teaching

Assessment: Fast is better than deep

Posted on by Mark Isero

 I’ve always believed that assessment is at the heart of good teaching and learning. Students improve only by knowing what’s expected of them and by getting feedback about how to get there.

When I began teaching, my colleagues and I devoted huge amounts of time devising the perfect assessment program. We joked about our three-dimensional rubrics and sometimes-indecipherable coding system. Some students and parents got what we were trying to do, but others replied, “Can’t you just give us a grade already?”

They were right. Our assessment system was great, but often it took way too much time for students to get their work back.

And the main point of assessment is not to evaluate students’ skills and knowledge but rather to help students grow.

That’s why, the last several years, I’ve focused on getting my students’ work back fast. Especially on practice assignments, extensive comments take too much time. Students like reading personal notes from their teachers, but they prefer knowing whether they’re on track.

If assessment takes too long, students forget about the assignment, start thinking the teacher is unorganized and incompetent, and begin caring less about the class.

This summer, I’ve been reminded of the fast-is-better-than-deep rule. I’m a student in a library and information science class, and my professor has taken several weeks to return assignments. At one point, we were on Major Assignment #3 when she hadn’t yet graded Major Assignment #1. This was inexcusable, and I quickly lost interest in the course.

My point is not to bash my professor but rather to emphasize the importance of assessing student work quickly. If there is a large gap between when students turn in assignments and when they get them back, then students don’t know how they’re doing and how to improve.

Perhaps even more important, the notion of time gets messed up. The best classes, I believe, have one narrative. A group of students and a teacher engage themselves in a story of growth. Although the story isn’t always linear (there are always flashbacks and subplots), the teacher must preserve the master narrative. You can’t be in more than one place at one time.

Of course, fast assessment is very difficult, especially if you have more than 120 students. But unless it’s a culminating project, I’d rather spend two minutes per student on two assignments than four minutes per students on one. Even though scenarios take the same amount of time (eight hours), my students get an extra opportunity to practice and get better. 

Kindle #13 arrives!

Posted on by Mark Isero

image I found a package on my porch when I returned last night from my three-week vacation to India.

It’s Kindle #13! There it is on the right.

This is the first Kindle donation I’ve received since February, so I’m extra appreciative.

And the donor, a local artist, found out about the Kindle Classroom Project after conducting a quick Google search. That’s pretty neat.

Unless you’re a Kindle fanatic, you can’t really tell by the photo that this is a Kindle DX, which sports a 9.7-inch display. The device is bigger than the iPad!

I can’t wait to try this new Kindle out on students. My prediction is that accomplished readers won’t like it. Reluctant readers, though — especially those craving large text — are going to be drawn to this Kindle.

It begs to be read.

In the next few weeks, as I figure out my new job, it’ll become clear which teacher I’ll be teaming up with on this project.

If you know of friends or family members who have an old Kindle lying around, please encourage them to donate it to students. 

reading/teaching

The two who passed: No surprises here

Posted on by Mark Isero

 Only two of my students passed the AP English test this year. What set these students apart?

It wasn’t their work ethic. Sure, they worked hard, but not more than their peers.

Maybe it was their performance on the multiple-choice section. But I don’t think that’s the case; all their practice exams placed them somewhere in the middle.

They’re good writers, for sure. One of them makes every word count. The other knows uses sophisticated language. And I’m sure the AP readers liked their generally-clean grammar. Yes, writing skill was likely a factor.

But I don’t think that explains their success.

Rather, the two students who passed are readers. They see themselves as readers and read a lot. They’d been readers before entering the class. They know what kinds of books they like. They have favorite books. They were two of the four students who attended an optional field trip to go see Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner.

Yes, it’s becoming clearer now.

In high school, I wasn’t much of a reader, and I still passed the test. So did many of my friends. But that’s because I was an expert on how to do school. In the suburbs, you can get away with that. At my former school, you can’t.

Here’s the thing: The AP English test does not grade you on what you learned in the 12th grade. It doesn’t ask you about Frankenstein or The Scarlet Letter or any of the books you’ve read. Rather, it determines how well you can read challenging, obscure texts. That’s why it’s hard on urban kids and English learners.

If you’ve been reading your whole life, and if you see yourself as a reader, you have a much better chance of passing. That’s why the two students who passed were at such a big advantage. That’s also why, like a few astute readers have suggested, it’s crucial for schools to build a culture of reading. It’s important to create literary nerds.

I’m happy for the two students who passed. But there were no surprises, no stories of students working hard and beating the odds.

Maybe the truth is better, though. Maybe it’s better to know that the gaps are wide and that it takes a concerted, multi-year effort to address them. Maybe it’s what’s necessary to convince us how important it is to make bold moves on reading.

