tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60715724439487225042024-02-22T01:20:32.447-08:00Leslie Hall @ InkspotWhat I'm thinking about what I do, which includes but is not limited to all matters related to education, reading, writing, editing, content development, and curriculum and assessment design and implementationLesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-20352420393110719752014-07-07T21:51:00.001-07:002014-07-07T21:51:18.646-07:00New Digs--See You There<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I'm migrating to <a href="http://www.writingismyjam.com/">Writing Is My Jam</a>, which is where I'll henceforth be freely expressing my many opinions about everything including but not limited to writing, writing for kids, writing for educational publishing, and writing assessments. In fact, if you are so inclined, you can find all of my previous posts from Leslie Hall@Inkspot at the new digs of <a href="http://www.writingismyjam.com/">Writing Is My Jam</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I feel l should close with a song.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/EEEzbFxEbB8">The music of my misspent middle school years</a> comes to mind, probably because this song is on my current writing playlist. Theme of magic, because the genre I'm working in is--surprise!--<a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Magic_realism.html">magic realism</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here's a sampling:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/9iA_TZ15ruA">Witch Doctor</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq-NShfefks&list=RDCq-NShfefks&feature=share">Magic</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/vBKi4MEPBsQ">Superstition</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/82r9VQuet_k">That Old Black Magic</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/infVKRDENSE">Magic Road</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4gc8iBDaI">Black Magic Woman</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And also <a href="http://youtu.be/_B0CyOAO8y0">Entry of the Gladiators</a>,<a href="http://youtu.be/TscxLlhMiig">Sideshow</a>, and <a href="http://youtu.be/rQjh9H-ymK4">She Said</a>, none of which particularly have to do with magic (or magic realism), but they do in some way relate to an aspect of plot, character, or theme.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Make a playlist for your writing. It's inspiring. Then come on over to <a href="http://www.writingismyjam.com/">Writing Is My Jam </a>and post a sample in the comments. Because it's fun. A work playlist is fun, too.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-80191864520549683402014-05-08T00:30:00.000-07:002014-05-08T01:26:51.224-07:00Louis C.K. Hurt My Feelings<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=louis+ck+hates+the+common+core&oq=louis+ck+hates+the+common+core&aqs=chrome..69i57.5638j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8">Louis C.K. hates the Common Core standards.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I first saw it <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/02/louis-ck-testing-common-core-david-letterman_n_5255310.html">here, on the HuffPo</a>, from David Letterman. Later, a friend/colleague (I don't name her only because she is in the business, too, and I don't want to get her in trouble) sent me a message to make sure I saw it--thanks for keeping me in the loop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Toward the interest of full disclosure, I have to say I’ve always had a little crush on Louis C.K.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Why, you may ask?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You may ask this because you’re thinking of the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=louis+c.k.+ben+and+jerrys&oq=louis+c.k.+ben+and+jerrys&aqs=chrome..69i57.8606j0j9&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8#q=louis+c.k.+episodes">fictional-but-based-on-real-Louis </a>and the elevator fantasy scene or fictional-but-based-on-real-Louis passed out and surrounded by empty pizza boxes and ice cream containers or fictional-but-based-on-real-Louis being rejected by a woman because she witnessed him shrinking from confrontation with a high school bully.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Why do I have a crush on <a href="https://buy.louisck.net/">Louis C.K.</a>?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Oh, let me count the ways: for the pure and sheer humanity and vulnerability that he just goes ahead and expresses, seemingly without any filter, and most of all, for the breathtaking courage it must take for him to expose his humanity and vulnerability to the world. He’s willing to be <a href="http://youtu.be/8qOaZ4CQqKI">naked</a>, figuratively and literally, when most of us are frantically swaddling ourselves with ego padding, trying to keep our humanity and vulnerability zipped up, buckled tight, under wraps, armored up. We post only flattering glamorous pictures online, nothing that makes us look dumpy or frumpy or dorky, even though surely all of us spend more time being dumpy, frumpy, or dorky than we do being smooth and suave and glamorous and elegant and unruffled. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Unless we’re, you know, <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbillidollarbaby.com%2Fkanye-west-kim-kardashian-vogue-april-2014-annie-leibovitz%2F&h=0&w=0&tbnid=ofYcRly-Mt_S0M&zoom=1&tbnh=185&tbnw=272&docid=G8bnkHNvWXPXSM&tbm=isch&ei=Ii5rU-Ndg67IBNCGgJgL&ved=0CAsQsCUoAw">Kimye</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(That picture on my blog? Taken three years ago. I've aged. I hate having pictures taken of myself and probably won't update it until I'm seventy.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Besides, I hail from the working class, as does Louis C.K.,and so I applaud and cheer <i>preach it, brother! </i>whenever he criticizes <a href="http://youtu.be/hHVMAa-21aY">entitlement or laziness</a> or ingratitude.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All right, so we have this comedian who is a father--a good father, if by “good,” we mean someone who engages in thought about parenting and participates in his kids’ lives, which is all fantastic, and those of us who didn’t have fathers like that think he is really amazing for being that kind of father, and probably those of us who did have fathers like that feel a bit of fondness for him because this is familiar territory--who pays attention to his daughters and their inner lives and who worries when his daughters suffer, and so when his daughters, upon encountering mandatory statewide standardized testing, feel anxious, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/05/louis-ck-against-the-common-core.html">Louis C.K. has something to say about it</a>. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Something really not flattering to the people who write the tests. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Something really not flattering to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the spirit of respectful discourse and intellectual debate, I’d like to address these points:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">1. Who writes these tests?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I do. Not the bad ones--unless instructed by a client to write badly, and sometimes that do happen, much to my chagrin--and only English language arts. Someone else is to blame for math, science, and social studies. Not my areas.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You could talk to my friend Scott about math or my colleague Jim about science, I guess, but they don't write bad tests, either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are lots of bad tests, yes. It's a systemic problem. More on that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">2. Why do I do this horrible, horrible thing?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To earn a living and support my two children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">3. What are my qualifications?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I have a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a master’s degree in English with an emphasis on writing from Sonoma State University, almost two years community college teaching experience, twenty years experience in educational publishing, and five years elementary classroom volunteer experience, as well as other miscellaneous tutoring experience from college and grad school. Also I was a TA
in grad school, for the creative writing class, oh God, was that awful, all those stories about cats and sexual abuse and suicide mixed with the occasional fantasy of being a wealthy celebrity writer driving a red Corvette, clearly no
student in that class had ever read a word written by any writer other than their favorite writers: themselves. In addition, I’ve put in many, many hours of study--in education, in reading and language acquisition and of literature and literary criticism, and especially in assessment, and even more especially in the writing of test
questions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">4. What’s with the <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/">Common Core</a>?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s a good idea to have national standards. Other countries do, and that’s how they make sure that all the kids in the country are learning the same things at the same pacing. It’s a good idea to consider career- and college readiness, and how to make that happen, particularly when kids in the United States are undereducated to a degree that must make us the laughingstock of industrialized nations. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/best-education-in-the-wor_n_2199795.html">Finland and South Korea especially must snigger at our national ignorance</a> and celebration thereof--<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926153">is there any country in the world that makes a point of being so dang proud of being stupid</a>? I ask you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">5. Why do people hate the Common Core so very much?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">People fear change. People hate what they fear.
