Please refer to this article

https://tcrecord.org/library/Abstract.asp?ContentId=13828

Thank You Zol for the article

Douglas

Dear Douglas

For me some of the methods that are used to teach me again I always triptych: learning to understand in order to transmit.

Best regards

FADEL

Dear Fadel,

I thank you for your reply

Douglas

Directed, modern technology based, and controlled methods of teaching are prevalent  and students are silent listeners and spectators. Teachers are not free to develop its own methods of teaching and curriculum. So, teachers' critical thinking, analytical skill, motivational delivery, reflective intent, etc. are missing in the class rooms.

Dear Subhash and Shaban,

I thank you both for the information. 

Unrealistic and Impractical High Stakes

High stakes testing can therefore be said to be a nexus point at which parents, students, and educators can and should unite to fight our common enemies and defend our schools.

Union leaders yielded to the “reformers” regarding the increased use of high stakes testing, is content to juggle the precise percentages of our overall job performance that is to be derived from this arbitrary, highly unscientific data. They, need to hear from both parents AND teachers that the status quo is unacceptable, and that their plans to further emphasize the use of high stakes testing will be met with fierce resistance.

http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/09/09/advance-teacher-evaluation-and-parentteacher-solidarity-in-the-age-of-the-high-stakes-test/

Thank you dear Krishnan for telling what I believe the truth to be. If we allow this false primes to continue without fierce resistance it will be the end of education as we know it.

I would like to ask a follow up to Krishnans' point about action. I am wondering if social disobedience has sailed away into the night due to the fear or being fired? Is the dollar that mush more powerful than the loss of a generation of children?

Douglas 

Understanding the Interaction Between High-Stakes Graduation Tests and English Learners

The next round of federal and state educational policy must be a mandate that provides support for ELs to meet performance standards by providing evidence-based solutions: appropriate curriculum, pedagogy, and well-trained teachers should be cognizant of the less intrusive approach that many ELs and their families have toward schools by reconsidering whether “one size fits all” high-stakes exit testing policies are plausible for increasingly heterogeneous student populations.

http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=16201

Ever developing civilisation requires new techniques. Certainly, you have noticed that a teacher also must change his/her modes of teaching and training.

A good way for training and checking skills and knowledge is to add exercising in VE.

A teacher has to devote much time, but, in future  the feedback is effective both: for the students and for the teacher.

Dear Krishnan and Olga,

Thank you both, your input is highly valued.

@ Krishnan, I agree that the next power play by government will be with regards to ESL learners and again we will be taking time away from good teaching to prepare the students for 15 day's of rote memorization based on the "testing" of our new immigrated children.

@ Ulga, Am I to understand that you are a proponent of this age of high stakes testing? If so would you explain your position and reasons for taking your stance. I would really like to here from you. Thank you in advance

I thank you all,

Douglas

@Douglas

I have had several groups studying basic English.

Time-on-task spent practicing important  material-not-covered on high stakes tests (but important to life and critical thinking in particular) has diminished in order to promote the hyperfoci on high stakes tests.

 Millions of teaching hours have been lost or have been simply off task.

Dear Kevin,

I could not agree more!

Thank you,

Douglas

I taught social studies 11 for the Burnaby School district. When the B.C. government imposed a government exam on that course, many teachers, including myself had to drop whole units from their curriculum in order to free up time to prepare students for the exam. One of most unfortunate effects was that many of us had been teaching students research and essay writing skills, which we would spend a month on, encouraging the students to explore an ethically charged topic such as the Holocaust. Once the government exam came in, we had to scrap that unit and focus more on teaching students to memorize "facts" that they could regurgitate on the government exam. Now that I am teaching university, many of my colleagues complain that students graduating from grade 12 in B.C. do not know how to write a research paper. I place the faulty squarely on the shoulders of the B.C. government when they made the decision to standardize the Socials 11 course by imposing the exam at the end of the year.

There always needs to be a balance between the need for assessment in order to know whether students are actually mastering certain skills/knowledge, and time to use creative teaching to impart those skills/knowledge. Students I had from 1990s thru 2010, either in a Masters program, or as interns, were very unprepared in basic skills (writing, spelling) and knowledge of the field. They came up during a time of few standard tests. One can, clearly, go overboard in both directions. The need for clear definitions of skills and needed knowledge, and some way to assess them, is very important, as is the need to be a creative teacher who can address the needs of all students. How to accomplish both goals is much more difficult to specify.

Quality Teaching Initiatives Concerns

• Reliability of using high stakes student tests to evaluate teachers;
• Use of high stakes tests has been shown to promote  teaching to the tests or other efforts to “game” the  system and  even fraud
• Evaluation will provide limited improvement in the quality of teaching unless there is more emphasis on ongoing teacher support, training and mentoring which the state has yet to prioritize
• The mentoring, induction, and career ladder programs are currently small.

http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Are-We-There-Yet-College-and-Career-Readiness-Report-Card.pdf

Dear Laurel, Gerald, and Krishnan,

Thank you all for your replies. 

