Habits of Mind Habits of mind include such things as knowing where to find more information, asking original questions, reflecting on and learning from experience, understanding how to collaborate, and seeking out multiple points of view. These kinds of habits are at the heart of education, but are not easily demonstrated through testing. High-Stakes Tests High-stakes tests mostly or totally
Failing Our Kids collects fifty fact sheets, opinions, and reports from across the United States into one source that disputes the value of one-dimensional testing and affirms personalized assessment. Editors Barbara Miner and Kathy Swope gathered information from Rethinking School publications (go to the web site for much more: www.rethinkingschools.org) and beyond, and the cumulative effect is both empowering (there
All of the New York Performance Consortium schools have created overviews for each of their courses. These overviews demonstrate students’ learning goals, the assessments that they will complete, and the New York State Standards for Learning that they will master as a result. Educators across the Consortium have developed scoring rubrics in all areas of the curriculum. These scoring rubrics,
Educators in the Coalition of Essential Schools share a commitment to the idea that they need to assess students’ progress to help students keep learning and to help teachers keep getting smarter about how to teach. There is also a large degree of consensus among Coalition educators that standardized tests cannot be the most important element in an assessment system-because
Coalition teachers require multidimensional exhibitions of skills and understanding to know that students have met our standards.Coalition students need opportunities to demonstrate their learning over the course of months and years. Setting up such assessments demands time, deep connections and professional competence. We know that standardized tests provide only a limited opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know. Linda
Many of us know Alfie Kohn for his courage and coherence on of the dangers of standardized testing. Kohn’s message in Punished by Rewards is perhaps even more important for educators and parents. In Punished by Rewards, Kohn painstakingly demonstrates the ways that behaviorist theory has seeped unawares into our everyday actions. We take it for granted that praise and
Robert P. Moses’ Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights opens a portal in history, connecting Moses’ experiences in the 1960s southern civil rights movement to the current-day Algebra Project, which he established to teach math to middle school students. By putting the historical struggles of blacks to gain voting rights in Mississippi during the 1960s side by side with
To help schools involved with Maine’s Learner-Centered Accountability Project, staff from the Southern Maine Partnership (S.M.P.) and participating schools have created a comprehensive assessment system model. S.M.P. schools are in the process of integrating this model into their assessment systems. Level I assessments are the multitude of assessments typically used in classrooms: vocabulary quizzes, study guides and other demonstrations of
Elizabeth Herbert provides a nuanced analysis of how creating student portfolios affects students, teachers, parents and a school community. The Power of Portfolios presents Herbert’s learning about portfolios-inspired by Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences work-as a portfolio itself, distillations of lessons learned and questions raised in seventeen years as principal of the kindergarten through fourth grade Crow Island School in Winnetka,
Fairtest: National Center for Fair and Open Testing The advocacy heavyweight for alternatives to high-stakes standardized tests, FairTest offers a resource-rich web site, The FairTest Examiner quarterly print newsletter, and a variety of publications devoted to critiques and alternatives within the testing reform movement. Don’t miss the website’s Assessment Reform Network, which will connect you with local movements supporting fair,