No one understands what the Common Core standards are, or what the shift means, or that it's really a good thing that kids in Alabama learn the same things as kids in Connecticut. There’s too much hype and not enough real education about the standards and their purpose. Teachers are scared because tests are being used for wrongful purposes (never a good idea to link teacher pay to test scores), and scared teachers are scaring the kids.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">6. What is Louis C.K. really upset about?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Like any caring parent, he’s upset that his daughters are upset.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He doesn’t know enough about the Common Core to be upset about them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That’s not his fault; it’s the fault of the top-secret test publishing industry that keeps all information under lock and key, supposedly to preserve confidentiality, but, really? Wouldn’t it be smarter to explain what’s happening and why? No. Because then they would have to explain everything else, like the billions of dollars spent on testing and how little of it changes anything really, and also how little of it trickles down to the people who are doing the
actual work which means that the majority of content developers (not me, I'm the exception, this is my career) are inexperienced hobbyists or inexperienced part-time teachers or hustlers who think they're getting away with something by getting paid to do something they don't know anything about and how much of the big money in testing gets bottlenecked up at the executive and shareholder level.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">7. What should Louis C.K. really be upset about?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/10-5">Capitalism</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmlX3fLQrEc">The one percent</a>. The <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/12/01/noam_chomsky_america_hates_its_poor_partner/">war on poor people</a> instead of a war on poverty. The state of education in the United States. Dogs that need rescue at animal shelters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What’s so unfortunate here is that Louis C.K. is someone who’s got a public forum--people (including me) listen to him, laugh at his jokes, care about his opinions. He has an opportunity to make people think (at least a little) and that would be a really great thing if--and I don’t at all intend this as a snarky sarcastic dig--he knew what he was talking about. I'm sure there are a gazillion things he knows plenty about, but the Common Core standards are not on that list. Really, do you think he has even read them? I mean no offense, but I would be surprised by an affirmative.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There are so many things that are terribly wrong in education in general and in educational
assessment in particular, but from my perspective--as someone who does know what she’s talking about here--the Common Core is a paper dragon. Let’s talk instead about the corporatization of education.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How about that fewer than half a dozen test publishing companies rule assessment, and the king is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/05/06/a-history-of-pearsons-testing-problems-worldwide/">Pearson</a>? (<a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2014/05/american_institutes_for_research_challenges_pearson_common-core_testing_award_in_court.html">Which company is now involved in a controversy over the award of the PARCC assessments as the result of a lawsuit filed by AIR</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How about that the people who are actually doing the work are paid woefully inadequately (Hello? My yearly income today is the same as it was twelve years ago when I started my business, but guess what, inflation--can you see why this is a problem?) while the companies continue to earn profits that are obscene in comparison?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Let’s take me, partly because I am monumentally self-absorbed, but also because my experience is what I know. I do know many other people in this line of work, but very few have the depth and breadth of experience that I have in educational assessment: I’ve worked in hand-scoring, program management, content development from the ground up (item writer to editor to supervisor to manager to director and back to item writer and editor). I’ve worked directly with state department of education officials. For seven years, I had an annual contract with <a href="http://www.dadeschools.net/">Miami-Dade County Public Schools</a>, one of the largest districts in the country, a district that has more students than some states.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For the last twelve years, I have concentrated mainly (with some side jobs involving higher level consulting of test design and product research) on the hands-on work of content development: writing and editing material (reading passages and questions) for tests. That is unheard of. In this industry, as soon as anyone shows a spark of initiative, and especially if that initiative is accompanied by a pebble of intelligence, that person gets promoted. Anyone else with twenty years' experience has been in management for at least ten of those years, and management is not the same as actually doing the work, as any line cook at KFC could tell you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I mean no arrogance when I say that I’m the perfect person to write tests, considering the combination of education, experience, and
dedication--because I care about what I do, quality matters to me, the kids matter to me--when I write reading passages and test questions, I’m thinking about the experience of the kids who are going to take the test just as much as I’m thinking about my paycheck. Maybe more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Not that I don’t think about my paycheck. I do. I have to. I’m a single mother with two kids.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Thinking about those kids who take these tests breaks my heart. Not so much kids like my daughters and Louis C.K.’s daughters--these girls are all going to be fine. They have parents who love them, ready access to books, music, art, libraries, documentaries on penguins and whales and volcanoes and subscriptions to the National Geographic and visits to the Smithsonian. Their parents talk to them all the time (maybe too much, in my case; Louis C.K. is probably a lot more interesting and a lot less pedantic when he talks to his daughters) and are willing to listen and answer questions and explain all about why everything in the world is the way it is. We the parents will support our daughters, consider their happiness, find ways to challenge them, look for opportunities to help them navigate the complexities of relationships, communication, education, and, eventually, careers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And Louis C.K.’s kids? They’re especially going to be fine. <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/12/like-all-rich-people-louis-ck-hates-spoiled-rich-kids">They’re rich</a>. They’ll have their pick of colleges, go wherever they want, do whatever
they want from now until they die and leave their truckloads of dollar bills (remember investment income is taxed at about half the rate of labor income, so their money is constantly making money, they'll have more money than they could ever spend) to their kids and their kids' kids.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That is awesome for them, and while I envy their good fortune (which I acknowledge comes from the hard work and talent of their father), I don’t begrudge it them. If they get a little upset about a
test, I understand and I sympathize and it's nice that their dad sympathizes, too, but really, there are a lot worse things in the world to happen when you’re a kid, and a lot worse things do happen to many of the kids in the world. Maybe some of that righteous indignation could go to someone else’s kids, kids who really don’t ever get a chance.
Not that I mean to be all sassy to Louis C.K.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Note:</b> A little crush. Not a stalker crush. Have I ever written to or tried to contact him in any way? No. Geez. Of course not. Would I ever? No. Oh, God, no. What do you take me for? Have I watched his show and stand-up routines? Yes. Do I laugh at his jokes? Most. Some of the humor is a bit past my endurance, but I celebrate his right to express himself.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-29675612755201995962013-11-17T16:53:00.000-08:002013-11-17T16:53:35.189-08:00What Are We Waiting for<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">November is <a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">National Novel Writing Month</a> (NaNoWriMo, that crazy venture in which you write 50,000 words of a consecutive narrative thread in 30 days). The NaNoWriMo motto is <i>The world needs your novel.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don't know whether the world needs my novel, but I do know that every November for the last 5 years, I considered participating in NaNoWriMo but didn't follow through.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
This year I am doing NaNoWriMo. Or I should say I did NaNoWriMo, because I'm done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the first 7 days I wrote 20,661 words. As of midnight yesterday, I had written 50,425 words, which means I finished the novel and accomplished what I had set out to do. (Almost. I'd set myself the ridiculous goal of 50,000 words in 15 days. So I was a day late.) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />NaNoWriMo <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/11/02/nanowrimo/">critics</a> will agree with Laura Miller of <a href="http://www.salon.com/">Salon</a> who says "<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">I am not the first person to point out that 'writing a lot of crap' doesn’t sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"> November." (To which one might be tempted to respond <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI">thusly</a>.) </span><span style="line-height: 20px;">I would agree with Laura Miller that if a writer is using some of the </span><a href="http://writeontheinternet.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/10-dirty-ways-to-reach-50000-words-in-nanowrimo/" style="line-height: 20px;">silly tricks I've seen for completing NaNoWriMo</a><span style="line-height: 20px;">, such as adding a nonsense word ("</span><a href="http://writeontheinternet.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/10-dirty-ways-to-reach-50000-words-in-nanowrimo/" style="line-height: 20px;">potato</a><span style="line-height: 20px;">") after every word in order to pad the word count, it's potato pretty potato much potato a why-bother potato exercise potato.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Certainly writing fast doesn't always mean writing badly. <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/">Mental Floss</a> provides <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/53481/14-published-novels-written-during-nanowrimo">a list of NaNoWriMo novels that got published</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">As for me, I found the NaNoWriMo project a delightful and fruitful way to spend two weeks and a day.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you are a writer who has considered participating in NaNoWriMo, I encourage you to do it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Because if your novel offers the world your unique voice, your quirky perspective, your way of looking at and thinking about the world, and your story--the story only you can tell--then yes, the world really does need your novel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We need all the stories we can get.</span><br />
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Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-11324849900124591192013-08-06T12:42:00.001-07:002013-11-17T16:55:16.070-08:00PSA: Conducting a Performance Review of the Inner Critic<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For a few days I've been considering </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">what Freud identified as the super-ego</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, what has become popularly known as the </span><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=inner+critic&oq=inner+critic&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i60j0l3j69i62.2910j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">inner critic</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, or if you're abundantly blessed, your personal busload or committee or parliament of inner critics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Generally speaking, the role of the inner critic seems primarily protective, as wrongheaded as its tactics are for that purpose. If you're a writer, your inner critic might advise you to clean the house instead of writing, or may suggest there's no point in writing, because everything you write is horrible, bad, and no-good, and that one 7th grade English teacher was just being nice or had bad taste or that the one story you wrote that got published or that your writing group liked was an anomaly. No attempt means no risk means safety from rejection and criticism.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> Probably there are inner critics for every occupation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are as many strategies of dealing with inner critics as there are types of inner critics: we can <a href="http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0062507575">embrace them</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-neff/self-compassion_b_1579462.html">treat them with compassion</a>, or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqqyVm9gvYM">murder them</a>. I'd like to offer a new one: conduct a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_appraisal">performance review</a> to evaluate their effectiveness on the job.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Frankly, if my inner critics were my employees, I'd have fired them by now. I always sort of knew they were making a mess of it--how did they even make it past the interview?-- but I'd never taken the time to consider the nature of their incompetence. I made <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/09/ten-reasons-performance-reviews-are-done-terribly/">one of the biggest mistakes employers make with performance reviews, according to Forbes</a>: I haven't been conducting them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To prepare for the review, I must specify the responsibilities of the inner critic: what is the job description?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A critic approaches a work with curiosity, is open to experiencing a work and responding to the work, observes those responses, and investigates the work in order to consider the artist's purpose and message, and how the artist achieves that purpose and conveys that message. A critic pays close attention to the work. A critic is dedicated to a particular art (and should be an expert of that art or field), and in the raising up of that art, and so the critic is responsible for celebrating achievements as much as for observing attempts that may fall short.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">These are questions a critic might ask in examining a work of art:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What place does this work have in the tradition or genre?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How has this work been influenced by earlier works?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How does this work reflect a social, historical, or cultural context?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How may different levels of interpretation be applied to this work?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What are the messages of this work?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Is there a universal message or is the message specific to a group, time, place, instance?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How does this work convey those messages?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Does this work have a unique voice and style that set it apart from others of its type?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What contributes to the uniqueness of this work?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What emotional responses does a person have to this work?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How does this work elicit those emotional responses?</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What is not in the critic's job description:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">insulting, bullying, ridiculing, mocking, belittling, name-calling, disparaging the artist or the work, listing past mistakes, predicting future failure</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Critics address the work with specific questions and use the information to discuss the work and explore the meaning of the work. It's a lot easier to approach a work from opinion (<i>I like it, I hate it</i>) or judgment (<i>rotten, all right, awesome</i>), but so much less interesting and less effective.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What good does opinion do, really? Even nice opinions aren't much use, as much as it feels better when a reader says that he likes one's writing than when he says that he hates it.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you heard the way my inner critics talk, you'd agree that they've fallen down on the job. Or maybe they got handed the wrong job description in the first place. I can't recall their ever having performed satisfactorily.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Writers need to write, and we need to figure out ways around and through and over and under the obstacles to writing, even while we're constructing the obstacles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And there are other reasons:</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We parents, teachers, coaches, aunts, uncles, grandparents--we all of us adults--create the voices for future generations of inner critics. I'd like my kids to go out into the world with inner critics who contribute to, rather than sabotage, their happiness and well-being.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Many of us supervise others. In so doing, we can't help but impose the messages of our inner critics on others. We have the choice to be constructive or destructive. We have the choice to be reasonable (or not) with ourselves and others.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">No good writing ever came from performance anxiety.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I'm concerned that how we think about, talk about, teach, and measure performance in writing trains students to believe that not only are they terrible writers, but they are not capable of writing well. The reality is that everyone can tell a good story, and if you can tell a good story, you can write a good story, and if you can write a good story, you should, because we all need stories, as many as possible, from as many perspectives as possible.</span></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" mozallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="560"></iframe>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-7678814009328475992013-08-01T11:31:00.000-07:002013-08-01T11:31:51.099-07:00The Big Idea, or Focus, Cross-Referenced to Basic Rules of Item Writing<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What comes before preparation is intention, which we previously discussed <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/03/first-things-first.html">here</a>. Still, the concept of the Big Idea bears further exploration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Let's consider how we might approach this grade 4 standard from the <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy">CCSS</a>, RL.4.2:</span><br />
<div class="p1">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy">Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.</a></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This standard is passage-dependent; students read a story, poem, or play (or excerpts of the same) and then answer questions about what they read.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This standard requires two distinct subskills: determining a theme and summarizing text. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Either may be assessed with multiple-choice, constructed-response, or technology-enhanced items, although I note that in an ideal world, we wouldn't use multiple-choice for summarizing, but would instead ask students to create the summary. Again in that ideal world, it's best if we provide the student with opportunities to demonstrate mastery of a particular skill by allowing the student to perform the skill; however, we often operate under constraints that exclude the ideal. That's okay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After we've read all of our ancillary support materials and have thoroughly acquainted ourselves with the story, poem, or play (for less experienced item writers and for all item writers without a strong background in literary analysis, I suggest making an outline of and annotating the passage in order to avoid the trap of writing superficial and repetitive items), we determine the theme(s). There may be more than one. Out of fairness, choose the strongest theme that is most clearly supported and most thoroughly developed in the passage. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The theme may be stated explicitly or may be implied by the characters' words and actions.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here is our passage, "<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16436/pg16436.txt">A Boy's Song" by James Hogg</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1467222371"></span> Where the pools are bright and deep,
Where the gray trout lies asleep,
Up the river and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.
