Friday, October 1, 2010

MWP

I'm sitting here at the Effective Practices Conference waiting for the keynote address to start. It's always energizing to be around so many educators who are committed to making a difference for our students. Can't help but think of the fact that the next few weeks my entire school will be involved in testing, not teaching. It seems we could make better use of our time. So opposite to what today is all about.
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2 comments:

  1. jon yorkOctober 1, 2010 at 5:15 PM

    As a board Member of the MCELA, I can only say that testing and more testing seems to be headed our way. If endless testing doesn't appeal to you, then you should make your voice heard - many teachers don't even know that Maine is right now drafting legislation that will adopt the multi-state standards set. It's not set in stone, but the implications of these standards carries with it the design of what was explained to me to be an intuitive testing procedure - not just once a year, but continually, and designed to see where each student is functioning at the moment - opposed to current tests which apparently only measure what a student doesn't know. Not sure how this is really different, but the clear message is that testing may be on the way to Maine big time....

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  2. Kristi BancroftOctober 10, 2010 at 8:02 AM

    This week it is PSAT testing for sophomores and juniors on Wednesday. At the same time the freshmen will be tested in BOTH reading and math via the NWEA's.

    Two weeks later freshmen, sophomores and juniors will be given the same SAT-type writing prompt - one of four that will be administered this year. To my knowledge, my freshmen's 25-minute writing prompt product will be scored alongside the sophomores and juniors using the same rubric. Through the year the scores of these prompts will be compared and my work as a teacher will be assessed, based on their "measurable growth". This is all very disturbing to me as I should be preparing my students for the SAT writing prompt during their junior year, but I don't feel it's fair to assess them at the freshman year using this type of writing prompt.

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