newly ancient

With the creation of No Child Left Behind, education reform got a whole lot more difficult. The concept was good-that we should hold all schools accountable for every student. Unfortunately, the implementation was simply unacceptable. We are judging schools and students based upon test results, but not all the tests are the same. Unfortunately, in an effort to appear proficient, states have been setting consistently lower and lower expectations. The effect of which is that the states with the highest expectations are doing the worst. I’ve got a little surprise for you - Mississippi students are the best readers in the nation. Not to be stereotypical, but isn’t this a surprising from a state where the challenging NAEP places students at the lowest in the nation. What we have produced is a system where students in one school are asked to run 5 miles in the same time given to other students to run 100 feet. This wouldn’t be fair in racing, so why should it be fair in reading? The only way to ensure this testing and progress system works is to adopt national standards so that an eighth-grader in Alaska takes the same test as an eighth-grader in Arkansas.

You can see the difference in standards for each state from Gannett.

By focusing exclusively upon reading and math, we are taking the focus off of the liberal and creative arts. The interesting thing I see in this is that we are focusing on the skills which will be least valuable in the future. Let’s face it: math and reading are the tasks computers can do best. Computers excel at math… and are getting increasingly adept at reading and understanding text. However, I have never seen a computer write a poem or draw a unique and beautiful painting. In essence, the unique ability humans have is creativity. In light of this, schools should be seeking to capitalize on student’s creative potential rather than pushing it behind the useless mathematical memorization. When today’s kindergarteners will be able to calculate anything on a computer 24/7, what is the use of doubling times table memorization period and cutting liberal arts down to once a week?

I do not believe we should require art, music, or any other study. Instead, we should be giving students the choice between the liberal arts and letting them express their talents.

I feel that education should be a top priority for our nation, if we want to continue to hold our place on the cutting edge of technology and economics. In order to foster these beliefs, I propose we remodel the assessment system so that it truly tracks student and school performance. Critical to this is that we adopt consistent national standards. Not only would this ensure every student receives an equal education, but it would save money for taxpayers across the nation. If we adopt a national test, then you will be able to compare test results from school to school, state to state, and know they are always accurate. If education is truly equal, then expectations should be equal.

In addition to a nationalized test, we must ensure that schools are placing equal emphasis upon both the sciences and liberal arts. Therefore, scores on reading, writing, math, and thinking should be reported for every school. Notice how this focuses exclusively upon skills. We should be testing upon learning, not knowledge. That is a major flaw I find in many standardized tests-you might be asked the date of the American Revolution, but never the effect upon world politics. Assessment should concentrate upon transferable (from school to work) skills, rather than memorization. In order to maintain a position as a global leader, the United States should create a nationalized assessment placing equal emphasis upon both the sciences and liberal arts.

Whenever talking about the interet, the long tail must always be mentioned. The concept is simple: instead of having a couple immense websites, we have billions of sites all serving a specific niche. Well, perhaps education could learn a little from this concept.

Dan Meyer has found an interesting way of bringing the long tail into the classroom. Instead of having a single final exam, we could have extremely specific, small tests all year long. This creates a long tail of grades. At the top, you might have the majority of topics, which a student understands well. From there, a curve is formed down to that one topic the student really didn’t understand. Instead of having to retake a long final exam, that student can simply learn more about parabolas and retake the 5 question minitest. Of course, the benefits of micrograding extend beyond a single student. If the majority of the class fails on a specific microtest, then you know exactly what you need to reteach. By micrograding, a long tail of achievement can be created in education.

Unfortunately, implementing micrograding can be very hard. With the limited time available, it is hard to justify giving another test. In addition, the effort of grading all these tests can be very hard. The long term solution is to provide more time for learn and one laptop for every student. By giving each student a laptop, teachers can easily prepare a microtest using an internet application, publish it for the class. With the test in place, students simply login to the site for 5 minutes at the beginning of class, take the test, and get ready for the lesson. The computer can easily grade all the tests, tabulate the results, and present it to the teacher - all in real time. By using the latest in technology, we can make micrograding and focused assessment easy to implement in all classes.