Where the blackbird sings the latest,
Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
That's the way for Billy and me.
Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
Where the hay lies thick and greenest,
There to trace the homeward bee,
That's the way for Billy and me.
Where the hazel bank is steepest,
Where the shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free.
That's the way for Billy and me.
Why the boys should drive away,
Little sweet maidens from the play,
Or love to banter and fight so well,
That's the thing I never could tell.
But this I know, I love to play,
Through the meadow, among the hay;
Up the water and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.<span id="goog_1467222372"></span></a>
</span></pre>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We would probably use call-out boxes to define some of the vocabulary--"lea" and "nestling" stand out as words likely to interfere with student understanding.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If we're writing a multiple-choice item, the stem will look like this:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What is a theme of the poem?</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Or we might identify the poem only by its title ("What is a main theme of 'A Boy's Song'?") if we plan to write another item about genre characteristics ("How does the reader know 'A Boy's Song' is a poem?").</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Often at the lower grades, we use "theme" and "main idea" as synonyms; depending on curriculum, grade 4 students may not yet be familiar with the specific terms for narrative elements, and we don't want to erect unnecessary obstacles for those students, so we might write a stem that looks like this:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What is a main idea of the story?</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I prefer "a" rather than "the" in order to allow for variety in literary interpretation; we'd follow the client's preference on this. In this case, a clear theme is the joy of spending time in nature. Now we have a stem and the correct response:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What is a theme of the poem?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A the joy of spending time in nature</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">B [TK]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">C [TK]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">D [TK]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Next we'd write three distractors (wrong answers). Each distractor should have a rationale--that is, each should embody a specific mistake or breakdown in comprehension or literary analysis that might hinder a student en route to determining the theme. The rule in item writing is that, given the evidence in the text, distractors must be "plausible but not possible." The distractors should be clearly wrong to the student who is able to "determine a theme...from details in the text."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Many clients require item writers to provide rationales or justifications for the wrong answer; I support this wholeheartedly as valuable practice for inexperienced item writers. Experienced item writers have rationales in their minds already, so it's just a matter of typing them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When we write the distractors, we must stay focused on our Big Idea. In order to do that, we'd consider the breakdowns that occur when students attempt to identify a theme. In order to do that, we'd think about the process of making meaning from text. We read the poem and step back and come up with the overarching meaning: the joy of spending time in nature. Then we think about how a student might falter in putting the pieces of the poem together to see that big picture. A student might get stuck on a detail of the poem, and mistake that for a theme. A student might confuse theme and subject. A student might focus too narrowly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Next up: constructing plausible but not possible distractors.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I'm reading: <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reivers">The Reivers</a></i> by Faulkner and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginings_of_Sand">Imaginings of Sand</a></i> by Andre Brinks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br /></div>
Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-73495338444585797592013-07-31T13:36:00.000-07:002013-07-31T13:36:07.649-07:00The Big Idea, Cross-Referenced to Basic Rules of Item Writing<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What endeavor doesn't benefit from planning and preparation? What endeavor succeeds without preparation?</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=GV0MAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Ah, fatal words! Too late in moving here, too late in arriving there, too late in coming to this decision, too late in starting with enterprises, too late in preparing.</a></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These first guidelines of the <a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf"><i>CCSSO/TILSA Quality Control Checklist for Item Development and Test Form Construction</i></a> should be considered in early stages of planning, long before item writing assignments are made:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf">1A. Each item should assess content standard(s) as specified in the test blueprint or assessment frameworks.</a> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf">2A. Items must measure appropriate thinking skills as specified in the test blueprint or assessment frameworks.</a> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">3A. Items should be written at appropriate cognitive levels and reading levels according to the item specifications guidelines.</span></a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A test blueprint identifies the skills and/or knowledge to be assessed, provides the item-to-skill distribution, and specifies item formats.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Let's think about creating a blueprint to assess writing at grade 6. We'll base the blueprint on the Common Core State Standards.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the CCSS, English conventions are addressed in the language standards, and what we might call writing strategies and application are addressed in the writing standards. The language standards could be assessed with a variety of formats: standalone or passage-dependent multiple choice items, standalone or passage-dependent technology-enhanced items, or as one component of an extended-constructed-response item.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here is a writing standard:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span id="goog_1758233733"></span>1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of
substantive topics or texts,</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">a. Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from
alternate or</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes
clear</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and
evidence.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">b. Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying
evidence for each</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in
a manner that</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">anticipates the audience’s knowledge level and concerns.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">c. Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major
sections of the text,</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between
claim(s) and reasons,</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and
counterclaims.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">d. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone
while attending to</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they
are writing.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">e. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows
from and supports</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">the argument presented.<span id="goog_1758233734"></span></span></a></blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Generally the above standard would be assessed with an extended-constructed-response item, because multiple-choice items and short constructed-response items don't allow students sufficient opportunity to demonstrate the ability to "write arguments to support claims...." However, the subskills may be (and frequently are) assessed with multiple-choice items; this is more common at the district or classroom level than at the state level. You might see a question that addresses W.1.a by asking the student to choose the best opposing claim for a given argument. Such multiple-choice items may help teachers isolate specific areas in which a student needs instruction and support.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here are language standards:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span id="goog_1758233737"></span>1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">standard English grammar and usage when</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">writing or speaking.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">a. Ensure that pronouns are in the proper case</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(subjective, objective, possessive).</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">b. Use intensive pronouns (e.g., myself,</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ourselves).</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">c. Recognize and correct inappropriate shifts in</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">pronoun number and person.*</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">d. Recognize and correct vague pronouns</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(i.e., ones with unclear or ambiguous</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">antecedents).*</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">e. Recognize variations from standard English</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">in their own and others’ writing and</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">speaking, and identify and use strategies to</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">improve expression in conventional language.*</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">standard English capitalization, punctuation, and</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">spelling when writing.</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">a. Use punctuation (commas, parentheses,</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">dashes) to set off nonrestrictive/parenthetical</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">elements.*</span></a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">b. Spell correctly.<span id="goog_1758233738"></span></span></a></blockquote>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">All of the above language skills may be assessed with multiple-choice questions. These could be standalone, or could offer a stimulus: an editing passage with embedded errors. More on language items as previously discussed <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/03/speaking-of-language-cross-referenced.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For our imaginary grade 6 writing test, we might decide that we'd like to use multiple measures in order to obtain as much information as possible in as many different ways as we can, so we're going to create a blueprint that specifies a combination of item formats and includes x number of multiple-choice and technology-enhanced items, along with one extended-constructed-response to a writing prompt; this response will be scored with a holistic rubric that addresses organization, style and voice, and conventions. We would develop a test blueprint that specified the standards and subskills to be assessed, along with the number of items and item formats for each standard or subskill.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In our blueprint, we may also use <a href="http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html">Bloom's Taxonomy</a> or <a href="http://www.aps.edu/rda/documents/resources/Webbs_DOK_Guide.pdf">Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge Guide</a> to determine the cognitive level for each item. Although the cognitive levels of some skills are relatively simple to determine, based on what is required from students, some skills may be addressed at multiple levels of cognitive complexity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We may instead indicate the cognitive levels, item difficulty, and content or domain limits, and reading levels in the item specifications, as suggested in the CSSO/TILSA checklist.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In a typical statewide high-stakes assessment program, the decisions that inform the development of a test blueprint and item specifications are made by committees, which is as it should be, and committees should include classroom teachers. Committees often include other stakeholders, e.g., business leaders who may be asked to identify skills and knowledge necessary in the workplace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Once all of that preparation is complete, item development begins.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now let's say we've received an assignment to write those multiple-choice language items and that ECR writing prompt. We've read all of the project documentation and support materials; we have the item specifications in front of us. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is </span><a href="http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv1n01.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a truth universally acknowledged</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> that a test item should target one and only one skill or bit of content knowledge. Each idea should have one big idea; every part of the item should support that focus. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If we were going to write a multiple-choice item for W.2.b, our big idea would be how to spell grade-level appropriate words. We might write an item that looks like this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which word is spelled correctly?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A absense</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">B boundery</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">C civilizashion</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">D dissolve*</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This item clearly targets one skill: correctly spell grade-level-appropriate words. The stem tells the student exactly what to do. The item is phrased simply and concisely. The content is neutral; there are no highly-charged words. