Not Short and Sweet: A Conversation with Students of America (III)
Students from across the United States discuss personal and standardized assessments in schools
On November 17th Student Voice held an event for International Students Day. We convened a group of students from across the United States for a roundtable discussion and movement planning session in Washington, D.C. at Facebook’s office. The roundtable was recorded and streamed via Facebook live. The conversation below is the third in a series. Students discuss assessments.
Andrew B: The part I want to put to the whole group deals with assessments. Talking about standardized tests, talking about how we determine what folks are learning in schools so the question I want to ask the group quickly is: what has been, in your experience, the most accurate and effective assessment that you’ve ever had in school? We’re talking standardized test, longer essays, group projects, individual projects, PBL etc. What has been, in your view, the most effective form of assessing what a student knows in school?
Megan N: At my school I was a part of a class called biotechnology and we were doing lab practices every week. We never took tests or read from the book we just did hands on laboratory research and we were graded based on how our results turned out, what we found out, how we could explain our results and go in depth. The teacher would come around and ask “why are you doing this step?” and we would tell her. We planned out our own research.Thats the most effective way —
Andrew B: Why?
Megan N: Why? Because most of the time you go to a normal class and they teach you to how to take tests. They’re teaching you this is right or wrong. You don’t learn from mistakes. You can learn how to practice things and evolve your thinking in a different way (with labs) instead of just saying this is the answer. There should be a thinking and reasoning behind it.
Prince: The most effective thing for me has been group projects. Usually, I like to communicate so its one of the best traits that I have because when I work with people I like the idea of getting stuff done. We all together put in our effort and we have a finished product to show to people. I think students like communicating more than just looking at a test so thats why group projects would be better than standardized tests.
Andrew B: DO you think that group projects prepare you better for the future? Thats the goal right? Does it proper you better than a regular test?
Prince: In certain cases it does, it depends on the type of job you want to do when you get older. Maybe you might be in Human Resources and you might do more group projects. Sometimes with a standardized test if you’re good at mastering things and thats what you want to do in the future then maybe [standardized tests] are better for you. For me, group projects are better because I want a job that I can communicate with daily and get stuff done.
Andrew B: So you’re saying in addition to knowledge itself the skills gain you get from working with people, managing projects as you said are important to you for the future.
Andrew F: So my school is entirely project based learning so that means that every single class, like 7 or 8, you have a project going on. SO you work with a bunch of students and its really great because you get to learn how to work with people for all different backgrounds but a lot the times PBL isn’t made for that because teachers put you in groups like “ we’re going to put the student who did best on the last test and the worst on the last and see if the student who did the best can teach the one who did the worst”. Thats just not how it works. The student who did the worst just doesn’t care. So the one who did the best ends up carrying the weight. In an ideal world it would work perfectly where everyone gets everything done and you accomplish everything together but in my world it doesn’t because I usually end up carrying the weight of my peers. In regards to standardized testing though I think it doesn’t work that well mainly because it doesn’t ask if you’re an english language learner or if you had a full 8 hours of sleep the night before or ask all these different things about your background. It just wants to reduce all you learned in a year into 60 questions in 4 hours. It doesn’t work well. I think maybe the best thing would be applying a concept you learned, like a paper or something to show that you accomplished the concept rather than answering 70 multiple choice questions.
Zoe: I’ve only been in DCPCS (DC Public Charter Schools) and my first and favorite school, which was my elementary school, was my Montessori school. I think that was the best school I’ve ever been to get my mind stimulated and be able to teach myself. That worked so well for me because the teacher didn’t tell you “this is what what you’re going to learn and this is your worksheet”. What we did was you get to choose whatever you want from your cubby and you get to choose whether you work on math or reading and you teach yourself. They also mix the classes so we had older students with us who would teach us and we could teach them sometimes. I think that Prince said the group work and being able to talk to other people and learn from them mimics the future. In the future we’re going to have more group projects like STEM industries have more of “okay we’re going to work together to figure out whats wrong with this”. The most recent thing though that I enjoyed is project studio. Its on Fridays and we end school at 12:30. We had a STEM project studio and I worked with my group to make our own website and we figured out how to make a one-pager about the opportunity gap in STEM. It was great and I feel like we communicated with each other and gave each other different tasks. I feel like what [Andrew F] said was very true because I’ve also been in the situation where I was in a group with someone who didn’t do so well and I had to take on their work. The thing is that, that can happen but if everyone wants to do the work and everyone is enjoying what they’re doing and it isn’t boring then I think its the best way to teach some one.
Malia: Unfortunately what I see a lot, similar to what she’s said, is with this standardized testing or higher level classes at my school often times the teacher will base the curriculum off the test we take at the end of the year. For example, AP classes. There is totally a divergent from actual learning for the sake of education. What I really appreciated this past year, and this one, has been socratic circle in english or history settings. We actually had a grade Socratic circle for one of our tests where we just had to participate. I think it’s a really good way to relay, especially in history class when we’re talking about social issues and how history repeats itself, to educate yourself on what has happened and apply that to future circumstances. I think what I’ve learned in history this year has been easily applicable because I can understand it better rather than just answering multiple choice questions on an old presidents life. Although these things are necessary to know its also important educate yourself and be able to apply it.
Megan: Something I found interesting is that [Malia] said you’re learning for the sake of taking the AP exam at the end of the year. I love AP classes and think they are very rigorous, I respond well to that but In my AP Statistics class this year in our text book, it will be teaching you and then there will be a blurb that says “This isn’t on the AP exam but its interesting” and my teacher always tells us to skip over it. That could be a very important concept for what your talking about or it could be important for the future but its not on the test so they don’t see value in that. Last year I took AP US History and it was the hardest class I’ve ever taken but it was my favorite teacher of all time and the best class I’ve ever taken because he didn’t set up his classroom like that. We were lucky because we had an extension period so we had two blocks of the class but we were able to take what we were learning and apply it to both our community and state and huge part of that was yes this was in 1860 but how is it relevant to today. I responded really well and my grade was helped by that but I also still remember everything from that class unlike other class where you take the test and forget it 5 minutes later.
Andrew B: So I’m hearing that we want assessments and projects that help us develop skills more than just the information. We want things we’re interested in, thing that apply to our future and the world outside of the classroom. One reason why standardized test have endured so long is because they are essential to a very important process or its been said they are essential to an important process which is college admissions…
This is the third part of our “Not Short and Sweet” series on International Students Day (edited for length and clarity). You can read part four next Monday. Stay tuned: the movement is live! Join the conversation with #StuVoice
