Assessment can provide valuable information for educators about a particular child’s skill level. There is a need for some formal standardized assessment but it must be supplemented with teacher observations of the child working within the class setting. Standardized testing gives you just a snapshot of a child’s performance in a setting that is highly stressful for some students. There are many variables in a student’s life that can affect the results of a test given on a particular day.
In the field of early childhood education, often an overview of a new topic may be given in a large group setting and then reinforced in much smaller groups. Just having the children move to smaller groups of 3-4 children allows for assessment of what was learned during whole group instruction. Reinforcement can take place immediately, as well as, one-on-one instruction if needed.
Also, written observations in each developmental area must be maintained monthly so that anecdotal records of a child’s skills are available. I believe samples of the work from each area should be saved also. The maintaining of these types of records provides teachers with an overview of a child’s development throughout the year and can be an indicator of the need for formal testing when expected developmental milestones are not reached.
A study was published in 2001 entitled Trusting Teacher’s Judgments: A validity study of a curriculum-embedded performance assessment in kindergarten to grade 3. In the study the Work Sampling System, a teacher based assessment with sample collection, was compared to the results of the same student’s scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised, a standardized test. The results found that the teacher’s judgment was valid and their assessment of children’s learning or special needs were in direct correlation to the results indicated by the standardized test. The teacher’s assessments were conducted as part of the routine instruction with no additional stress to their students.
The International Math and Science Study has been conducted 1995, 1997, 2003 and 2007. It provides information on math and science achievement of United States 4th and 8th graders to that of other countries. One of the countries that always scores higher than the US is Japan so I thought I would look at how they assess their students. I was surprised to learn that in Japan they feel a student’s motivation to learn is the most important thing. Teachers use whole class instruction with everyone working at the same pace. Mathematics is presented in terms of concepts rather than calculations, withholding the correct answer, but having the class work as a whole to come up with as many solutions as possible. It is important to the Japanese that those who do understand help classmates that do not when doing seatwork. In the US we might see that has holding back the advanced students, but in Japan, they see it as a way for those students to cooperate with people of diverse abilities. Learning to interact with others is seen as a form of studying because it is so important in that culture. Tracking and drilling of math skills and facts is not dome until later in junior high when preparing students for high school entrance exams.
Japanese students actually spend more hours studying music, arts & handicrafts, homemaking, physical education, moral education and doing special activities than on math and science. Students participate in activities such as picking flowers and raising rabbits. We may have much to learn from Japan as our system of more time on drilling and testing does not seem to be improving our students understanding of mathematical concepts.
References
National Center for Educational Statistics. Trends in international mathematics and science study (TIMSS). Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/timss/
Samuel J Meisels, Donna DiPrima Bickel, Julie Nicholson, Yange Xue, & Sally Atkins-Burnett. (2001). Trusting teachers' judgments: A validity study of a curriculum-embedded performance assessment in kindergarten to grade 3. American Educational Research Journal, 38(1), 73. Retrieved October 15, 2011, from ProQuest Central. (Document ID: 113701421).
Wu, Angela. (1999, January). The Japanese education system: a case study summary and analysis. Research Today. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/ResearchToday/98-3038.html
Good Evening Michele,
ReplyDeleteWow! There is so much to be said about standardized testing. Personally it is not one of my favorite things to give out to my students. They all get frustrated and worried before the test begins. It is too stressful for our students to have to go through. I liked your many other suggestions on other ways we could access our children's knowledge. By the way, I found out that in Western China the teachers were teaching and students were repeating. In addition, the students also used rote learning and memorization techniques to learn material. So, I found it interesting that Japanese had different ways of teaching their children. Both countries love to study all day and night long. Nice Blog!
Hi Michele,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the information and the article about trusting teachers, it was an interesting read.
I, too, came across information about nations that focus more on play, music and arts have children that do better in school. Finland, for example, allowed children more than double the recess time than most American students, who if lucky get 20 minutes outside a day.