93 research outputs found
The Realities of K-12 Virtual Education
In a decade, virtual education in its contemporary form of asynchronous, computer-mediated interaction between a teacher and students over the Internet has grown from a novelty to an established mode of education that may provide all or part of formal schooling for nearly one in every 50 students in the US. In a non-random 2007 survey of school districts, as many as three out of every four public K-12 school districts responding reported offering full or partial online courses.There can be little question that virtual courses in certain areas (e.g., math, English, social studies) produce tested achievement results on a par with those of their conventionally taught counterparts. Nor is it debatable that more complex areas of the curriculum (e.g., the arts) are beyond the reach of these new arrangements. Nevertheless, the rapid growth of this new form of schooling raises questions of cost, funding, and variable quality that require the immediateattention of policymakers
2. Testing Old, Testing New: Schoolboy Psychology and the Allocation of Intellectual Resources
There will be no divining of the future here- no megatrends, no reference to Orwell (except this one). What little we truly know about the future does not bear mentioning. Nor shall I refer to micro-computers, data banks, and other gaudy paraphernalia that the future holds for us. The future is best seen in a rear-view mirror. We can at least hope to see more clearly the recent past we have traversed. Appearances of rapid change are usually superficial. If we see the past and present clearly, we will know as much of our future as it is ever permitted us to know.
Kenneth Boulding (1968) contends that the discovery of knowledge is absolutely unpredictable, since knowledge is the one thing that if we could predict when we would discover it we would have it already. The evolution of a technology, if it were not really radically new, might be predicted with some success; but then, if we can\u27t predict the discovery of new knowledge and we can only predict changes in ordinary technology, then surely we have little idea of the important changes that lie ahead. New knowledge is revolutionary; technology is Establishment. The discovery of knowledge upsets things, changes the way lives are led. Technology serves old entrenched interests and established institutions. The glacial evolution of testing in this century reveals the source of its momentum- new technologies are moving it, not new knowledge. Testing is the conservative wing of the Social Science party.
A Point of View: Abstracted Empiricism
The most revealing perspective to assume for viewing the evolution and the current condition of testing is that which affords the clearest picture of how testing relates to the basic disciplines in the study of human behavior. In the last 100 years, testing has moved gradually from the center to the periphery of the behavioral and social sciences. Once an integral part of the best thinking on human development and behavior, testing\u27 has progressively grown more inbred and dissociated from the leading theoretical positions in psychology and the social sciences. In its position at the margin, testing has come to serve more faithfully the goals of its own professional subculture and of a particular political subculture (i.e., its own intellectual Establishment and the professional-managerial Establishment) than to serve the ends of science and the true aims of education. To fulfill its promise, testing must find its way back to the center of psychological thinking.
My message here does little more than echo a theme sounded by Anne Anastasi (1967) in her 1966 presidential address to Division 5 of the American Psychological Association.
. . . Psychological testing is becoming dissociated from the mainstream of contemporary psychology. Those psychologists specializing in psychometrics have been devoting more and more of their efforts to refining the techniques of test construction, while losing sight of the behavior they set out to measure. Psychological testing today places too much emphasis on testing and too little on psychology. As a result, outdated interpretations of test performance may remain insulated from the impact of subsequent behavior research. It is my contention that the isolation of psychometrics from other relevant areas of psychology is one of the conditions that have led to the prevalent public hostility toward testing (p. 297). Although the very essence of psychological testing is the measurement of behavior, testing today is not adequately assimilating relevant developments from the science of behavior. ... It is noteworthy that the term “test theory generally refers to the mechanics of test construction, such as the nature of the score scale and the procedures for assessing reliability and validity. The term does not customarily refer to psychological theory about the behavior under consideration. Psychometricians appear to shed much of their psychological knowledge as they concentrate upon the minutiae of elegant statistical techniques. Moreover, when other types of psychologists use standardized tests in their work, they too show a tendency to slip down several notches in psychological sophistication (p. 300)
2. Testing Old, Testing New: Schoolboy Psychology and the Allocation of Intellectual Resources
There will be no divining of the future here- no megatrends, no reference to Orwell (except this one). What little we truly know about the future does not bear mentioning. Nor shall I refer to micro-computers, data banks, and other gaudy paraphernalia that the future holds for us. The future is best seen in a rear-view mirror. We can at least hope to see more clearly the recent past we have traversed. Appearances of rapid change are usually superficial. If we see the past and present clearly, we will know as much of our future as it is ever permitted us to know.
Kenneth Boulding (1968) contends that the discovery of knowledge is absolutely unpredictable, since knowledge is the one thing that if we could predict when we would discover it we would have it already. The evolution of a technology, if it were not really radically new, might be predicted with some success; but then, if we can\u27t predict the discovery of new knowledge and we can only predict changes in ordinary technology, then surely we have little idea of the important changes that lie ahead. New knowledge is revolutionary; technology is Establishment. The discovery of knowledge upsets things, changes the way lives are led. Technology serves old entrenched interests and established institutions. The glacial evolution of testing in this century reveals the source of its momentum- new technologies are moving it, not new knowledge. Testing is the conservative wing of the Social Science party.
