Time to learn from others
Nova Scotia Education Minister Karen Casey agreed to streamline PowerSchool/TieNet [student information systems]. She also agreed to suspend three provincial assessments, maintain the suspension of Grade 10 exams, suspend one Grade 8 provincial assessment and place a five-year moratorium on any new assessment in favour of more teacher-generated assessment.
That should reduce some of the classroom overload, but we will have to wait to see if any of that actually happens.
Standardized assessment is science-based assessment, designed to identify strengths and improve weaknesses. Teacher-generated assessment lacks that design consistency and capability. Conscientious teachers generate assessment that connects with outcomes, and at various cognitive demand levels. Others produce something that is easy to correct.
Success or failure in the education system, as in life, often depends on our ability to comprehend what we read. Designing appropriate assessment in today’s diverse classrooms is very challenging.
The first step in that process is producing something students can read fluently. Research suggests that 85 per cent of vocabulary in assignments/assessment should be easy to read [at students’ independent reading level]; 15 per cent should be slightly challenging [at students’ instruction reading level]; and 0 per cent should be difficult [at students’ frustration reading level] because that has no educational value.
Reading courses usually aren’t part of secondary, teacher preparation programs, and the reading process isn’t part of their background knowledge, and that’s a problem. If each of Nova Scotia’s secondary teachers [grades 7-12] designed just one assessment that didn’t consider readability levels, and assigned that assessment to five classes of 25 students per year that could amount to 525,000 inappropriate assessments [student disconnects/year].
Many of today’s professions skilfully use readability to connect with their target audiences. Political speechwriters use readability levels to connect with voters. Except for Donald Trump’s fourth grade speeches, speeches by the other 2016 U.S. presidential candidates were written at a grade 6-8 readability range to connect with the average American voter who reads at a grade 7-8 level.
Over 450 publishers list the readability levels of their publications [in Lexiles] to connect with readers at specific grade-levels. “Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows” has a readability of [970Lexiles], suitable for students ranging from proficient 6th grade readers to struggling 8th grade readers. Shouldn’t teachergenerated assessment be designed to connect with students, at specific grade-levels?
The following comparison further illustrates the importance of the readability-comprehension connection. The Boston Globe is written at a 12th grade readability level and has an 18 per cent readership; Time Magazine is written at a 9th grade readability level and has a 35 per cent readership. If those two publications published an article on the same topic; clearly, twice as many readers could read and comprehend the Time Magazine edition. Shouldn’t that readability-comprehension connection be the first consideration for teacher-generated assessment?
Poor assessment results are usually attributed to ineffective teaching or a lack of student preparation. But there is another possibility: inappropriate assessment design [assessment written for Boston Globe readers, but assigned to Time Magazine readers].
Other professions are skilfully making the readability-comprehension connection. Why is the profession that teaches reading, and with so many possessing Masters Degrees in Education and Literacy, and supposed to be the avant-garde of the academic world, not making that connection? How long will their professional ignorance go unnoticed? Doesn’t that punish the innocent and ignore the guilty?
Al Moore Glace Bay