Week 13 - Evaluations
Evaluation is the test of a teacher’s curriculum design,
according to Tyler. They are meant to show how students have changed in either
knowledge or behavior since coming into contact with the curriculum of a
particular class. Tyler cautions that while most people associate pencil and
paper tests involving bubbling multiple choice answers or writing essays as the
exclusive forms of assessment in schools, that other forms are also valid, like
practical projects involving putting the learning to use to make something, for
instance. Evaluations should not only be done once, but several times
throughout a course to show whether a student’s behavior/knowledge has
changed/improved over time. Tyler optimistically muses that evaluations should
be given yearly to students, even after they graduate, to see if they’ve
retained what they had learned. While this sometimes happens in longitudinal
studies, it is not currently standard practice in the American education
system.
(Not the only form of evaluation!)
The point of evaluations is not only to evaluate whether the
students have learned or not, but whether the teacher was effective in
designing and implementing the curriculum. Teachers have hopefully already
clearly articulated their learning objectives, and by taking a sample of
students’ evaluation results, it can be determined if the teacher succeeded in
getting students to meet those objectives.
These are ideas that inspire one of the worst uses of my
time during the school year. Every year in September, I am required to
administer a “BOY” test provided to me by CPS to all of my classes. This is a
test that I have no say in writing, that is not aligned to the curriculum that
I teach, but that has three relatively simple sections based on listening,
reading, and writing bizarrely overlapping information largely about what students do or do not like to do in Spanish. I have to spend a day administering this test
to students at the beginning of the year who have had about 3 weeks of Spanish,
which is frustrating for them, since they barely understand anything that
is on the test! But I’m required to give them something that both the district
and I know that the students are initially going to fail in the quest of
showing that my class has provided “growth” in the students’ language abilities
when they take a very similar “EOY” test near the end of the school year in May.
Why spend an entire class period frustrating my students and establishing that
they by and large have not learned any Spanish previously? In this case I would
prefer to be judged (because the results of this test provide 30% of my rating
as a teacher) by a single test at the end of the year that is at least aligned to my curriculum, and preferably
not administered, graded with a special scale and input into a
difficult-to-access website by the person whom it is meant to judge, which does
combine with shoddy district oversight of the whole process to misalign
teachers’ incentives, in that it would be trivially easy to deflate students’ scores
look bad at the beginning of the year and inflate them to look great at the
end.
All of this is to say that evaluations are hard to get
right. Tyler is very correct when he writes about it being very important to
choose the correct form of evaluation to get at measuring the objectives that
the teacher was purporting to achieve. In what ways do you evaluate students in your class? What are ways you've been evaluated yourself that you thought were particularly effective or awful?
Thank you for sharing! I totally agree that "Evaluations should not only be done once, but several times throughout a course to show whether a student’s behavior/knowledge has changed/improved over time". Most of the time, we use tests to examine students' knowledge, which is too one-sided, but it is a highly effective and convenient way, especially for nationwide evaluation. While on the other hand, this kind of evaluation is not fair for examining teachers' devotions to their teaching career. So the standards of evaluation need to be deeply explored. It seems that each country has its imperfections in educational system. By reading your story, I want to say that there are so many unrelated policies making teachers or students have no idea and frustrate throughout the world. But we still need to believe that "the future opens out a bright prospect for us all, despite twists and turns along the way".
ReplyDeleteThanks for your evaluation experience. I agree with you that evaluation is not only designed for students but also a reflection of teaching quality. For students, what they need to do for the next learning stage is more important than the evaluation result itself. In other words, I think a good evaluation method should help students realize their shortcomings rather than let them upset or complacent about the evaluation results. For teachers, they should reflect where they need to improve in terms of pedagogies or other instructional aspects after an evaluation.
ReplyDeleteWhat you bring up about the BOY test and having no part in writing it is really frustrating, both from a teacher's p.o.v. and from Tyler's viewpoint, which is that evaluation should also consider individual students. We've talked in our class about students' roles in curriculum design, and evaluation is certainly part of that and they should be included. The second reading about getting rid of grades might speak to this because it's a fairly radical way of giving students agency. But it could work. Thanks for the great post!
ReplyDeleteHey Steve! Thanks for sharing! I feel that evaluating curriculum is one of the most imperative parts of curriculum design, but it is often the part that is overlooked by administrators, curriculum designers, and students. Evaluations are a way to gather information on how effective the curriculum - how subjects are being taught, if student can retain knowledge, and if students could transfer and apply knowledge. I think the standard "fill in the bubble" type surveys does not effectively gather the data to prove whether or not a curriculum or student meet course objectives. And I think your experience as a teacher dealing with CPS administered evaluation somewhat relates to my point. I feel that more effective ways to measure students' growth would be projects that allow students to apply the knowledge they learned though out the course and apply it to different concepts - but is probably more time consuming and costly than the standard test or survey. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi, Steve, thank you for your evaluation experience. I really agree that evaluations should not only be done once, but several times throughout a course to show whether a student’s behavior/knowledge has changed/improved over time. I think after a period of teaching, students will have their own attitude toward our class. We can ask for their opinions of our class and know their ideas of our class to ask our students join the evaluation and ask for their feedback. Besides, I also agree that evaluations is not only to evaluate whether the students have learned or not, but whether the teacher was effective in designing and implementing the curriculum. Teachers can listen to each other’s class to find the differences and ask for their feedback as well. I think teachers can give teachers a value feedback in teaching.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, Steve! I agree with you that evaluation should not only be done once, but several times throughout the course. I think it is because the purpose of evaluation is not merely to test whether students achieve the objectives of the curriculum or their scores achieve the standards, but also to examine the development process of students during taking the course. In addition, I understand your feeling about giving your students a frustrating test at the beginning of the year and I agree that might frustrate students if it is just for comparing the scores with the results at the end of the year to evaluate the course. I think there are many ways to evaluate the curriculum and the scores of tests is just one aspect of evaluation. However, the objectives of the curriculum cannot be just improving the knowledge, but also to develop some skills or abilities like the critical thinking or cognitive skills through the curriculum. Thus, I think, the ways of evaluation should not be the simple paper test, but includes the observation, questionnaire, self-reflection, interview, or some authentic project presentations.
ReplyDelete2. Thanks for sharing. First of all, I like the way that you summarize the article. I’m agree with that evaluation is not the only way to evaluate whether the students have learned or not, but whether the teacher was effective in designing and implementing the curriculum. Evaluation should not be the only way to judge students. Grades are not the thing that define a good student or bad student. In fact, students should not be defined as good or bad.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question, I think the way that I am going to use is reflection journal. I will tell students to write reflection journal that can reflected their learning process and their thoughts about this curriculum.
Hi Steve, thank you for your post. I can definitely understand your frustration when it comes to your BOY and EOY assessments. Your blog post encapsulates the anxiety that both educators and students experience during exams. It's a tricky subject because although I understand the need to evaluate teachers' performance, I don't think they should be rated based on student assessments. I personally hate tests and the pressure of them really made me crack whenever I had to take them as a student. I strongly believe that they don't capture a student's growth and understanding of a given subject because those kinds of assessments usually are a "one size fits all" and we know through learning theories that students are diverse learners. Maybe an alternative to your situation would be a mid year assessment and an EOY to ease the anxiety of your students that get blindsided by the BOY.
ReplyDelete