@ Laurel, I am in agreement with you and your thoughts regarding the rote teaching and students memorizing dry facts. There is no pedagogy involved in this type of "teaching"

@ Gerald, I personally understand and to some extent agree with your position on learning and mastering the basics. However, for me I would gladly trade a few spelling errors to have the students write a beautifully crafted argument. I would trade the memorizing of an important historical date for the background knowledge as to why X happened on Y day.

@ Krishnan, Your words and information I am honored to receive and learn from.

Again I thank you all,

Douglas

Dr. Marie Farrell's doctoral dissertation addresses this question and finds that teachers are much impacted by changes of programmes of study. This thesis is available free on the U Calgary library:

The art of teaching is affected by "technology changes'' and "tailor made" teaching methods, where teacher is not free to use its own methods.

Dear Yvonne, Subhash, and Shaban Ahmad,

@ Yvonne, I thank you for the information you provide. How about any personal thoughts on the question at hand.

@ Shaban, Your information is of great help my friend!

@ Subhash, I could not agree more. I do see a great change in the abilities for teachers to stop the lesson if a "teaching moment" comes up do to the fact they need to be on page 176 by 10:20 am Tuesday 6th 2015 and the true learning opportunity for both teacher and student has been passed by due to our current educational straight jackets enforced on us.

I again what to thank you three for taking the time to respond and your insightful views on  the matter of importance.

Douglas

Hi, Douglas. I would say the answer is no. When freedom is taken away, knowledge cannot flourish. The high stakes testing is submitting to a mind set that is enveloped in a box and teachers cannot teach. The art of teaching is awesome. It is a creative force that has many expressions. But high stakes testing has squelched that creative energy with power to silence what really needs to be taught. So children become mannequins. They wear a poker face because what was inside of them has died or they rebel and end up in prison.

Teachers are very special people and so are children. Neither one of them should be used as political targets or political objects. I believe in unschooling, schools without walls, and home schooling and any other form that allows for creative expression in the classroom because life is the student in the classroom of the world – not the cubical called a classroom with windows and a playground. The parent cannot help but teach in the environment of life. For home schooling, learning is the world that the student knows. This is what I believe the classroom needs to imitate. Instead, the classroom is imitating failure which is obvious by the Nation’s Report Card. I believe we need to let teachers teach, but we can’t because of high stakes testing. We put too much pressure on teachers to be something that they can’t be. I believe teachers take the brunt of the educational system, and it’s not fair to them. We need to lower the ratio of students to teacher. At this point it is, I believe, 16:1. We are about to face an incredible surge in student enrollment. We are not prepared for it and pushing high stakes testing is only going to make becoming a teacher a chore instead of a joy.

I wish I had a million bucks because I would set up my own school and give it a try. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money. Even if I did have the money, the community has to be willing to give it a try. So not only are teachers chained to the educational system, but so is the community. It is very hard to move forward in any direction now without the government and the community chained to the schools. Freedom is becoming a lost word in the dictionary and so is the art of teaching. It’s all about people – not data and testing. Here we are teaching each other what we know and sharing knowledge. So I will humbly leave and hope that you find answers to your question.

Hi Douglas

I agree with you that teaching is an art. The new technologies were so effective methods to improve it. Now the teachers act as a guiders, organizers, and managers for their students.This will improve their self dependence and will significantly improve the objective learning.  Best regards

Douglas: I agree that one can go overboard in the "facts" department, to the exclusion of thinking skills. However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps I wasn't as pointed as I should have been: my students couldn't write a clear, cogent report, even excluding the spelling/grammar issues. I think, in part, this was due to lack of clear goals of their teachers, and lack of rigor in assessment. Remember, these were MA and PhD students! I don't want to think about how poorly trained the high school and BA people were. Again. The issue is not either/or: it is both/and. How to accomplish this, as I said, is not so easy.

Gerald, the basic issue--other than academics--which is lost through the overdoses we witness in the USA over 3-plus decades of high stakes testing (from the town, city, state and federal government levels came these tests all at once) is that many institutions (and students and teachers) throughout all levels have lost  on enrichment tasks which promote student initiative, motivation and, finally, lifelong learning.

Whereas the basics may be important for academic success at the earliest levels--"the same procedure as last year, James"--does not work with every grade level nor developmental level of youth.

In short, one-size-fits-all models and practices hardly fit anyone well.

This is why we can surmise that increasingly time was lost by students on "basics-plus" at all grade levels over time.  Basics are one thing basics-plus is what most of us educators desire for our kids.

