What's New in the Nation?
Our education system was crafted in the 1920s, and the schools of the
day focused on teaching facts and basic skills. Only the top of the
class was prepared for college and other, higher-level futures. Today,
more and more jobs require that people be able to reason, think creatively,
make decisions, and solve problems. Workers need advanced skills and
the capacity for complex thinking. Factory workers are taking a greater
role in collaborative, work groups, analyzing what they're doing and
figuring out better ways of doing it. High-tech staff need to be able
to learn new skills and knowledge constantly and rapidly.
Our school system hasn't grown at anywhere near the same pace as the
rest of North American society and world technologyėor in the same directions.
Under today's social conditions, schools face different challenges from
those of our childhood. While proposed solutions differ, everyone agrees
that we urgently need to improve the current educational system. Our
schools need to be far better aligned with the realities of today's
world, and to make adjustments to better prepare our students for the
future.
What's New in the Schoolroom?
Thanks to an increased research focus, we now know more than ever about
"best practices" in teachingėstrategies, materials, and teaching
approaches that promise the best learning results for students. There
have been literally thousands of research studies focusing on teaching
and learning, resulting in many improvements in the last generation.
How Testing Has Changed
Historically, testing was used as a way of identifying "the
best and brightest" students, those who would move into a limited
number of slots in secondary and post-secondary education. In a time
when educational resources were very limited, this may have made sense.
But today the goals are to increase, rather than limit, the number of
students who succeed and go on to higher education. This changes the
needs and purposes for testing.
One of the current practices in education (new since today's parents
were children) is to provide a variety of tests ("multiple measures,"
they're called), so that we can assess a broader range of student knowledge
and ability. Multiple-choice tests are a traditional form of
assessment. Tests that involve students in real-world tasks are currently
referred to as performance tasks. Multiple-choice and short-answer
questions are quite adequate for assessing knowledge of facts and certain
kinds of conceptual knowledge. Performance tasks are better for assessing
the kind of complex reasoning that demonstrates that a student truly
understands. (To experience the difference for yourself, see the Horse
Race Game and how students are assessed with both these methods.)
Assessment is now commonly woven into all stages of education: before
new material is presented (to assess existing knowledge), during the
learning process (to monitor how well a child is grasping a concept),
and after the lesson's been taught (to check whether the child understands
the new material). This lets a teacher assess and modify the learning
experience in time to make a differenceėrather than discover a problem
just as it's time to move on to another subject.
An effective teacher is constantly assessing students' progress through
daily and weekly home and class assignments as well as ongoing observations.
The approach of your child's teacher to assessment is an excellent subject
to raise and discuss as the school year gets under way.
Read about Standards-Based Reform
Adapted from Spark
Your Child's Success in Math and Science (GEMS, 2002) |