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">All of the answer choices are grade 6 words (according to EDL Core Vocabularies); all are words likely to be known to grade 6 students and are words that are significant to academic content areas. There are no tricky or esoteric rare words. The answer choices appear in a logical order (here we use alpha order). All of the distractors address common spelling mistakes: using </span><u style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">s</u><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> instead of </span><u style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">c</u><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, using </span><u style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">e</u><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> instead of </span><u style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a</u><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, and writing phonetically. None of the words are homonyms and so none are context-dependent; each of these words have one correct spelling.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here is a poor item addressing the same skill:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which word is written correctly?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A musheenz</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">B rabby</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">C anker</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">D pistol</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This item has multiple flaws. First, the big idea is not specified in the stem; the student doesn't know what s/he is expected to do until s/he reads the answer choices. The answer choices are not grade-level-appropriate; "machine" is a grade 2 word, while "anchor" is grade 3. The word "rabbi" may not be familiar to grade 6 students. Answer choice A ("musheenz") is plural, while the other ACs are singular. Answer choice A also offers mistakes that are unlikely to be made by students at the targeted grade level. The answer choices do not appear in any logical order. Finally, the correct response is a type of weapon.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As bad as this item is, though, we could make it even worse by</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">increasing the reading load by burying the spelling words in sentences and offering four sentences as the answer choices;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">obscuring the targeted skill by adding in other types of conventions errors, such as mistakes in capitalization and punctuation;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">using homonyms, or words that are spelled differently depending on the context;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">using above-grade-level vocabulary.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Item writing is both an art and a science. There's so much to consider, even in writing the simplest spelling item.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-92017953984459643052013-07-27T10:50:00.000-07:002013-07-27T10:50:14.728-07:00How to Get the Best from Item Writers<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Many years ago, I was a development manager at a Great Big Huge Test Publishing Company. I've already told <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2009/10/poppycock-folderal-nonsense.html">the story of how I began as a temp employee in hand-scoring</a>, as so many recruits to the test publishing industry do. Armed with my book-learnin' and a new but hardly marketable M.A. in English, emphasis in creative writing, I was thrilled to get a job that paid slightly more than $10 an hour, a job that had to do with words and writing. Yay me, illustrating the joy of low expectations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When the Great Big Huge Test Publishing Company was awarded what was then considered a big statewide assessment contract (back in the days when we tested at grades 3, 6, 8, and 10, or grades thereabouts), I was plucked from hand-scoring, handed the title of associate editor and deposited in a cubicle in a cavernous upstairs honeycomb which cubicle I shared with another associate editor who'd also come from hand-scoring. Within 5 years, I'd gone from the windowless cubicle of associate editor to content editor to supervisor to program manager to the window office of development manager. You can probably guess at my success as a manager, given I had no training and little experience in management. Oh, if only I had read <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Out-Best-People-Reinforcement/dp/0972488995">Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement</a></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Which I have since read, and which principles I endeavor to apply when I'm called to supervise others, and to the effectiveness of which I can attest. <a href="http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Oprah-Interviews-Jay-Z-October-2009-Issue-of-O-Magazine/8">We do what we know; when we know better, we do better</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It may be tempting, when we consider the <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">plummeting quality</a> of what we see on test materials, to blame the writers. But as <a href="http://www.ets.org/s/understanding_testing/flash/how_ets_creates_test_questions.html">this video from ETS</a> reminds us, the writer is only one of many contributors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Getting the best from item writers has to start long before an editor sends out that <i>Are you available? </i>email. The foundation of a project must be sound; there must be a blueprint and prototypes; there must be a clear vision of what the product is intended to look like, how it is intended to perform, what skills/knowledge it is intended to measure, and how it should measure those skills/knowledge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These decisions should not be left to the item writer; few item writers are equipped to make such decisions. In the past, item writers worked in-house, or were mostly former employees of test publishing companies, and so were at least minimally conversant with principles governing the design and construction of assessments. Sometimes item writers were corralled to help assemble the tests and were given Xeroxed sheets containing lists of item numbers and associated <a href="https://www.msu.edu/dept/soweb/itanhand.html#stats">data</a>. That is no longer the case. I don't know of any test publishing company who maintains a staff of in-house item writers. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Today test publishing companies commonly hire item writers who have never worked for test publishing companies and who have little experience writing items for high-stakes assessment </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(they may have written for curriculum and textbooks, if they have any experience at all)</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. They may not have any classroom experience; they may not even have kids, and so the world of education--the real world of education and of what kids really are able to know and do at a given grade level--is a mystery to them. Or they develop their own ideas about what K-12 students know and can do, ideas that are as inaccurate as they are ambitious and inflated. (This is through no fault of their own, but the remedy is simple: volunteer in the classroom. Go to a school and offer to spend an hour a week in a classroom.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Even if item writers were equipped, they shouldn't make decisions which should rightfully be made at a much higher level, by folks with greater knowledge, experience, and authority. Such decisions take time. There must be time to consider, reflect, think about it in the shower and in the car, time to return to one's colleagues and say <i>Well, what if</i> and <i>how will it work if</i>. The <i>what-ifs </i>must be given time to rise to the surface.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rushing inevitably creates chaos. Whatever writers produce under slippery circumstances--when the expectations are not specified-- will fail to meet those unspecified expectations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Assuming, however, that the big decisions have been made, and that the writers have been provided with everything they need to do a good (or excellent) job, what else can companies do to get the best from writers?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">1. Take care of all housekeeping details upfront. Provide the writer with written information about the scope of work, schedule, deadlines, pay rates, and points of contact. Preferably all in one email message. Send the contract and the <a href="http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf">W-9</a>. Tell the writer whom to invoice and how. Remove possible sources of worry. Worry is destructive to creativity and productivity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">2. Provide training. The training should be as brief as possible, and should be conducted at the commencement of the project. A training that is offered a month before writing begins is useless, because writers will have forgotten the information they learned. Materials for the training should be emailed in advance. The writers should be told whom to call if they have questions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">3. There should be a dedicated content lead available to respond to writers' questions and to provide timely guidance throughout the course of the project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">4. Give writers the chance to do it right. The content lead's ducks must be lined up and ready to waddle. There must be a clear style to follow, preferences to comply with, and so on. The directions and feedback should be clear. To be effective, feedback must be immediate. Feedback must have the purpose of informing work in progress. Consider how disheartening it is to submit 50 items and then be told that there is now a new requirement, please revise those items accordingly and resubmit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">5. Allow the writers to work as they work best. More and more companies are requiring writers to input items directly into an online authoring system. While some of these are better than others, all add time and effort on the part of the writer, thus siphoning off energy better spent on item development. For each project, writers must learn how to use a new system; they might finish the project before they become proficient. Then it's off to a new system. I often decline opportunities to work in authoring systems, because I find the levels of clickage annoying--seconds add up to minutes add up to hours over the course of a year, hours I would much rather have spent reading or looking out the window or talking to my daughters or whatever else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">6. Let the writers do the work they do best. Writers write. Now that companies are operating on principles of leanness akin to corporate anorexia, companies are expecting writers to take on the work that used to be the province of content editors and desk-top publishers. With no increase in pay and no increase in time allotted to do the work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">7. Give writers enough space to write. Some assignments are so rigid and exacting, with so many criteria of so many types, that they become impossible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">8. Allow the writers to contribute their unique knowledge, experience, and skills. Writers work for all the educational assessment, test preparation, and curriculum publishers. They have access to a depth and breadth of knowledge about what's happening in educational publishing that is denied to the folks whose only job in educational publishing has been to work at the one company at which they are currently employed. Being open to the possibility that the writers know something and giving the writers freedom beyond the stricture <i>This is how we do it </i>will only serve the company and ultimately, the kids.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">9. Be a human and let the writer be a human. We are none of us robots. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We have the skills we shine at and the skills we don't. This is normal and the nature of being human; it's not a flaw unique to a particular writer if she has trouble juggling multiple spreadsheets (not to name any names, me). No one in this world is capable of doing everything perfectly; no one is guilty of never making a mistake. The industry used to understand that; the protocol for test publishing included many rounds of editorial review prior to submitting materials to proofreading, and then to QA. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If these principles were applied, quality would improve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That's all I got for today. I'm off to Valencia, to the <a href="http://calarts.edu/">Cal Arts</a> campus, to visit my daughter, Twin A ("A" being the initial written on the knitted cap the nurses placed on her head after her birth) who is a creative writer in the <a href="http://www.csssa.org/">California State Summer School for the Arts</a> program. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I'm reading: I finished <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying_(novel)">As I Lay Dying.</a></i> I love Faulkner. It always takes me at least half the book to marshall my resources to focus on his writing, I find it so challenging, but once I'm in, I'm there. I have a novel by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Brink">Andre Brinks</a> next, I think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-85576734826688991762013-07-26T21:17:00.000-07:002013-07-26T21:22:10.502-07:00A Great Deal Done Imperfectly<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.</i>--Plato</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2013/07/before-beginning.html">my last post</a>, I may have given the impression that editors have more power than they do, and that perhaps that they have time to consider the ramifications of failing to provide all the necessities, or that they are willfully negligent. Salaried as they may be, editors often find themselves in an unenviable pickle, with compressed development cycles and few resources. The industry's reliance on freelance personnel increases the workload of front-line staff, who may now have to manage groups of writers in addition to performing other duties. Each writer must add about an hour a week in emails, phone calls, and admin tasks--and that's if the writer is low-maintenance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It's also likely that editors want to provide all the necessities, but those necessities don't exist and the schedule doesn't allow time for editors to develop them. (Some of the most experienced item writers are able to work around the deficiencies, but the work of the less experienced will be affected.