Assessment and reporting, not more exemplars!

I notice with despair that systemically we are going through another attempt at defining what an A -E is for a variety of topics and year groups to help teachers accurately mark assessment. I wonder how long it will take "those in the know" that providing A-E definitions either is so cumbersome with detail that it is impossible to use or too vague to be of any real use.

There are good reasons why teachers have used percentage grades (and not exemplars or rubrics) historically to assist in judging grades. Percentages combined with basic teacher judgement has been the only valid tool for judging students A-E on assessments. The simple fact is that teachers gain accuracy in assessing students over many years and by teaching as many year groups as possible in their sector (primary or secondary). By watching students mature into more capable students, teachers are better able to determine the snapshot grade of students and judge what makes a student an A (in any given year) and what type of student deserves B-E or the politically incorrect and now defunct F.

The sheer breadth of the curriculum and the variety of responses by students makes the task of defining A-E for all topics in all learning areas a task that serves no real purpose. Teachers do not have the time to find and refer to these exemplars when marking nor are the exemplars accurate for a variety of socioeconomic sectors (yes, I am saying an A in a low socioeconomic area is lower than a higher socioeconomic area by reducing amounts until TEE examinations). Much of marking is viewing the material of the student, noting key issues and making a teacher judgement on where the student is positioned on a continuum. As more students are guided through to TEE (or yr 7 graduation) by a teacher, teachers get better at giving feedback to students with information that helps them reach their potential.

That is what teachers are paid for, they get better with experience and this experience (or lack of) should be valued where accurate and monitored and augmented by senior staff whilst experience is being gained.

(...now if we were being given EPW's with solutions for all maths NCOS then I might give a little cheer as a good use of systemic resources).

Idiot Generation

I wonder now that developmental curriculum has again given way to syllabus driven curriculum if we will look back at the current generation as the illiterate or idiot generation. A bunch of kids that have 'challenged' spelling, writing, reading, grammar and arithmetic. A generation where challenging oneself was only the domain of those driven from outside the education system or those lucky few with teachers with the ability to entertain or drive students through sheer will.

This being the case, will children that have been betrayed by a poorly implemented experimental education system be able to seek redress from the government in years to come?

We risk a lot when we keep children in the system until year 12 regardless of their want for education. These children typically do not succeed and do not want to be in the education system. Are they the stolen generation of the future, "abused" by being kept in a system neither of their want or perceived need (by either their parents and themselves) a system not really geared to their needs, in many cases the children themselves are resented by those within the education system as time wasters and do nothings?

Will we be accused of preventing children reaching their potential by not providing adequate measures to curtail disruption in the classroom? Should we be doing more to create optimal environments for learning? Is preventing disruptive kids from these "optimal learning environments" abuse by neglect?

As society becomes a more litigious environment and legislators are less able to create common sense legislation, schools could become a battleground for lawyers on behalf of parents and children, based on the expectations gained through unscientific reports given by schools in early years and via standardised testing and IQ analysis.

Are students that only respond to physical violence at home (and/or experience few real boundaries) able to respond to verbal chastisement at school? Is a teacher that hits a student on the arm with a ruler worthy of an assault charge? Can we better protect the 100's of teachers that are assaulted every year?

I would hate to think that negative questions become the focus questions facing our next decade. I personally would much prefer to be concentrating on creating a stronger education system, well funded, well managed and with willing participants.

Curriculum Council PD events

Curriculum council events are always attended with a healthy amount of skepticism. They have typically been fairly patronising towards teachers in their approach, devoid of usable content and fairly defensive of their purpose.

The most recent compulsory moderation was the latest shmozzle. The requirements sent to teachers during the reporting period were as follows for each course gathering materials for four students, an A, B, C & D student:

"Each file must consist of all completed assessment tasks that have contributed to the grade for the first semester unit or all tasks completed so far if units are being delivered concurrently, including:

• the assessment outline for the units/s
• the tasks/ task briefs/ task descriptions and marking keys indicating the allocation of marks
• a complete set of all marked tasks for each student (Including the Semester 1 Examination if one is used).

It is advisable that schools supply photocopies of the assessment tasks (not the originals). Where possible indications of the school and students name should be removed from each of the tasks and the student work."

