The End Game of Assessment

In the video, Anita Hoge recounts her experience of the Pennsylvanian school curriculum. Her research began one day when she was informed by her son that he had been given a weird test at school, one of many. Although the authorities were reluctant to provide them, she eventually gained access to the tests and discovered that the Educational Quality Assessments (EQAs) were testing children`s attitudes, values and beliefs. If children did not achieve the government approved outcomes after testing, they were provided with remediation and tested again. This process would continue until the child responded appropriately. So this was a child-centred, lifelong learning approach.

Because attitudes, values and beliefs are predispositions to behave in certain ways in certain situations, what was applied to the children in Pennsylvania was a form of behavioural modification, using Skinnerian techniques. Group pressure was used for reinforcement of the desired outcomes, and all of this was being done without parental knowledge or consent. There are lessons to be learned here.

Since school text books are being used less and less in the classroom, it is often difficult to know what children are being taught in school. In Scotland, Curriculum for Excellence has little to say about content. However, we are given lots of information about the importance of assessment to the learning process. For instance:

Assessment is an integral part of learning and teaching. It helps to provide a picture of a child's or young person's progress and achievements and to identify next steps in learning. It can also be used to identify and plan any support to achieve these goals. [Is this not similar to remediation in the Skinnerian sense?]

 
So what are the goals of Curriculum for Excellence apart from gathering a lot of data about pupils? Here is an interesting place to go. http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/the-international-language-of-edu-platitudes/ It can be seen that there is nothing new about Curriculum for Excellence and the outcomes are more about what children can do than with what they should know. Attitudes, values and behaviours are central to the curriculum and teachers are invited to engage pupils in the following manner:

Staff should discuss with learners what they are expected to learn. They should clarify and share learning intentions and success criteria and appropriate experiences for achieving these.

There are some contradictions:

Assessment supports learning by focusing on the process of children and young people moving from where they are in their learning towards their desired goals. [Here is a subtle shift to their goals when the goals have already been mapped out.] 

Pupils are invited to take part in their own assessments. In other words they are asked to internalise the goals and to reflect on them:

Learners do well when engaging fully in their learning, collaborating in planning and shaping and reviewing their progress. Approaches to assessment that enable learners to say, 'I can show that I can…' will fully involve them.

So will group work:

Peer assessment and other collaborative learning enables learners to support and extend each others' learning, for example by being aware of what is expected of them from looking at examples and devising and sharing success criteria.[This approach has the potential to change attitudes and values by applying peer pressure.]

It is clear that the curriculum in Pennsylvania is at a more advanced stage than Curriculum for Excellence because assessments are still being standardised in Scotland and teachers are encouraged to work with each other to obtain standardisation. Without standardisation, the data being gathered about pupils by way of their assessments will not be fit for making adjustments to the curriculum, research purposes, or even for behavioural modification. It is probably the case that most teachers are unwittingly engaged in building up a system that has the potential to work in a similar way to the educational system in Pennsylvania.

" The Framework for Assessment described in Building the Curriculum 5 provides an outline of the approaches to assessment to support the purposes of learning 3 to 18. It aims to create:
through collaborative working, a better-connected assessment system with better links between pre-school, primary and secondary schools, colleges and other settings to promote smooth transitions in learning, better understanding of effective assessment practice and sharing of standards and expectations, as well as more consistent assessment. "The notion of a knowledge based education has been tossed aside by Curriculum for Excellence and content has been streamlined to accommodate the time needed for `assessment for learning`. The system has been justified by claiming that assessment and feedback help learners to move forward in their learning. This may be true for formative assessments in a traditional education although even the claims made for that are highly exaggerated. See A Critical Review of Research on Formative Assessments ...

iew shared post

When it comes to assessments that include attitudes, values and behaviours, we are on a slippery slope towards a totalitarian regime where only government standards are approved and it is beginning to look like we are dumbing down our children to achieve it. Note that: "The Scottish Government, other national partners and education authorities will work together to build on local and national practices for quality assurance and moderation of assessment." Of course, there has to be a system for sidelining parents if progress is to be made and that comes in the form of GIRFEC.

The Early Years Framework and Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) highlight the importance of effective and sustained early intervention practices. These practices help to ensure that appropriate action is taken to provide the right level of support for children who are at risk of not achieving their full potential. [I do not think we need to ask whose standards will apply to measure potential.]

The Scottish people have a right to ask what Curriculum for Excellence and GIRFEC are really about. So far, all that has been provided are circular arguments, oft repeated phrases, and little sound evidence to support any of it.

　
　
　
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningteachingandassessment/assessment/sharingstandards/qualityassurance.asp