An excellent article that details the rift within psychometrics that standardized testing has created. Even psychometricians are saying that our nation's standardized tests, specifically those designed by Pearson Learning Systems, are excellent measures of how well students know how to take tests, but say very little about how much they have learned in the classroom. And it is not going over well when they say that.
What do you think of this in light of our specific focus on supporting literacy development? How can we widen what counts as intelligence when the stakes are high in just one code (SAE)?
http://www.texasobserver.org/walter-stroup-standardized-testing-pearson/
I agree with the criticism of the state of the test score reverence that arises from Dr. Stroup's findings. I simultaneously acknowledge the challenge of expanding a conception of learning and literacy in the contemporary paradigm of US education that places such heavy emphasis on numerical data as "truth". Much like a uni-dimensional perception of literacy that is based on holding conversation or the adequate/correct regurgitation of information, it hides the other layers that (ideally) comes with literacy: comprehension and application to one's life. In class our first day, our groups all conceived literacy as a tool that extends beyond reading and writing. While we cannot revolutionize the system in one go, I believe that we can help expand our (both ourselves as teachers and our students) collective conceptions and values of knowledge by validating and recognizing our students' collection of skills and interests. We can do this with the assignments and projects we assign, with the sources we integrate into the classroom, the decorations on our walls and a constant interest in bridging the learning to their lives wherever and whenever we can.
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