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">No one--except the one at the top of the pyramid, I imagine-- is resting on a velvet cushion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I may have left another inaccurate impression: that it's all about the money. It's not. How can it be? This is not a high rolling game. What I mean to say is that when writers don't have what they need to do their best work, everyone loses.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The industry continues to become less hospitable to the people actually doing the work of creating the tests--or, more accurately, the people writing the passages and questions from which the tests are assembled--which results in a great deal done imperfectly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Writers lose time and money; they also lose the best of all rewards, the satisfaction of a job well done, simply because how can you do a task perfectly when the task hasn't been clearly defined, and when you ask for clarification, you're directed to figure it out?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The companies lose much, much more. The lower pay and the more pain (inconvenience? Call it what you will. I mean all of those tiny ducks that are pecking us to death) to the writers, the lower quality the work, and the fewer writers willing to undertake that work, those fewer writers being the ones who have no choice: the least proficient, the least experienced. And the most highly skilled writers simply decide they've had enough and they move on to greener (or at least different) pastures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Most importantly, the children who are taking the tests have already lost when they're faced with low-quality materials that don't provide them with a fair chance to demonstrate what they know and can do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All right. Let's move on. I'm eager to address the basic rules of item writing (a version of which you can see <a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf">here</a>, in the <i><a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf">Quality Control Checklist</a></i> published by CCSSO), but I realize I should first define some terms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">An item is a test question. An item may be discrete, or may depend on some external stimulus, such as a reading passage or a chart or a map or something else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here is a discrete item:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Why does my dog Sophie bark at mail carriers?</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A She is flat-out crazy.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">B She is outraged by uninvited guests.*</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">C She knows something about them that we don't.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">D She wants to register a protest about mail delays.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The above is a multiple-choice question, and contains a stem ("Why does my dog bark at mail carriers?") and four answer choices: one correct response (B, as far as I can tell, but I think maybe C is a possible right answer) and three distractors. Distractors, which used to be known as "foils," are wrong answers. Don't get hung up on the language--the point is never to distract nor entice the test-taker to bubble the wrong answer; the point is to create wrong answers that have a reasonable foundation in common mistakes kids would make with that particular skill or bit of content knowledge. More on this later. But tests should never be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cYQV62WhkM">tricky</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A multiple-choice item is usually worth one score point, and used to be budgeted for one minute of test-taking time, not including the time it takes to read a passage or examine whatever stimuli is needed to answer the question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are other item formats: constructed-response items, which are also known as open-ended items. These require the student to provide a response. The response may be as short as a word or a phrase, or, in the case of extended-constructed-response items, the response may be a complete essay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here is a short constructed-response item:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Write two words to describe my dog Sophie. Use details to support your answer.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And here is the scoring rubric:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">2 points: </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The response includes two accurate describing words, and is supported by relevant evidence.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">1 point: </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The response includes one accurate describing word, and is supported by relevant evidence, OR the response includes two accurate describing words with no supporting evidence.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">0 points: </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The response is blank, illegible, off-topic, or otherwise impossible to score.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A short constructed-response item would usually have a score point range of 0-2 or 0-3, and would be budgeted for 5-10 minutes. More than that is usually reserved for an ECR, which could take as few as 15 minutes, or as long as an hour or more for a full essay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">An extended-constructed-response item would look like this:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Considering Sophie's protective nature, do you think it is wise for strangers to approach her? Why or why not? Write an essay in which you discuss the wisdom of approaching a dog with whom you are personally unacquainted.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don't provide a writing rubric because they are complex creations, but you may see some examples <a href="http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TaskItemSpecifications/EnglishLanguageArtsLiteracy/ELARubrics.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/rubrcw10.pdf">here</a>.</span> <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The score point ranges for ECR items vary, depending on the traits of writing and number of domains. That is, an essay might be scored for organization, style, and conventions. If the question depends on the student's comprehension of a passage, the essay might be scored for both reading and writing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Bear in mind that these sample items are jokes, and as such, aren't examples of exemplary items, primarily because they require a great deal of prior knowledge, and so the test-taker who is unfamiliar with Sophie and dogs in general will perform less well than the test-taker who is on a first-name basis with Sophie and/or other dogs. There are other, less egregious flaws, but we'll get to those when we get to them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you have an item you'd like me to examine, explain, or deconstruct, feel free to post it in the comments. Check the copyright first.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1cYQV62WhkM" width="420"></iframe><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> What I'm reading: Forgot to mention I was also finishing up <i><a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/trollope/tsociety/claverings.html">The Claverings</a></i> by Anthony Trollope. Then it's back to <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying_(novel)">As I Lay Dying</a></i>. I gave up on the other.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-67352394864741222742013-07-25T19:55:00.000-07:002013-07-26T00:56:48.009-07:00Before the Beginning<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the beginning, when <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=KJV">all is without form and void</a>, here is what an item writer should have in order to write test items:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">project overview and background</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">company and/or project style guide, whichever should be followed for the assignment</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">list of standards to be assessed (with or without item-to-skill distribution)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">item specifications with content and domain limits</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">sample items</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">scoring criteria</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">boilerplate text for rubrics or sample rubrics for CR and ECR items</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">item templates, if required, or log-in information for online authoring systems</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">if an online authoring system is required, writers should be provided with training and a handbook or at the least, FAQ</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">additional information as to client preferences (e.g., should target vocabulary be at or slightly above grade level, are there particular constructs or formats that should be included or avoided, should developers use <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steck-Vaughn-EDL-Core-Vocabulary-Workbook/dp/155855811X"><i>EDL Core Vocabulary</i> </a>or <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Writers-Word-Alijandra-Mogilner/dp/1582974136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374805337&sr=1-1&keywords=children%27s+writer%27s+word+book">Children's Writer's Word Book</a></i> to verify grade-level-appropriateness of vocabulary)</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If these documents are not available, the project is not ready to launch content development. </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These are not luxuries; these are the <a href="http://youtu.be/9ogQ0uge06o">bare minimum</a>. These should be provided with every assignment. Without these, the best case scenario is that the writer operates at a significant disadvantage and loses work time puzzling and attempt to read the minds of the assigning editor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Remember, item writers are usually paid by the item. We aren't paid for puzzling and mind-reading. Nor are we paid to pore over these materials--which poring takes four to eight hours if you do it right; editors often don't consider that </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">each project is its own world with its own lexicon and laws</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, nor do they understand the need for ramp-up time, because to them, this is all old hat, they've already spent hours and hours studying the project and discussing the project in meetings, heck, they may have contributed to the proposal and participated in a series of internal and external start-up meetings--but we all of us content developers accept that it's an unfortunate cost of doing business and we wish the test publishing company personnel understood that each project comes with unpaid ramp-up time--four hours may not be a lot to those who are comfortably salaried with medical benefits, vacation days, sick leave, and retirement accounts, but to we who are not and we who have no vacation days and no sick days, we who are paid only as long as we are clicking away at our keyboard--and that is why we decline those small assignments for fewer than 50 items. (I long for the day when every content developer performed a cost/benefits analysis, and began declining work that costs him or her money. If we all got together, the world would change. It would have to.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The need for puzzling and mind-reading may not be quite so troubling to the assigning editors--many of whom have never written items themselves (doesn't that seem funny? It's true! Oh, maybe they wrote one sample that one time for a proposal) and so don't know what item writers need, and also, some of whom have regrettably been taught by management ("Have the item writers do it! That's what they're paid for!") to view content developers as recalcitrant underlings, sort of grumbling lower housemaids, if you will--but will be troubling them in a worse scenario, one in which the writer is unable to meet specifications because none have been provided. So the writer submits items that are unusable for the project, and the editor either rejects or rewrites the items. Either way, the schedule is compromised, and now the editor feels the pain, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The item writer also must be provided with a clearly defined assignment that includes the following information:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">targeted grade level(s)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">item formats (multiple-choice, constructed-response, writing prompts, </span><a href="https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/qtiworks/web/anonymous/samples/list" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">technology-enhanced</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, etc.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">additional criteria for formats, such as whether the items will be presented online or as paper-and-pencil tests</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">number of items</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">guidance about item-to-skill distribution if the distribution is not specified</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">mode of delivery (Word templates delivered through email, documents uploaded to a secure FTP, files added to Dropbox, submission through an authoring system, etc.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">point of contact--whom to contact with questions and best means of contact</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">deadline</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">any expectations not already specified in the project documentation</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">housekeeping details: whom to invoice, what information should be included, when to invoice</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What is pleasant, but not necessary, is the editor's set of item review criteria or the item evaluation checklist; however, few companies have such a rubric in place, and so the items may be reviewed with a level of subjectivity that doesn't serve either party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is all before the beginning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If any of this sounds unfamiliar--if you have questions about any of this, please ask me. Ask me. I will explain every little bit. Knowledge = power. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I'm reading: <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying_(novel)">As I Lay Dying</a></i> by William Faulkner, current <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/">New Yorker</a></i>, and <i><a href="http://juliettefay.com/books/the-shortest-way-home-reviews/">The Shortest Way Home</a></i> by Juliette Fay (not such a big fan of the latter--has anyone read it? Can you convince me to continue? I'm thinking of doing the unthinkable and stopping in the middle. The reviews seem hyperbolic for what's there.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">UPDATE: Look what I found. A sneak preview, click <a href="http://www.ets.org/s/understanding_testing/flash/how_ets_creates_test_questions.html">here</a>. More TK!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">UPDATE: Made a correction.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-85456809498739962012013-07-23T16:49:00.001-07:002013-07-23T22:32:41.475-07:00Rule Number One<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://youtu.be/mDSYn3eVenI">...is that you gotta have fun.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Every craft, art, skill, vocation--</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">every discipline--comes with rules. Call them procedures, steps, processes--there's a set of knowledge that must be acquired and then applied over and over.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The path to mastery is</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1. learn the rules</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">2. practice following the rules</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">3. make mistakes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">4. get corrected</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">5. do it over</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">6. <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/04/gap.html">repeat eleventy gazillion times</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Until you know enough to know when you can or should break a rule, when the value of such breakage exceeds the value of following the letter of the law. When you're really the master of a craft, art, skill, vocation, you're so at home in that world that you operate on a different plane--it's all intuitive. With experience and mastery come a set of tools that aren't available to beginners or even intermediates.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The most basic foundation for the rules is that you have to care about what you're doing, which to me means you gotta have fun. There must be something in there that's absorbing or it's not worth doing. Do something else. Do something you like, something you care enough about that you'll do a good job at it. You have to like what you do so that you care about it so that you learn to do a good job.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Speaking of twenty-year-olds, Louis C.K. says <a href="http://youtu.be/LTaZkf4dih8">to just do the job you're getting paid for</a>. [Might not want to play this at work. <a href="http://www.mcla.edu/Undergraduate/uploads/textWidget/1457.00018/documents/Jay_Taboo.pdf">Taboo words</a>. Don't play it if you're offended by profanity.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But I don't mean to pick on writers. I believe that many would do better if they knew how to do better. What if the writers who provide okay work and the writers who provide almost okay work want to provide excellent work? Let's assume they have the solid foundation of caring about the quality of the writing and they want to make their editor's life easier. Now what? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There's no longer a now what in this industry. <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">We've discussed this before</a>. <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/04/gap.html">And before</a>. There used to be a training path, but the shrubbery has overgrown the path.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Which is a long way of saying that I thought it would be good to write a series of posts to review some of <a href="http://www.ccsso.org/documents/2003/quality_control_checklist_2003.pdf">the basic rules of item writing</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The test publishing industry is shrouded in mystery. First, because it's technical, and for lots of people, technical=boring. Whenever I begin to describe or explain what I do, I see all the light fade from the listener's eyes when his brain wanders off in search of sparkly entertainment. Then, because the tests are high-stakes, they are secure and confidential. Unfortunately, the security and confidentiality create an environment in which substandard work is passed off as acceptable. Who's to know? This is an industry that has incredibly high stakes for students and teachers, and yet it is completely unregulated. Think about that for a second.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The end users (those poor kids) don't know the difference. They just do what they're told. The teachers are hardly more sophisticated in this realm, and must trust their administrators, who must trust the district personnel, who must trust the state department of education, who must trust--the test publishing companies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That whole chain might wind differently if assessment development occupied a place in teacher education--doesn't it seem strange that teachers are taught so little about what becomes of such vital importance to them and their students?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In any case, the plan is to review each of the basic rules, show what good items look like and what bad items look like, and explain what makes items good and bad. If even one teacher learned how to tell the difference between a good test item and a bad test item, that would be all to the good, and what I want is to increase the amount of good in the world.</span>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">7/23/13 10:01 p.m. UPDATE:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After publishing this post, I received a message from a writer. I realized I may have inadvertently hurt writers' feelings. That is so not my intention!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For the sake of brevity, I used a gross description. I intended that part of the post as a bridge to another matter. My intention is to address problems in the industry. My intention is not to pick on, discourage, nor cause pain to any writer, but to consider why this industry isn't hospitable to new writers and how we might be able to change that. The industry desperately needs talent, but erects insurmountable barriers for outsiders. This industry doesn't provide training. This industry relies on very few people to produce a high volume of work for pay that gets lower and lower.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It would take another blog post to explain the matter fully. The problems are becoming legion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Instead, I deleted part of the post. T</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">o this writer and all of the writers I had the good fortune to work with during that project:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Thank you. I learned so much from that project. It was a pleasure to work with so many talented writers who produced so many passages that were charming, fun to read, interesting, and all kinds of fantastic. I appreciate your hard work and willingness to learn. I find it unfortunate that I didn't (and don't) have the luxury to train writers at a reasonable pace, nor sufficient time to coach writers on all of the inflexible demands of the industry. That does not imply a deficiency on the part of the writer. Every writer I worked with was capable of great writing. This industry might not be the best fit for some--and that might not be a bad thing. Or possibly one day I will have the luxury to be able to coach and mentor writers so that they can succeed in this market. </i></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-53140898573605832632013-07-02T15:24:00.000-07:002013-07-21T07:24:16.127-07:00And Then What Else Happened<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I've been developing a series of writing rubrics. I won't say more about them, because I'm contractually obligated not to, except to say that they're the best writing rubrics ever. Maybe not the <i>best</i>--but they're pretty good, and I'm scribbling away on directions to help teachers use them fairly and consistently, fairness being an ideal in every circumstance and consistency being particularly ideal in scoring, though not necessarily in every other circumstance. More on this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The next step will be to develop writing prompts. I've been researching those. Not to steal anybody's ideas, but it's interesting to see what people are doing with writing prompts these days. The sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes, the clouds pass, the world turns, and things change. How we think about and teach writing changes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In my research, I came across a blog post by a writer, <a href="http://hopeclark.blogspot.com/">C. Hope Clark</a>, who HATES WRITING PROMPTS. You can read it all <a href="http://hopeclark.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-prompt-or-not-to-prompt.html">here</a>. It's clear that Ms. Clark HATES WRITING PROMPTS for grown folk writers; the ones we use to teach writing to kids, the kinds of prompts I'm writing, are okay. <i>Whew.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ms. Clark's perspective interests me because I'm also a writer who earns a living by my writing and yet, I feel differently about writing prompts. <i>Now.</i> I used to feel otherwise. (I didn't HATE writing prompts, but I didn't see the point; I always felt as if I didn't have enough time to writing everything I wanted to write, so why would I spend time writing what I would never use?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If I were consistent, I might still find writing prompts pointless, but through a tangled series of events, I ended up working with <a href="http://partwild.wordpress.com/">Deb Norton</a>, a writing teacher who is big on <a href="http://partwild.wordpress.com/daily-prompt/">prompts</a>. My first response (on the inside) was along the lines of <i>this is lame and pointless why don't I just write</i>, but because I trusted my teacher, I wrote to the prompts and in so doing, found that what I wrote to the prompts sometimes surprised or even shocked me. Sometimes it gave me information I didn't usually have access to, information about my characters or even information about me. When I use a prompt at the beginning of my daily writing practice, I do so to warm up. Sometimes I use one in the middle to break myself out of a boring stretch, because it can be like picking up and shaking your brain like a snowglobe so you can see all the glittery sparkles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The idea that real writers shouldn't use prompts because they don't need practice just doesn't make sense to me. Musicians practice, and then they perform. Elite athletes practice, and then they compete. Everyone who is good at anything practices and practices and practices--and no one stops practicing because he has achieved perfection. If anything, you practice more and you practice better. My daughters' orchestra teacher told parents that if their kids sounded good when they practiced, they weren't practicing; they were playing what they already knew.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When you're a writer, how can you get to what you don't know? I get there by writing. To write well, a writer must write A LOT, yes, but a writer must also get a flashlight and a pickax and a shovel and do some excavating in the subconscious depths. Sometimes we need to find a way to sneak past our analytical brain, that insufferable know-it-all gatekeeper, in order to mine the depths, to get to what is wild and authentic and kind of crazy or chaotic but real and true and beautiful or hideous and archetypal and universal. I don't know many writers who can get there on their own without some help. A prompt can be a gentle nudge asking your subconscious to bestir itself and answer the question of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04m2Ous-gU4">what else happened</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Asking for help doesn't mean a writer is weak or immature, any more than asking for help means that any other human is weak or immature. It just means we need help. To ask for help when we need it seems a lot more mature than refusing to ask for help because we think we should be perfect genius superheroes who know everything and can do everything and never need anyone ever--that there is the recipe for a crazy cocktail, in my opinion, and will guarantee swift onset of writer's block, because anxiety is the natural born enemy of creativity. You try telling yourself that you have to write something perfect and then sit down to write. Let me know how that works out for you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the immortal words of Bill Withers, we all need somebody to lean on.</span></div>
