Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
forced to do things that contradict some of the excellent advice I see
here at Phys-L. Also, in part because the standards are not written
very well and are quite muddy.
This brings up a couple of observations.
One agreeing with the above. I tried to take the viewpoint that theAnd we thank you for trying to help!
test is going to be the true standards, not the verbiage in the
standards document. So here was a chance to hopefully at worst "do
no harm" and at best to improve things a bit.
I have increased empathy for my colleagues in K-12, because I don't
see any easy way that they can cope with these standards documents
other than ultimately trying to see what the actual tests seem to be
testing. One obvious problem is how are they supposed to guess how
the question writers are interpreting the standards as they write their
test questions? It is a big morass.
It was quite an eye-opening experience. I'm not sure that the processThe only reason I know as much as I do about the test questions, is I also spent time in Sacramento a few years ago, for Harcourt reviewing the test questions written by college professors. Our groups were mostly high school teachers. Our job was to review the questions to see if we believed the standards were being addressed. Because two of us taught EL students (students with English as a second language), we rewrote most of the stems of the multiple choice questions and some of the answers to shorten them so our students would have a chance to answer them. And as John Denker pointed out, our textbooks are wrong sometimes, so we threw out a few questions because the answers contradicted our textbooks. Unlike you, we did not receive payment for our services, we are just high school teachers trying to make sure our students got a fair shake. I did not mind volunteering my time because Harcourt did pay for our expenses.
is resulting in anything that will improve the education in our state.
But I met colleagues that I haven't met before and I got a week's pay,
so I'm glad I participated; and hopefully "I did no harm".