This might sound like an easy task, but photocopying and anonymising 4-5 tasks for four students (up to 10 pages per task) plus a 10 pg exam, marking keys, unit outlines, descriptors is about 240 pages of photocopying and a fair amount of work at a busy time of year. Do this for two courses and it is 500 pages of photocopying.

Teachers would have appreciated knowing the requirement at the start of the year and then the task would have had negligible impact (as it could have been collected as the term progressed). As there is no moderation generally in year 11, these materials are not normally kept in the same ordered manner year 12 materials are kept. There were many stories of teachers needing to spend considerable time during the break gathering materials. This may have been exacerbated by a lack of feedback from school admin to teachers of requirements as information became available.

The task itself on the day involved 10 teachers examining the marking of fellow teachers and stating whether their grade based on a cursory inspection of the results of students. The process failed to some degree because 80% of DET schools were using the same exam (from the TDC). Thus what we saw was the same exam 5-6 times, we examined the percentage score of the exam and defined a grade accordingly (80%+ -A, 65-80% B, 50-65% C and 35-50% D) or thereabouts depending on the level of difficulty of associated assessments.

A better use of time (but not the purpose of the meeting as I was chastised by the Curriculum Council person at great length) would have been to swap EPWs, discuss timing and difficulty levels of the courses and how students are performing in the courses. I was told to ensure that I wrote my feedback down. I responded that I had been down that path before and would no longer spend time on unread feedback but she was welcome to feed back my concerns. I find my blog a much more therapeutic venue for developing my understanding of the coursework.

There were some key findings:

It was reported by teachers that there is major concern about students passing from 2CD to 3AB in year 12 as the difficulty jump is seen as more than possible for the majority of students (many students are destined to repeat the same course). Another issue has been raised that there is not enough "teaching time" for low ability students in the 1BC course which seems to be more focused on assessing past learning than having time to teach new material.

The Curriculum Council representative raised issues with the Saddler 3AB text stating that it was flawed and that the Westone resources were superior. I nearly fell over when she said that, as I have found the Westone resources near useless as it is far too investigative for my liking. It should be noted though that this may be my teaching limitation and a reflection of my cohort, rather than an issue with the Westone resources. The usability of the OT Lee materials were questioned by a number of teachers (although I like them as a supplementary text) and in general it was considered that Saddler texts were the preferred text, albeit you needed to be careful where content exceeded the course requirements.

There is a lot of confusion about what the TEE papers will look like and teachers are waiting impatiently for example papers. It was generally considered that it would have been preferable to have been given full TEE exemplar papers for each module before schools had to create and run courses.

My favourite issue raised though related to a hearsay Curriculum Council comment made by a teacher in the 3A MAS moderation meeting that the curriculum for the 3A courses is aimed at 30% of mathematics students as opposed to the old Introcalc & G&T course that aimed at about 10% of students. This raised mirth from the whole room of senior teachers who indicated that if this was the case, the course was failing in its objective.

As the most junior member at the 3A moderation meeting I attended, I did appreciate the feedback given by the more senior members. For this the meeting was worthwhile.

ta!

Board game supplies

I've been a fan of local stores, but paying retail Gamesworld prices is just ridiculous. I've recently made four transactions with Bestgames.com.au out of Sydney and been very happy.

Battlelore was $160 at Gamesworld and $115 at BestGames , and managed to get Runebound (Second Edition), Race for the Galaxy and Dominion for $213 (about $70 each).
Tactics (just off London Court in the city- a little hard to find if you don't know where to look) is cheaper than Gamesworld if you are looking for a physical store in Perth.

There was a problem with Race for the Galaxy, Bestgames tried to rectify it, notified me and offered to refund my money or to wait another week. It was one game of three, I'm happy to wait.

The web based orders from Bestgames were ~3 days delivery by courier. They even offered me a discount when I wrote a review for them on Battlelore. Shipping is free over $100. Nice people.
There are others; serepeco.com.au (offer to beat any price), gamesparadise.com.au (that has Battlelore at $99, free postage over $85 and also has physical stores) are two I have looked at but not ordered from.

I like the instant gratification of buying and playing games on the same day, but a 50% markup is just plain silly. Shame on you Gamesworld, because of you I'll wait my three days by mail order.

If you're thinking of playing some out of the ordinary board games, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ is a good place to start. Days of Wonder, Rio Grande, Fantasy Flight and Z Man all publish great games.

Now to wait and order Arkham Horror, Steam and Power Grid later in the year.

:-)