Annals of graduate school: reprise

[terriqat]

So, I'm back at Bank Street in the Early Childhood General/Special Education program. This means that when I finish I'll be able to teach anything from infants to second grade either general ed. or special ed. Its a 54 credit program, and hopefully I'll be able to finish in three years. Starting in September I'll be able to work full-time teaching

Comments

[fleurdelis28]

My mother had a stint grading or writing questions for grade-school standardized tests (I know she graded them; I don't know if she also ever wrote the questions or whether a friend of hers did), and there were actually almost ridiculously strict rules for what you couldn't include. There was a good reason for each of them -- for example, no mentioning fathers because not all students might have them -- but it ended up eliminating pretty much all potential subject matter. In which case, maybe it's better to keep the questions completely out in la-la land, since almost no third grader has any real experience of yachtness.

[shirei_shibolim]

In which case, maybe it's better to keep the questions completely out in la-la land, since almost no third grader has any real experience of yachtness.

One doesn't necessarily need any real experience, but one should probably know what a yacht is. Not all of these kids do. ("Yacht" is also a terrible word for purely orthographic reasons.)

Terri mentioned to me a while ago a reading test that featured a passage about cowboys and that required some basic understanding of what a cowboy was, which the test writers apparently believed to be universal among 8 year olds.

[fleurdelis28]

To be honest, I would have thought so. I tend to class cowboys with asteroids and dinosaurs, as subjects that children know more about these days than most adults.

[shirei_shibolim]

Given your upbringing and education (which are pretty similar to mine in all ways that matter for the purpose of this discussion), those are reasonable assumptions. This is, of course, exactly the problem: You can take a perfectly intelligent and educated person and ask her to write a test that won't discriminate against poor kids by calling for excessive outside knowledge, and there's a decent chance that it just won't work. Hence the need for a deeper understanding of the culture in which these kids live.

[rymenhild]

Good to hear from you!

Pumpkin soup sounds lovely. Would you possibly share the recipe?

Also, there was really a question about a yacht? Idiot testwriters.

Recipe

[terriqat]

I will post the recipe when I have fixed it a little -- its not ready yet for public consumption (I took it from the back of a soymilk carton, and it needs work). As for the testing issue, shirei_shibolim and fleudelis28 have hit upon the fundamental problem with testing -- finding something everyone knows at least something about. The issue with both the subjects mentioned is that they require specific cultural knowledge and either make no sense literally (what is a cow boy? A male cow? A boy who is part cow? A boy who works with cows?... you see the issue) As for the word yacht-- we teach kids to sound out words they don't know, and try to derive understanding from what they sound like -- yacht is impossible to sound out! (Especially if your first language is not standard English as is the case for most of the kids in question) The issue with giving multiple topic options is that it requires the test writers to decide on potential topics at least a year and preferably two in advance, so curriculum materials can be professionally

Re: Recipe

[amechad]

While you are correct that certain things may require a certain set of cultural knowledge, OTOH, I don't see that as a negative thing because to be an educated person (in any given country, let's say) one needs a basic set of knowledge and cultural markers. For sure, the priviledged kid who has the cultural markers (which, if you watch garbage TV like the Simple Life you will see that the well-off kid may not have the cultural knowledge) may have an easier time but the poorer kid whose parents can't read NEEDS to get the knowledge that he/she does not have about cowboys, yachts, and other "middle-class" (not that I know any middle-class person who actually owns a yacht!) in order to be considered "educated."

Re: Recipe

[shirei_shibolim]

Agreed that basic cultural context is an important thing to teach children, but the standardized reading exams are not the place for that knowledge to be tested.

The problem is simple: A child who reads at grade level but has no idea what a yacht is (if we decide to stick with that subject) may do worse on the test than a child who is a substandard reader but has that background. As the stated goal of the reading test is to test one's ability to read - and not anything else - it is counterproductive to introduce material that tests other aspects of the child's education. (See my 2005-11-15 03:26 am comment for a proposed solution to this piece of the problem.)

If you want another perspective on the problems inherent in this form of standardized testing, ask a Lion Cub friend of ours about how the Bechinah Psychometrit treats kids from Ethiopian families.

[flintknappy]

The Regents are pretty evil in general, this does not surprise me that they would do that, though it is pretty crappy