Dear Corinne, Faiq, Gerald, and Kevin;

I thank you four for the contributions you have made to this thread. The issue of HST and pedagogy is to important!!!

@ Corinne, HST and Freedom!! interesting connection to make, perhaps a Marxist critique is in order!

@ Faiq, For me personally, I am very troubled with and have great concern regarding technology and teaching. I have no such concerns with technology and education but my growing concern is the growing belief by some (amount of questions posed on RG) that technology can one day become the teacher and I have to much respect for the profession and the human teacher-youth relationship  Thank you for your kind words.

@ Gerald, I agree that assessments provides the information necessary for us to tailor our focus toward the needs of students but I think we have gone to far. Taking all that instructional/classroom time away from teaching hurts even the issues you raise. Grammar and spelling are important, I agree, so perhaps the time might be better used in addressing the concern you raise. Thank you and your concerns are greatly respected!

@ Kevin, I am agreement with your post however Gerald does raise an important issue. It appears as though one issue is constant throughout the critiques in the era of HST. That being the lack of students coming into college are not prepared. Hence, what HST was designed to address is in some way's its own worst nightmare and that is an irony that should be worth mentioning.

 Again I thank you!!!

Douglas

In “High Stakes Testing and Curricular Control: A Qualitative Metasynthesis” a study analyzing 49 qualitative studies to determine how high - stakes testing affected curriculum. For his purposes, Au defined curriculum to include “content, pedagogy and knowledge form”. Principal finding determined “curricular content is narrowed to tested subjects, subject area knowledge is fragmented into test - related pieces.

http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/15112/Ralston_ku_0099D_12785_DATA_1.pdf?sequence=1

Dear Krishnan,

Thank You,

I would think that the fragmenting into "test-related-pieces" would be alarming to most educational researchers. It would seem this fragmentation of subject knowledge into specific "categories could explain (at least partially) the lack of connectivity between what appears to be subjects unrelated but in fact are. Meaning the ability to link differing concepts together in order to create new meanings or new conceptual knowledge's.

Krishnan, again many thanks.

Douglas  

Dear Gloria,

That is so sad. How does your ex-student cope with this situation? H/she must not be to happy.

The educational factory line is getting mote and more fine tuned as it exists and I must say I am very glad I no longer teach in K-12. I

Thank you so much

Douglas

Not an answer but a follow on question from a non-teacher - Is it "style" of teaching that changes with high stakes testing, or is it the "content" of what is taught... or is it impossible to separate the two?

Dear Micheal,

For me it was an almost complete transformation of style and "content" . First as to the style or manor in which I taught for the test is much more focused on specifics such as dates of events, who were the combatants, which side won, what year did such and such start and ends or law passes ect. There is little "style" in drilling information into students heads. Of course there are memory tricks that can be taught and used but rote memorization is not what I call teaching.

As to your question regarding content it also is narrowed down to the best educated guess as to what is going to be on the test. In-fact there is research being done the moment the test from this year is done and the questions are known as to the possibilities for next years. 

Last, your point of separation between pedagogy and content.  As a social studies teacher for two decades I would argue (and I believe most would agree) that after a few years we teachers create our own pedagogical style which not only delivers the best we have to offer in the sense of adapting to students needs but also what we believe really works for us as well.

Thank you Michael for your thoughtful question!

@ Shaban, well stated my friend!  Sense NCLB in 2001 the federal government here in the U.S. has not only exerted its power but by placing the funding of schools as part of the highway bills funding many states that "opted out" are now opting back in due to the dramatic decrease in federal funding received by individual states. This funding process is much more tightly controlled and regulated by the "Feds" astime has passed.  

Indeed it is a high stakes test!

Douglas

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for the prompt and thoughtful reply. I will probably have more questions on this subject in the near future.

Michael

Dear Michael,

You are welcome and I and others will be glad to respond.

I look forward to reading you next!

Douglas

In Chicago program students with low test scores were not promoted to the next grade and schools and teachers were put on probation. The program increased student achievement, although the improvement was larger in skill sets used on the high-stakes exam.

Jacob, Brian (2002), “Accountability, Incentives and Behavior: The Impact of High-Stakes Testing in the Chicago Public Schools,” National Bureau of Economics Working Paper 8968.

This is a very critical question. But, I personally feel that especially in Universities we should teach for understanding and higher-order thinking. But, the tests may not be as comprehensive as the emphasizes of teaching and learning suggested in the current literature. I said this because tests are usually bounded to paper and pencil tests which are not as comprehensive as the emphasizes of the teaching. As a result, some teachers teach for the test. So, there is a significant influence as you suggested. To minimize the negative rapurcation, we should use assessments that go beyond paper and pencil tests like for example portfolio assessment, product assessment, performance assessment and what you name.