (application, analysis, evaluation, creativity.)  They measure knowledge and comprehension.

Education has placed such high stakes on standardized tests that indeed many teachers feel pressured to "teach to the test" so that kids will pass.  My own philosophy is that if I'm meeting educational standards in my teaching, my kids will pass the standardized tests with no problems.

With my students, I use two formal assessments at the first of the year to determine baseline knowledge in reading and math.  I'll repeat those assessments mid-year and again about a month before the end of school to chart progress.  I use regular portfolio assessments for writing and science. Additionally, I use informal assessments, such as running records and anecdotal records, on almost a daily basis for a more continual assessment of progress rather than relying exclusively on the "snapshots" of more formal assessments.

Roper wrote: "don't measure higher-order thinking (application, analysis, evaluation, creativity.)  They measure knowledge and comprehension"

Is it possible to measure these things? I mean, is it possible to even quantify them? And if so, exactly how do you encourage these things in children so that they are better?

What exactly is the point of education? Is it to make kids really really good at math?
Is it to allow them to point out America and Iraq and South Africa on a map?

I've worked in companies with folks who are brilliant. I've really struggled to know how it is that they were able to get so far ahead... I wonder how they learned any of this stuff in school at all...

I guess I question the limitations of the school system in general, and what sorts of things I as a parent should be doing to compensate or prepare my kids (and kids around me) for more advanced learning or loving learning or whatever...

I'd also be interested to know if you think there's a gospel application to this... in how we learn and apply and study the Gospel, etc...

--Ray

Some vignettes from my first week teaching Kindergarten:

On the first day, I taught the kids restroom procedures--here's how we line up, here's how we wait for our turn, don't slam the stall doors, don't crawl around on the floor, only two squirts of soap, etc. Partway through our practice, one little boy raised his hand and announced to the whole class, "I had an operation on my wiener so I can pee better." Speechless.

For the first week, I've been going through the lunch line and eating with the children to model the correct procedures and good table manners. On Wednesday, the chubbiest little boy in class pointed to one of the cafeteria workers and asked me, "Why is she so fat?" "We come in all different sizes," I replied. "Yeah, but why is she so fat?" Speechless. Although I wanted to say, "Same reason as you, chunky boy."

One little girl has had a really tough time adjusting to school. She cries every morning when her mom drops her off. She often cries at recess. On Thursday at recess, another girl approached her, put her arm around her, and said, "I'm sorry you're sad. Do you want to come and play with me?" Speechless. My crying girl shook her head and scrunched her shoulders forward, whereupon the "friend" took a step back, put a hand on her hip, and said, "You're just a crying little bitch, aren't you," and walked off indignantly. Shocked. And even more speechless. I had a talk with the "friend" later about how we don't say those kind of things to our friends.

I survived the first week. I'm exhausted. I'm really thankful that tomorrow is a holiday. And I hear it gets easier after the first week. Hopefully I won't be struck speechless so often. 

-- Edited by Roper at 18:37, 2007-09-02

You're not kidding. My oldest came home from Kindergarten using his middle finger in an objectionable manner. He only did it once, though. He had it quite firmly explained to him that it was very rude and not allowed in our house.

It is amazing the things children come armed with to school. It is almost enough to want to homeschool them... because MY children would NEVER be impure were it not for all those nasty gentile kids...

--Ray

Honestly, I feel that I had a very good education as a child, and I graduated from high school in '04 to give you a perspective. The elementary school teachers that I had were all very good and I loved learning. They added fun to the curriculum, so that they could balance out making us watch the news (which I actually now love to do) to having us go and catch some bugs outside and do a research report on them. I always remember being rewarded for good behavior, and if the class as a whole didn't have good behavior, we wouldn't receive the awards, so it made the whole class help each other to behave.

My dad was always encouraging us to get into any honors programs that we could, so in middle school and high school I was able to bypass most of the bad teachers. Granted my history and English classes were just the teachers preaching their ideas to me, which I did not appreciate. Also, once I hit AP classes, the history and English teachers just got worse and thought it best to tell us about all of the scandals in history and literature, including letting us know that EVERYTHING that is written can allude to sex (I kid you not, in my AP English class, if the teacher asked what the author was referring to, it was generally sex. If not sex, it was God, but that was less likely. We did and experiment one day to prove it!) Because it was an AP class, if we couldn't hack it he would just get mad and tell us not to have our parents whine and complain and if we couldn't live up to college standards that was our problem. So I dropped AP English and went down to "honors" English, where we read Hamlet and I was finally able to read Shakespeare and enjoy it, and we learned about logic in writing, and we learned about how important it is that we maintain our creativity and not just write what we think the teacher wants to hear. Then I had a really good Eng 101 teacher when I got to college.

That's why I stuck to math and physics. In math, you can easily prove your conclusion and don't have to get too passionate to express your opinions. And in physics, I am just constantly amazed at what a perfect and beautiful Universe our Heavenly Father created! At least that's how it was in high school, where I had amazing teachers!

Then I came to the big university where most of my teachers are the engineers that are going on for more education on engineering theory, which we do need to learn, but if they gave us just a couple of applications instead of only theory, we engineering students would be able to understand the theory a whole lot better.

Thumbkin... tall man... HUH??? How many verses are there? I only sing the thumbkin, run away part and then it's over. (This is where I'd use the Nauvoo shrugging guy, but I CAN'T!!!) (Nauvoo grumbling blue guy goes here.)

BTW, I read recently that Miss Teen South Carolina had a 3.5 grade point average. So she's considered one of the smart kids.

See, that's the thing about GPA...grades in remedial classes count for the same as AP/Honors classes. (Unless you wade into the mires of weighted GPA...)

Did you hear the follow-up answer? "We need more geography..." or something like that... anyhoo.