from Massachusetts Dept of Education feed:
"Gov. Patrick Announces Massachusetts Awarded $13 Million Data Systems Grant" http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=5534
Statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) grants awarded through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.
Key points of this article:
- SDLS will be used to track student progress from pre-kindergarten through college.
- This will give educators ready access to student performance data. Will enable educators to target students individually, adapt instruction for struggling students, and close performance gaps.
- Will also enable DOE to target schools that especially need support.
- "Educators at all levels are going to be know more about what's working and what's not for their students . . . "
- Real-time access to student performance data is critical to improving overall student achievement in Massachusetts. Will provide more timely information for educators to make decisions.
My Comments:
An SDLS is badly needed. I've seen many students slip through the cracks. I'll be tutoring a 9th grade student in two weeks who is reading at a 7th grade level. SDLS is a great step towards coordinating teaching efforts.
However, I'm not sure if student data alone is enough, especially when it comes to coordinating teaching efforts. As a tutor, I get students who were doing okay with one teacher, but now are suddenly struggling with a different teacher. Same subject - different level.
I'd like to see some sort of data system that tracks student performance in relation to teachers - something that would convey whether the overall GPA of a class goes up or down depending on the teacher. I think that this needs to be factored in and might improve consistency among teachers.
I have a psychologist friend who removed her elementary aged children from the public school system because of inconsistencies among educators in their teaching methods. These inconsistencies resulted in different evaluations of her children from grade to grade. Her children are now in a private school, where they have the same teacher from Grade 1 to 8! This school is known for its academic excellence and innovation. Obviously this wouldn't be feasible at the high school level, but it does signal the need for more research in this area.
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If they track a student, as they say, from pre-k to college than I would think the data would be significant. It is when they look at a student's 8th grade MCAS and 10th grade MCAS and decide they are soon going to evaluate the teacher based on their scores! Why should it be my fault that student A decides to fool around on his 8th grade MCAS because the scores mean nothing (which the kids have told me they have done). Also the 10th grade MCAS the student has had an Algebra 1 teacher and a Geometry teacher, I just don't think it is right evaluating a teacher on such little information. As I started saying though...if they follow this student they can determine more closely what he/she knows and understands.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, there are at least 25 reasons why a student could do "great" with one teacher and then bomb the next year in the same subject. Maybe even more. The whole problem with this idea of "quantification" is that as a culture, we're trying to find the "one answer" for a huge set of undefinable problems. The other issue I have is that what has been proven to work in our culture is smaller class sizes. There is a lot of evidence that this works. Also, ask anyone on the street, and they'll tell you that we need more trade schools, that not everyone's going to college. But, instead, our state is going to spend $13 million dollars!!! on a "system" to "fix things" when we know that in the end, it really isn't going to change anything.
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