A Point of View: Abstracted Empiricism
The most revealing perspective to assume for viewing the evolution and the current condition of testing is that which affords the clearest picture of how testing relates to the basic disciplines in the study of human behavior. In the last 100 years, testing has moved gradually from the center to the periphery of the behavioral and social sciences. Once an integral part of the best thinking on human development and behavior, testing\u27 has progressively grown more inbred and dissociated from the leading theoretical positions in psychology and the social sciences. In its position at the margin, testing has come to serve more faithfully the goals of its own professional subculture and of a particular political subculture (i.e., its own intellectual Establishment and the professional-managerial Establishment) than to serve the ends of science and the true aims of education. To fulfill its promise, testing must find its way back to the center of psychological thinking.
My message here does little more than echo a theme sounded by Anne Anastasi (1967) in her 1966 presidential address to Division 5 of the American Psychological Association.
. . . Psychological testing is becoming dissociated from the mainstream of contemporary psychology. Those psychologists specializing in psychometrics have been devoting more and more of their efforts to refining the techniques of test construction, while losing sight of the behavior they set out to measure. Psychological testing today places too much emphasis on testing and too little on psychology. As a result, outdated interpretations of test performance may remain insulated from the impact of subsequent behavior research. It is my contention that the isolation of psychometrics from other relevant areas of psychology is one of the conditions that have led to the prevalent public hostility toward testing (p. 297). Although the very essence of psychological testing is the measurement of behavior, testing today is not adequately assimilating relevant developments from the science of behavior. ... It is noteworthy that the term “test theory generally refers to the mechanics of test construction, such as the nature of the score scale and the procedures for assessing reliability and validity. The term does not customarily refer to psychological theory about the behavior under consideration. Psychometricians appear to shed much of their psychological knowledge as they concentrate upon the minutiae of elegant statistical techniques. Moreover, when other types of psychologists use standardized tests in their work, they too show a tendency to slip down several notches in psychological sophistication (p. 300)
High-Stakes Testing and Student Achievement: Problems for the No Child Left Behind Act
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized test scores are the indicator used to hold schools and school districts accountable for student achievement. Each state is responsible for constructing an accountability system, attaching consequences -- or stakes -- for student performance. The theory of action implied by this accountability program is that the pressure of high-stakes testing will increase student achievement. But this study finds that pressure created by high-stakes testing has had almost no important influence on student academic performance
THE EFFICACY OF SPECIAL EDUCATION INTERVENTIONS AND PRACTICES: A COMPENDIUM OF META-ANALYSIS FINDINGS
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Alternative Certification of Teachers
The certification of teachers through programs other than those based in colleges and universities, rare before 1980, has become a prominent part of the teaching profession. Alternatively certified teachers are appearing in increasing numbers in private and charter schools and in poor urban neighborhoods where school districts have difficulty finding regularly certified teachers. This trend has inevitably given rise to the question of the relative effectiveness of alternatively and regularly certified teachers, but empirical research focused on students’ achievement test performance gives no clear answers. There are many good reports describing programs of alternative certification of teachers. This brief neither supplants them nor updates or corrects them. Rather, it represents an attempt to cast the major issues in the debate over alternative certification in a somewhat new light and in a concise form
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NEPC Review: The Productivity of Public Charter Schools
This report claims superiority of charter schools in producing achievement per dollar invested. The findings are cast as cost-effectiveness ratios, where effects are measured by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) points and costs are measured as “revenues received.” The report concludes that charter schools deliver an additional 17 NAEP points per 1000 in reading. All analyses are undertaken with data for 21 states and the District of Columbia. Because an earlier review by Baker pointed to serious flaws in the “cost” part of the ratio, this review will focus on achievement. The effects of charter versus traditional public schools are estimated by comparing state averages of both sectors without attempting to equate them on demographic variables like poverty (free lunch eligibility) or special-needs status. Not reported is the fact that the demographic differences between the two sectors are highly correlated with the estimates of differential effects; the sector with the higher percentage of poor pupils scores lower on the NAEP test. This failure alone renders the report and its recommendations indefensible. Furthermore, the assessment of expenditures in the two sectors rests on non-comparable data across states and questionable data within states. These weaknesses leave little evidence on which to base any valid conclusions. Reports of this type can only be viewed as advocacy research, in large part because they fail to reconcile their findings with the extensive literature of contrary findings.</p
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NEPC Review: Report Card on American Education
The "Report Card on American Education," published by the American Legislative Exchange Council, uses poor and misleading methods to draw some very controversial findings. The report presents readily available statistics to generate hundreds of tables and figures concerning each state's education "inputs," "outputs," and demographics. Interspersed among these tables are a mere dozen pages of analysis intended to support the conclusion, in the words of ALEC Executive Director Lori Roman, that per-pupil spending increases, pupil-to-teacher ratio reductions and raises for teachers "...are not going to make the difference in raising American student achievement to international standards. Empowering parents will" (p. 1). But ineptness and naiveté in measurement and data analysis have thwarted any attempt to legitimately derive such conclusions.</p
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