Fair Isn't Always Equal: The Rest of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4

(Page 35) “Always err on the side of substance, not fluff.”
I love projects. I mean actually doing them myself, making something. I did a fabulous job last year on Ava’s “All About Me” project for her pre-school class. I’ll even go out on a limb and say it was the best one in the class. (Okay, that’s not really going out on a limb—some of the projects didn’t show the effort of any 3-D effects at all…they were just simply colored with Crayolas.) So what did I learn by doing, I mean helping, Ava with that project? (Other than cute cloth at a fabric store is really expensive.) Not a whole lot. While I do think the project is valid for pre-schoolers to do, when we assign projects in our class we have to ask ourselves, “What is the student going to learn from this?” or “How will this further the student’s learning?” I’ve seen some neat projects in my time but have wondered what the student learned in the process. Just because students are making some nifty project doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily learned anything. Don’t think I’m not guilty—I’ve certainly assigned pointless projects in my time. I think it’s Maya Angelou whom Oprah gives credit for saying, “I did then what I knew then. When I knew better, I did better.”

On another note, I like how Wormelli goes into detail about rubrics and how to design them (pages 44-48). After reading it, I definitely realized that the HSAP rubric is analytic—hence the reason why students can get different scores when different people score the responses. I also like how he suggested not to have five levels on the rubric because students tend to automatically think of the A-F scale. I had never thought about that, but it does make perfect sense. I think our clapping engagement in our first class reiterated the importance of giving the rubric to the students before they actually start the assignment.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 through Page 32

(Page 13) “According to Nolen and Taylor, ‘…there are two ways to obtain sufficient evidence of mastery: 1) multiple assignments, and 2) tracking the progress of a few important works over time.’”

While it certainly is a whole lot easier, is it really fair to use one assessment to determine a student’s knowledge of material? Y’all know I’m not a big fan of EOC’s to begin with, but when I think about those exams and their high stakes, I always reflect back to a crew I had taking the Math Tech II EOC. I’ll protect the innocent (or is that guilty?) and spare names, but I had Student A who was failing MT2 out the wazoo and didn’t have a clue what was going on. (He shouldn’t have gotten credit for MT1, but that’s another story.) Though he failed the class overall, he ended up passing the EOC. Then I had Student B who was a pretty good MT2 student. The afternoon before he took the EOC, one of his good friends died in a car accident, so he wasn’t very focused on the exam and ended up failing it. Though he passed the class, the required exam did impact his final grade. Do you think it was fair that that test counted for 20% of each student’s final grade?

While having multiple assignments may add a little more to our plate, it definitely gives a better picture of what the student does or does not know. I think back to an undergraduate class I took at USC where we were supposed to read a novel each week and discuss it in class. Our grade in the class, however, was based solely on our written responses to only two of the books; one counted as the mid-term and the other as the final. Guess how many books I read for the class? If said two, you win the prize. Looking at my transcript you would see that I had a B in African-American literature and would probably think I’m pretty well-versed on such novels; if the professor had assessed me on multiple assignments, she would have quickly found out I neither read nor knew squat!

How many of know of great teachers who had a really tough time passing the Praxis or NTE (for us old-timers) to become certified? Or know of some not-so-great teachers who breezed through the test? Even though the ADEPT process seems quite daunting to those of us who did not have to go though it, I think the idea of it is much better at assessing new teachers than the old APT checklist. (Did I get my humor point in this post?!? )

Okay, so I think I’ve made my case for the support of multiple assignments. What are your thoughts on the topic and/or other parts of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3?