39
mentary schools, heavy reliance on prepackaged curriculum and tests, the teach-
ers at Rockefeller Elementary School rarely relied on textbooks for instruction.
The Rockefeller teachers also constructed performance-based tests and used stu-
dent constructed portfolios to assess learning rather than traditional paper and
pencil tests.
Many states and school districts are turning to performance-based assessments to
complement traditional testing programs. Performance-based tests require students
to demonstrate what they know by responding to problems they have not pre-
viously met by calling on the skills and information they are supposed to have
acquired in class. The tests are based on the premise that testing should be closely
related to things students are learning and may include
portfolios of student work,
exhibitions, science experiments, oral interviews, and performances.
The state in which our primary research site was located recently informed
schools that they must develop, based on the state’s goals for learning, two forms
of assessment for the measurement of desired outcomes in six curriculum areas.
One of these two forms of assessment must be performance-based. According to
one principal, ‘‘the schools are just getting this off the ground,
and one problem
is that the staff must undergo training in alternative assessment.’’
Among the teachers with whom we spoke, there seemed particular eagerness
among science teachers for performance-based assessments and dissatisfaction
with more traditional types of tests. A common complaint from science teachers
was that the memorization and testing of vocabulary was boring and not relevant
to what students were learning in their labs.
Standards in the classroom.
Course grades were typically determined by the re-
sults of both quizzes and exams. However, teachers often had other criteria,
which they included in the final grade decision. For example, a middle school
teacher in Metro City said:
There
are three important factors, which I consider in addition to test and quiz
scores. They are: whether the student has asked questions when they are lost,
whether they have participated in the classroom, and whether they have com-
pleted homework assignments. Students who do well in these areas can be
bumped up to a higher letter grade if they are borderline.
At Rockefeller, students created their own portfolios with guidance from the
teacher. Students were also given an opportunity to set goals and reflect on their
work. To inform parents of their student’s progress,
teachers wrote narrative re-
ports twice a year about each child in each subject area. The narrative report co-
incided with a parent conference at the middle of the year, and at the end of
40
the year students presented their portfolio work to their parents, and the parents
received a second narrative report from the teacher.
Although teachers indicated that it was possible to retain a student in a grade as
a consequence of poor performance, it was clear that it was a more feasible op-
tion in some schools than in others. In East City Middle School,
the principal said
that a student’s course grade must average 70 percent or they may be required
to repeat the class. Remediation was often described as occurring over summer
vacations or during intersession breaks (for schools on a year-round calendar).
However, in some schools students were passed from grade to grade despite their
low levels of achievement. Teachers at the schools with the poor test results ex-
pressed a strong concern about the effects of retention on students’ self-esteem.
At Parks Elementary, a teacher said he would not take the responsibility of holding
students back in fifth grade when their classmates were leaving for the middle
school. ‘‘If I were a kid who had been held back, I would stop coming to school.
That would be too big a blow.’’ A science teacher at Metropolitan School stated
firmly, ‘‘I will not fail students who put forth effort.’’
The principal of South Central Vocational High School
indicated that a large per-
centage of the student population at South Central read at the elementary school
level when they entered high school (ninth grade). These students had been
passed through the grades regardless of their level of achievement on in-class or
standardized tests.
Although some students were passed on from grade to grade regardless of their
level of achievement, most the teachers and principals we spoke with in Metro
City had clear criteria by which they judged student performance, were identify-
ing students who needed extra assistance, and were contacting
parents about stu-
dents’ academic problems to enlist their support.
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