Update: A very smart reader (go Molly!) just reminded me that the two students have one more thing in common: They both had a background at elite private high schools before transferring to our school. Hmm. This revelation might require a post on its own! 

teaching

5 things I would’ve done differently

Posted on by Mark Isero

 Last year I taught AP English for the first time, and yesterday’s dismal test results show that I could have done much better.

Here’s what I would’ve done differently:

1. Take a summer AP workshop.
Our school didn’t have enough money in the budget to send me to a summer workshop. I assumed that good curriculum design and strong teaching would be enough to prepare my students for the exam. Now I think that the summer training was necessary to make sure I designed the course correctly.

2. Assign fewer (shorter) books.
There’s a big debate about how many books to teach. I took the suburban approach: Read lots. But the test doesn’t care about the number of books you’ve read. Rather, it cares about whether you know how to read intensely difficult, obscure texts. Therefore, classroom time needed to be less discussion of literature and more close reading, line by line, of challenging prose and poetry. Forget about The Catcher in the Rye and focus more on Heart of Darkness. Also, see #5.

3. Assign fewer essays and focus on thinking.
My theory of action was that if students had a lot of practice and wrote under the pressure of the clock, they’d be fine. But what happened was that my students never got good at first-draft writing. Only after extensive revision did their essays exhibit clear thinking and grammar. I should have done more training in class with the workshop model. Once the students had the basic essay structure down, we needed to work more on analysis. Yes, this is a reading skill, too — and the only way to improve it is live in the classroom.

4. Teach more directly about literature.
The AP test does not measure content, but the more exposed you are to literature, the better off you are. Because my students haven’t read as many books as their more privileged counterparts, I needed to close that gap with more direct teaching on topics like Shakespeare, the literary periods, and academic language. My students, who have different background knowledge, can’t “fake it” as well as their suburban peers. I should spent more time making them literary nerds.

5. Learn how to teach the reading section of the exam.
Ugh. Have you seen this test? It’s basically a harder version of the SAT. You’ve got your challenging reading passages that come out of nowhere. Then there are the multiple-choice questions with no clear correct answer. I never figured out a way to help my students improve on the reading section. Their scores were flat. They wouldn’t budge no matter what we did. For the most part, how they scored in October was similar to how they did in May. Worse, I couldn’t tell you what I’d do differently.

* * *

Last summer, when I prepared to teach this course, I had to make a decision: Should I try to get the students to pass the exam? To be sure, a test-driven curriculum would not necessarily inspire my students to love reading and writing. But I went for it because I thought it was authentic and the right thing to do. The AP, whether you like it or not, is about the test.

I don’t regret my decision, but now that my students and I have failed, I am concerned about their reaction. What will this mean for them? They worked hard, trusted themselves and their teacher, and participated in something they otherwise wouldn’t have done because they had faith in the process.

Now they’re finding out that even when they’re at their best, even when they tried and didn’t give up, they’re still less than average.

How will they process this failure? And how will they remember this class, their time together? 

teaching

AP results are in. They’re terrible.

Posted on by Mark Isero

 I found out my students’ scores on the AP test a few days ago.

I’m still in shock.

Advanced Placement exams are scored on a 1-5 scale, with 3 considered passing at most colleges. Only two of my students earned a 3. Nearly everyone got a 2. There were a few 1s.

When I learned that I would be teaching AP English, I vowed to raise last year’s pass rate, when only one student out of 14 passed the exam. Even though at times I thought that AP English is unfair, I believed that my students and I would work hard, demonstrate grit, and eke out 3s.

It didn’t happen. Despite our work, the pass rate stayed the same.

Nationwide, 55 percent of students received a 3, 4, or 5. That means that 91 percent of my students scored in the bottom half. In other words, even my best students did no better than mediocre.

A few of my friends have reached out to offer consolation. I’ve appreciated their words. But the biggest conclusion I’m reaching is that there is a difference between being a good teacher and being an excellent teacher.

You’re a good teacher when your colleagues, students, and parents appreciate you. You work hard and you care. You design good curriculum, listen carefully, and build a safe learning environment. You go above and beyond.

You’re an excellent teacher, though, when you combine good-teacher qualities and getting results. You figure out which good-teacher qualities really matter. Your students achieve more and do better.

This year, despite getting my students to read 13 books and write 16 essays, despite assigning them online writing mentors and in-person grammar coaches, and despite providing them with Saturday study sessions and hundreds of dollars of test prep materials, I was not an excellent teacher.

Sure, there are other measures of in addition to the AP test results. I don’t believe that test scores are the only way to assess my teaching. But it’s important not to explain away the 2s. The 2s are there, and they’re many, and there’s no way around them.

In an upcoming post, I’ll have more to say about what this all means to me. But for right now, I’ll be OK to stay with the disappointment for a while. The next step will be to deal with my students’ reaction when they find out the news this week.