Assessment in the Partnership Pedagogy
Chapter
8 Discusses assessment with a quick review knocking the usefulness of
summative assessment and the effectiveness of formative assessment.
Prensky talks about ipsative assessment which is where someone is
competing against themselves, trying to beat a personal best. This
occurs in schools, by mostly by teacher encouragement of “you can do
better next time.” Peer assessment is discussed as being twofold where
students prepare for a meaningful audience and students appreciate the
work of their peers, and where their own work compares. Prensky also
discusses real world assessments, where peer assessments are extended
globally using the internet. Self assessment and assessing students with
the tools that they commonly use are important as well. Teacher
assessment could be more authentic if they were peer assessed, assessed
by their students, and rate themselves, instead of just an administrator
observing them. This chapter then continues to discuss how to assess
how well a partnering classroom and school could be assessed.
This
is not my favorite chapter that I’ve read, and I don’t mean to be a
negative Nancy, but I’m not sure that one teacher can change the
paradigm of a school. If a district, or just even one site of a
district were on board to have partnering in their school then I would
hope there would be a lot of meaningful professional development on it,
and many opportunities to observe and mentor. Aside from that, I think
that self-assessment and peer assessment are very valuable, but I think
students need to be trained on them, and I honestly don’t know how many
of my former students would take it seriously. If it was a school wide
initiative, I think it could work, but in just one class, I’m not so
sure. With proper training and reinforcement I think it could happen,
but with focus in schools being standardized tests, I think it falls on
the back burner all too often. Ideally standardized tests would cease to
exist. That is never going to happen though. School funding as well as
many things that I am sure I am unaware of, depend on schools meeting
adequate yearly progress. As long as that is around, I fear that
teachers in struggling schools will always be trying to get their
students to pass the test. Also, I totally agree that parents play a
huge part in the education of their children, but having parents follow a
checklist for their students, at least in high school, would probably
not occur.
You point out a very sad truth about our schools, any new idea must begin from the ground up, hardly ever the other way around. If a teacher wants support for something like partnering they must always, for the most part, do it themselves. So as a result any PD they must find on their own. I completely agree the the value of self assessment and the catch-22 that comes with it. It seems like we are telling students one thing, with self-assessment, feedback and techniques like partnering...and then we are like, "oh, yeah...take this 3 hour long EOI at the end of the year...with not feedback on how you did...because the results come back the next year and you don't care anymore...but lets do this cool partnering activity and then we will cram for the EOI later..." If I was a parent and someone told me this I could find it hard to believe that this was the best way to teach our students?
ReplyDeleteI agree! I have this strange hate-like relationship with standardized testing. I know that as a teacher it is a pain and very over focused, but I still think there is a standard that each student should be able to pass in order to prove that they have some form of basic knowledge. I don't think it should be as high stakes as it is--affecting school budgets, teacher's jobs, etc. Students who take Algebra in Massachusetts should be able to pass a test that is given in California. There are basic processes and procedures that they should both know. I think there is a fear that if students aren't tested this way then teachers won't teach. I don't think that's true, but there should be some form of evaluation. I know, at least, that in my last school a student in the geometry class down the hall was not getting the same education as the student in my class. It was completely evident to everyone, and somehow that teacher was still there. Her standardized scores reflected it, but her class grades were not a good representation of actual student knowledge. That is not acceptable, and that is partially why I think there should be a test that all students have to take, and pass, before they are done with high school.
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