Testing that Matters...
...enables up to 100 teachers and faculty members to understand how to beat beat test-based accountability systems by doing the right thing for each student.
This series in truth should not exist. Test-based accountability is based upon a form of accountability that should have been rejected at the outset, not so much because of the testing piece, but because compliance based accountabilities:
- Aren't designed to build or sustain trust
- Can't identify effectiveness or best practice
- Can't support continuous improvement efforts
Had the truth about this sort of accountability prevailed, we would have no need to have to work from within a deeply flawed system.
But that isn't where most educators find themselves today. Rather, that deeply flawed system can feel all consuming, and it all but demands that educators use test scores in ways beyond their design.
Testing that Matters isn't about more or better forms of testing. Rather, it is about beating the current system as it exists by learning the limitations with the tests states use and taking advantage of them. In the end, it turns out that doing the right for each student, as determined by a teacher's understanding of that child, is the most likely way to shift the scores in a positive direction and allow a school to forgot negative judgments that might otherwise occur.
Over five interactive 60-minute sessions, we work with up to 100 teachers and faculty, seminar style, to do the following:
- Work through the basic design of the tests, demystifying how they work and what their limitations are.
- Show how to use the results–very simply–as a pattern recognition tool to identify opportunities for positive. disruptions likely to shift yet scores upwards.
- Teach how the concept of disrupting patterns can be done in a wide variety of settings, and for minimal effort.
- Make it clear what the source of adjustments to what is taught should be.
Why This Matters
Standardized tests of the sort that states give as part of their accountability efforts aren't likely to go away any time soon. Neither are the accountability systems that turn those results into judgments. Educators can't wait for those facts to change. Students need to be able to thrive regardless.
And this is decidedly not an anti-test effort, which is why it works and why it remains credible. Standardized testing has a set of legitimate purposes–in fact, some of those purposes can only be accomplished via such an instrument. Used as designed, it has value, but very little of its current uses fall under that design.
Learning what that design enables is what allows the results to be used properly and is what stands the best chance for seeing them trend in a positive direction.
Your Next Step
Testing that Matters is conducted as a medium-large size virtual effort for up to 100 teachers and faculty. One person registers and schedules out five 60-minute events and then forwards a link to allow individuals to register.
To register for a Testing that Matter series, or to schedule a conversation, just click below. Once you register, bravEd will reach out to create a schedule..
