Sociological / Psycholinguistic   Bases of Bilingual Education

Notebook: 06, An Exam with a Difference (Cheating)

Reflection on testing, the TAAS, the MSPAP, and bilingual education. In the June 11 article in the Washington Post entitled “An Exam with a Difference”, Brigid Schulte brings to the forefront, an alternative end of the year exam.

 Alternative in the sense that it demands group work, project completion, writing, and higher order thinking skills. When you compare the Stanford and the TAAS, the Stanford score is 50% of the necessary information in order to predict the TAAS score. If you add a test of higher order thinking skills you can add a full 25% to that total. To me this is a scary situation. We use a test which largely only tests what Alma Flor Ada would term Descriptive Phase items. In contrast the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program, or MSPAP seems to offer a solution in that many of its items require students to synthesize and analyze in order to come up with their answer instead of just parroting back facts lifted directly from test passages.

 Can this test be abused? Can teachers teach to the test? Yes, of course, but the advantage that Maryland students have over peers in Texas or Virginia is that when their teachers teach to the test, students get into groups, they synthesize, analyze and construct meaning. It is easy for me to say that the extra cost of test construction and assessment is worth it, detractors would point to the subjectivity of various parts of the test, as well as group dynamic concerns. But what wonderful problems to encounter, in light of the responses given by Maryland teachers: “MSPAP changed the way we teach. You’re able to get inside their heads more.” And: “The way the test is designed has done a lot to improve the kink of instruction we deliver.” Finally: “What’s been lost, and I don’t really consider this a loss, is the kind of teaching when you’re only giving information.”

 I have yet to hear any similar reference make to the TAAS.

 It makes sense that if you elicit a product from students, which requires them to use and develop higher order thinking skills, you will pick up the TAAS stuff along the way, however it is safer and easier to simply teach the to the TAAS. Teachers need to take risks and break out of the safety net of domain specific worksheets.

 The down side to performance-based assessment is that it leaves a school district open to litigation due to the subjective nature of the measurement. Its interator reliability is lower than that of the TAAS.

Course Components:

1. Cognitive Theories Paper 
2. Legal Cases Analytical Paper 
3. Presentation  
4. Notebook  
5. Paper 
6. Professional Development