Assessment is often a
process that includes information gained from many different childhood
experiences and activities, while testing is typically limited to a particular
instrument with a specific goal (Fiore, 2012).
DIAL-4 and Work Sampling are owned by Pearsons company, and are in
alignment with the Common Core. First of
all what is the Common Core? I had to do
a bit of research to find out what the Common Core even is. Iʻve never heard of this. From my understanding, it is basically a new
way of teaching. As time changes, we
evolve. Everything around us changes and
supposedly, new and better ways of doing things arise. We are always evolving. According the video, Everybody Hate Pearson,
Reingold shares her thoughts on Pearson.
She shares that Pearson is involved in every element of education, from
creations of curriculum, to teaching strategies, to tests and so forth. The people feel they have too much control of
our childrenʻs education, therefore causing a
giant backlash coming from both the left and the right. What does she mean by this? Well, people care about education, especially
their children and their futures. And so
the problem is basically being present in the business of education. Are their intentions good or bad? Is it for the better future of our generations to come, or are they being greedy for power and money?
All programs are in alignment with the Common Core State Standards, which is we have adopted here in Hawaiʻi that consists of a set of national K-12
standards.
Who is getting the money from using Common Core?
In Kohnʻs reading, he states that the NAEYC
articulated 4 reasons for assessments of young children: 1) to support teaching
and learning, 2) to recognize children in need of intervention or support services,
3) to evaluate earl childhood programs and monitor trends, and 4) for
high-stakes accountability (2003, p. 10).
Growing up, I remember that feeling of knowing test days were coming up;
Feelings of anxiety and nervousness. The pros to assessments is understanding
where children are and what they know. Allowing teachers to know where their
students are academically can support and guide their curriculum to help children
grow. As for the cons, making children
feel like failures, for one. These
standardized tests are benchmarks that tell children where they SHOULD be, rather than where they COULD be. Not feeling like youʻre good enough already sets the bar
for a childʻs future, or at least it did for
mine. I felt like I couldnʻt do it, therefore, I didnʻt want to do it. One of these systems could be appropriate, but as I shared last week, if you havenʻt experienced these programs, then
you really canʻt say what works and what doesnʻt.
Also, what works for one classroom might not work in another
classroom. All these factors need to be
taken in to consideration when deciding on the program for your classroom.
Hi Mahealani,
ReplyDeleteChildren that don’t do good on test like me do see ourselves as failures. We see ourselves as failures because we don’t do good when we take a test we get test anxiety. I think at a young age that is the age of where they are setting their selves for the future. Teachers do lecture them and not focus on the actual child. They just focus what is on the test. They don’t get to know the child. I think that we should lift up the children and set some goals for them for the long run so that they do good on these tests but also not seem them as failures. At what age do you think children get test anxiety? You made some great points in your blog. Thanks for sharing.
It is frightening as a child when they see or hear the word test. Assessments are a great way to measure students academic level and where they are. I do think that assessments like Pearson which is a great curriculum and Common Core measure a students strengths and weakness. At a young age though to understand how a child learns, testing is only one part of a students development. Compared to the other form of assessments, I liked and feeled the TS Gold Strategy is more beneficial to teachers and parents.
ReplyDeleteAloha Kemomi,
ReplyDeleteI definitely encourage you to keep investigating the Common Core, as it is the program that all public schools in Hawaii, and a majority of states in the US, use. Therefore, when we are getting children "ready" for kindergarten, this is what we are preparing them for. There are some things that need to be questioned, though, about it. For instance, should each child in the entire US be learning about the exact same things at the same time? Are there no contextual differences between a child in, say, Hawaii, and Washington state and New Jersey? At the same time, though, should there be a shared common knowledge between everyone who considers themselves a US citizen?
And yes, feelings of anxiety are pretty typical when it comes to test taking. The systems we examined over the past week have their own pros and cons, but we'll look at a few other ways throughout the next few weeks that also do very thorough assessments, but do not have test like components to them. Still, there is a movement within the US to move more towards test-taking, and if we feel as a field that this is not the way to move forward, we need to be able to articulate why these other forms of assessment are preferable. But how do we do that? Mahalo!