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Also, what you like is what you like. <a href="http://%3Ciframe%20width%3D%22420%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22//www.youtube.com/embed/0la5DBtOVNI%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20allowfullscreen%3E%3C/iframe%3E">It's okay to not like what you don't like</a>, and it's okay to like what you do like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whatever gets you writing is good. Whatever keeps you writing is good. For Hemingway, it was booze. The HuffPo published "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/the-drunks-and-drug-addic_n_464446.html">The Drunks and Addicts of Literature</a>." Not that I advocate heroin and absinthe; I write better when I get lots of exercise and enough sleep and have time every day to stare out the window and think deep thoughts. To each his own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was thinking the question might arise of why I sought a writing teacher when I write for a living and have been so doing for many, many years. The answer is that I needed help. Ask for help if you need it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And help someone who needs help. In the immortal words of the Dalai Lama, "Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By the way, Ms. Clark helps writers by publishing a newsletter: FundsforWriters. Read more <a href="http://www.fundsforwriters.com/">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">UPDATE: Still thinking about this. And another thing: for me and probably for a lot of writers, writing prompts aren't a method of generating ideas but of selecting ones for harvest. We have more ideas than we know what to do with. But as Deb the writing teacher extraordinaire says, sometimes writers get their gears stuck when all the ideas are clamoring, "Pick me! Pick me!" Then the restrictions and limitations of a prompt are helpful. Constraints seem to force creativity the way you can force daffodil bulbs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ANOTHER UPDATE: More on writers and drinking in <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-book-that-will-make-you-want-to-never-drink-again.html">The New Yorker.</a></i></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-71404868384266702162013-01-25T09:21:00.000-08:002013-01-25T09:27:20.034-08:00Zip a Dee Doo Dah, or Go, Team!<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I work my way through the list of <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">10 Reasons Why Assessments Make the World a Better Place</a>, I realize that this list is more of a grab bag of opinions festooned here and there by ribbons of fact than an argument resting on a solid platform constructed of actual information. (<a href="http://youtu.be/Oj3VphK9AMk">Not that there's anything wrong with that</a>; what else are most blog posts than someone's opinion? I myself have got lots and lots of opinions.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Which means I am silly for engaging in intellectual discourse about what is essentially an attempt to look on the bright side from deep in the trenches of a beleaguered and much-maligned profession. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But once I've begun, I must onward go, silly or not. Let's address Reasons 2 through 10 from <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">10 Reasons Why Assessments Make the World a Better Place</a> by <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/author/john-kleeman">John Kleeman</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">2. <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments make the world safer.</span></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Absolutely. No doubt about it. Certification and licensure are very reassuring, whether applied to doctors, nurses, mechanics, electrical engineers or dog trainers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">3. Assessments are the best way to measure knowledge, skills, and attitudes.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">They're the only way, aren't they? If by "assessments," we mean "measurements," and assessments may include the use of observation and other tools beyond the isolated pen-and-paper or online experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">4. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments are the cornerstone of learning</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">. </span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Not so sure about this one. <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-literature-matters-part-1-or-what.html">Remember what Trollope said</a>. How many modes of learning are taken into account? Which work best for which student?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And it would really depend on the assessment, how it was administered, how the results were interpreted and used, and whether instruction were subsequently guided by those results. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">5. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments reduce forgetting.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"> </span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I believe I read something about this somewhere, but I didn't take a test on it and now I've quite forgotten what the article said, except for the bit about how you remember more if you are tested on it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">6. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments are one of the few ways to be sure people really understand.</span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Subset of Reasons #3 and 4, and that is only if the assessments are solidly aligned with the curriculum.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">7. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments give objective data.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"> </span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is what they are intended to do. If the assessments are sound, constructed according to best practices, and free of obstacles such as cultural and other bias, we hope to obtain objective data after administering assessments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">8. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Assessments define standards.</span></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Not so sure about this one, either. Often item review committees define and redefine standards. Sometimes individual item writers creatively define standards, and their work of a moment forms the template that is followed forever after. Assessments should define standards.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">As an assessment content developer, I sometimes find myself stretching my brain until it snaps to find some logical way to target a skill that simply isn't assessable with a multiple-choice question. I know that it is not assessable, and yet I must do it, because that is the assignment. Am I defining the standard? I may very well be, but were I officially responsible for defining the standard, I'd approach it differently, perhaps starting off by working directly with groups of kindergarteners to obtain a baseline for what they actually are capable of doing and then burying myself in the library in order to see what people who spend their lives studying the developing minds of kindergarteners say about it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">9. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Passing an assessment makes people feel good about themselves.</span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">That's nice, isn't it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Although I only feel good about myself when I absolutely and totally crush an assessment. 100% is what makes me feel happy, but we all have different standards, see Reason #8. A quiz will follow.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">10. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15px;">Online assessments give access for all.</span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I guess so, if a computer is made available to everyone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And that's a wrap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As ridiculous as I may seem in taking seriously <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">what we can assume from the unbalanced and cheerleaderly perspective</a> is most likely intended as marketing literature (using the term "literature" loosely because you know I am persnickety and Victorian in my literary aesthetics). But in a world when all of us are <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=bernie+madoff&aq=0&oq=bernie+mado&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">duped</a> <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/questions-oprah-should-ask-lance-armstrong-230849439.html">constantly</a> and <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/83602/how-to-spot-a-social-media-scam.html">relentlessly</a>, there is tremendous value in distinguishing between fact and propaganda.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By the way and just for fun, this blog post aligns to the following<a href="http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RI/11-12"> Common Core Standards:</a></span><br />
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<ul style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 20px;">
<li style="line-height: 16px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RI/11-12">CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5 Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 20px;">
<li style="line-height: 16px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RI/11-12">CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.</a></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">UPDATE: Corrected a typo, ah me, but that's no guarantee you won't find another.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-88308561125200878552013-01-24T12:24:00.000-08:002013-01-24T12:24:10.101-08:00Why Literature Matters: Part 1, or What Trollope Says About Assessment<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I'm not sure I want to know anyone in this industry who hasn't at some time or another experienced a crisis of conscience. Humans seek meaning in our work, and unless we are <a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-28/wall_street/31106457_1_psychopath-wall-street-psychologist">psychopaths</a>, we generally prefer doing good rather than evil. When we have a choice that doesn't much inconvenience us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Why do our consciences rail at us during the dark nights of our souls? You know the answer. You've thought the answer yourself, or you've even asked me the question to elicit the answer, whether you be a friend, family member, or complete stranger sitting next to me on Southwest flight 1207 out of LAX.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you are a parent or a teacher or a friend of a parent or of a teacher, or if you know and care about a child or if you ever think about what you read in the newspaper and magazines or consider what you see on the news, you know something about K-12 assessment and you probably have opinions about it, opinions that--please forgive the plain speaking, and this is through no fault of your own--are most likely ill-informed. Being as that there are few industries so shrouded in mystery and that excite so little enthusiasm and generate so little va va voom, so little sparkle as that of educational assessment publishing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, you probably understand that any conscious (let alone conscientious) person who creates tests for a living has concerns about <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">the quality of the tests</a>, <a href="http://www.fldoe.org/asp/">the purposes for which they are used</a>, and <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/08/teacher-incentives">the consequences when they are put to use</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A potential salve to our consciences lies in <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place">10 Reasons Why Assessments Make the World a Better Place</a> (compiled by <a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/author/john-kleeman">John Kleeman</a> at <a href="https://www.questionmark.com/us/Pages/about-us.aspx">Questionmark</a> and sent to me by my colleague <a href="http://centerpointcorp.com/about.htm">Frank Brockmann of CenterPoint</a>--you see, we all three of us are soldiers in the same militia).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And so I, dutiful foot soldier that I am, armed with the twin purposes of promoting greater understanding of assessment and its implementation and consequences, and of reminding all of us why the study of literature is crucial to developing higher level thinking skills (and character!), will, with the aid of my betters, review these </span><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">10 Reasons Why Assessments Make the World a Better Place</a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today, let's tackle Reason #1: </span><a href="http://blog.questionmark.com/10-reasons-why-assessments-make-the-world-a-better-place" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Assessments give equality of opportunity.</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The idea that assessment ensures equality of opportunity is one that <a href="http://www.anthonytrollope.com/">Victorian writer (and career civil servant) Anthony Trollope</a> treats humorously in <i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7481">The Three Clerks</a></i> (Chapter 3: The Internal Navigation) and seriously in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5978">his autobiography</a>:</span></div>
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<div class="reading" style="line-height: 20px; margin: 0.5em 20px; text-indent: 1.5em;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.literaturepage.com/read/trollope-autobiography-29.html">But in regard to the absolute fitness of the young men selected for the public service [<i>which selection was made based on examination results--ed.</i>], I doubt whether more harm has not been done than good. And I think that good might have been done without the harm. The rule of the present day is, that every place shall be open to public competition, and that it shall be given to the best among the comers. <i>I object to this, that at present there exists no known mode of learning who is best, and that the method employed has no tendency to elicit the best. That method pretends only to decide who among a certain number of lads will best answer a string of questions</i>, for the answering of which they are prepared by tutors, who have sprung up for the purpose since this fashion of election has been adopted.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Italics mine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">SAT tutoring, anyone? How much does that cost these days, anyway? Who is most able to afford SAT tutoring? How does that disparity affect this playing field that the test is supposed to be leveling?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And here is what Trollope has to say about similar kinds of narrowly targeted test preparation:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.literaturepage.com/read/trollope-autobiography-29.html">When it is decided in a family that a boy shall "try the Civil Service," he is made to undergo a certain amount of cramming. <i>But such treatment has, I maintain, no connection whatever with education. The lad is no better fitted after it than he was before for the future work of his life.</i> But his very success fills him with false ideas of his own educational standing, and so far unfits him. And, by the plan now in vogue, it has come to pass that no one is in truth responsible either for the conduct, the manners, or even for the character of the youth. The responsibility was perhaps slight before; but existed, and was on the increase.</a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Italics mine, yet again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What Trollope says about himself is that he would certainly have performed poorly on any such public examination, but if he had been rejected based on his poor performance, the government would have just as certainly lost "a valuable public servant." That he was valuable is incontestable; every biographical (and autobiographical) account I've read indicates that Trollope applied himself to his career as devotedly, industriously, and with as much competence as he did to his writing. (You may not know that Trollope wrote a gazillion books, and that he rose every morning at 5 dark-thirty to write for two hours before he began his work day at his day job.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Which ultimately means that Reason #1 doesn't really reassure me that I am making the world a better place, one test question at a time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(In addition, a highly inconvenient truth of this industry is that <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">the soundness of the test cannot always be taken for granted</a>, and an unsound test, a test that is constructed in absence of best practices, should not be relied upon to produce data that is itself reliable. I predict this truth will apply to all ten reasons.)</span></div>
Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-22679831801381001532013-01-17T09:41:00.000-08:002013-01-23T15:24:49.846-08:00Whale in a Bathtub<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Does anyone remember Helen Palmer's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fish-Out-Water-Helen-Palmer/dp/0394800230">A Fish Out of Water</a></i>, one of the classics from my childhood? The plot is simple, but compelling: A boy brings home a fish, overfeeds it, and the fish gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it is immense. I won't spoil the ending for you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The need for growth management is one of the main points of what I've heard and read so far in the <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/growtogreatness">Coursera business class</a>. Every owner of a successful business should carefully consider growth management. I'm thinking about small businesses now, like mine, but we've <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">previously</a> discussed problems associated with a failure to plan for and manage growth in larger companies. <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-quality.html">Quality is what seems to go out the window first</a> when growth exceeds capacity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is not exclusive to educational publishing, or even publishing in general: it's a universal principle, as <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2013/01/worry-plate.html">previously applied to dentistry</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now I'd like to apply it to orthodontics. What up with the teeth? I have teen-agers, one of whom has recently been freed from braces, the other of whom is still wired up. They are twins, as you know, so why is one wired and the other free? The orthodontist's failure to manage the growth of his practice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Like Dr. Bad Dentist, Dr. Too Successful Orthodontist came highly recommended. By three different people, one being my current dentist and another being an orthodontist in another state who went to school with Dr. Too Successful. During our consultation, he was friendly, explained everything clearly, answered all our questions, and seemed highly attentive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Once we had signed on for a course of treatment for both my daughters, our experience turned southward. Dr. Too Successful's practice is booming. This means for a negative client experience, characterized by:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a loud, crowded waiting room</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">waits of up to and exceeding an hour for scheduled appointments</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">difficulty in making appointments that will accommodate one's own schedule</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">impossibility in rescheduling appointments</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">technicians who are hurried and under stress, which doesn't really bring out the best in anybody</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">necessity of having to see Dr. Too Successful's junior partner orthodontist</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a breakdown in communication between the client, technician, and doctor, resulting in a six month extension of treatment</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The latter being what happened with us. That is, we were concerned about how my daughter's teeth were slanting, I mentioned it to the technician, she said that the junior partner doctor was aware of it, and I assumed he knew what he was doing. Three months later, when treatment was due to conclude, the junior partner doctor said that whoops, some girls look really pretty with teeth that slant outwards, it makes their lips look full, some people really like that. . .but if we wanted, we could have 4 teeth extracted and start all over. That was six months ago, my daughter is still in braces, and poor thing, she may be wearing them until she is thirty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Regardless, the main point is that Dr. Too Successful has completely lost control of his business. Soon after my conversation with the junior partner doctor, I called Dr. Too Successful to let him know that I'd experienced an erosion of trust. He said he appreciated my call and we talked about what happened. I explained that I didn't fault his office for making a mistake, but what bothered me was that the mistake was preventable, being as it was a direct result of either the technician not telling the junior partner doctor about my concerns, or of the junior partner doctor simply not paying attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The call concluded with Dr. Too Successful assuring me that he was dedicated to regaining my trust. And so he had seemed to be, for the next few appointments, but then his attention was captured by other clients and more pressing demands, and our experience as clients is once again suffering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Would I ever recommend Dr. Too Successful to anyone? No, on the contrary, I would tell everyone to flee as fast as their feet will carry them. I don't like saying this, because Dr. Too Successful is likable and seems committed to doing good work. And yet, by neglecting to control the growth of his practice and by forgetting to consider his clients' experience, Dr. Too Successful caused my daughter unnecessary pain and me unnecessary inconvenience. And he has had a negative effect on my business, in that I've had to take additional time away from my work to keep taking my daughter to orthodontist appointments, appointments for which I always have to wait at least 20 minutes, and often have to wait an hour. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here are the questions I ask myself:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What is my typical client's experience?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Is there any negative aspect to my client's experience of Inkspot?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How can I improve my client's experience?</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One of the little mottoes of the business course is that one has to love the client more than one loves the product. It's worth thinking about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">UPDATE: Lest anyone think I am casting stones from a glass house, I'd like to add this bit of irony. Last week, I had to call and reschedule an appointment at the last minute because my daughters had a school obligation arise suddenly that could not be missed. I was told the next available appointment was toward the end of February. The day and time offered conflicted with cello lessons, and I was offered an appointment in mid-March. By this time, feeling frustrated with having to find a time that fit my daughter's schedule, my schedule, and the straitjacketed schedule of the orthodontist, I said that I really needed the office to accommodate me and be more flexible, and here I mentioned that my daughter's treatment had only been extended to this point as a result of mistakes made in their office. I was given an appointment for yesterday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We went to the office, and even though everyone was courteous, it was strained, formal courtesy. Something was amiss, something more than what had passed between the receptionist and me on the phone. When the doctor examined my daughter's teeth, he spoke exclusively to her, as if I weren't there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the end of the appointment, I opened my planner to make our next appointment and saw that WE HAD ARRIVED AN HOUR LATE. That's right. In my mind, our appointment was at 2:30, because that was the time of the original appointment, but we should have been there at 1:30 and NO ONE HAD SAID A WORD. Though their body language and tone said plenty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was so astounded that I didn't know what to do, but immediately upon arriving home, I called the office to offer abject apologies. I apologized about ten different ways, and I sure hope that my apologies made their way to the technicians and the doctor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And yet? You understand that the doctor has never made that kind of apology to me for their mistake. I was an hour late for an appointment, but their mistake means that my daughter will remain in braces for what looks like a year after the original estimated end of treatment. But I guess some people find it much more difficult to apologize than others.</span></div>
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<br />Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-79220902039723765842013-01-16T08:53:00.000-08:002013-01-16T08:53:33.357-08:00Booming<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I found <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/09/coursera_signature_track_would_you_pay_100_for_a_free_online_college_course.html">this</a> interesting, about how the popularity of free online education may lead to its being free no longer, and institutions may be begin to charge students. (More <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/09/coursera_signature_track_would_you_pay_100_for_a_free_online_college_course.html">here</a>.) Which sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I'm taking a few classes through <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a>. One is a <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/growtogreatness">business clas</a>s, as mentioned <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2013/01/worry-plate.html">previously</a>, which interested me because although I've had my own business for lo, these many years, I have no formal training in the management thereof. I did serve a term as a program manager at Great Big Huge Test Publishing Company, which job I liked to say consisted primarily of apologizing to clients and then begging co-workers to do the jobs for which they received a bi-weekly check. Just kidding. Sort of. I also managed the deadlines and budgets. Any successes I had in that job should be blamed on my program coordinator, who had a magical gift for inspiring people to get things done. I did learn quite a bit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are tens of thousands of students enrolled in the class, students of all ages (high school entrepreneurs on up), from all countries (Bulgaria, Jamaica, Chile, Italy, keep going), and of a variety of occupations. It's fascinating to read about so many different types of small businesses (wineries, vintage furniture shops, financial planning, online information management, ESL institutes, lingerie stores, you name it). I find I'm just as interested in reading the student bios as I am in the required reading for the course.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The online format is fantastic: students watch videos of lectures, reading downloaded text, and discuss questions in forums. The execution of the forum is also fantastic: the sound is good, the content is solid, the site user-friendly and easy to navigate. My only bit of constructive feedback so far is that the quizzes--from an assessment standpoint--bear about as much relation to genuine assessment as my dog does to a rhinoceros. Still and all, so far it is a worthwhile and inspiring endeavor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Would I pay S100 to take the class? Probably not, unless I'd heard about it from a reliable source. I'm not saying it's not worth the money, it's just that I'm not sure I would have thought about trying it, and I'm not sure I was motivated enough to take that step.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-60025022095225715192013-01-15T23:15:00.000-08:002013-01-15T23:15:12.475-08:00Worry Plate<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Title courtesy of <a href="https://www.eyebobs.com/about/">Julie Allinson</a>, founder of <a href="https://www.eyebobs.com/">Eyebobs</a>, purveyor of <a href="https://www.eyebobs.com/eyewear/">fashionable eyewear</a>, from an interview provided as part of the content for <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/growtogreatness">this online business course</a> I'm taking.</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What's on the worry plate? Let's just say that mistakes were made. To err may be human, but nobody likes to be reminded just how human one's service provider is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For a dozen years, I went to a dentist who had been recommended to me. He was known for being the reassuring, kindly dentist who went easy on anxious patients. His teeth gleamed, he wore a huge gold watch and always drove a newer model of European luxury car, he was hale and hearty and volubly conservative in his politics (he talked a lot about politics while performing his work; while I didn't share his views, I was loathe to engage him in debate, partly because who wants to argue with someone wielding sharp metal instruments near one's face, and partly because it was impossible to talk while holding my jaws open), and he spent a great deal of the winter skiing or talking about skiing. (Summer was dedicated to tennis.) Already in his sixties when I became his patient, the dentist died several years ago, after I had moved away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Two years ago, I learned that this dentist had been a bad dentist. Expensive and unpleasant consequences followed this discovery. With the help of my current dentist, I tried to submit a claim for Dr. Bad Dentist to pay for the rework, but then I learned that Dr. Bad Dentist had departed this earthly realm, and that his malpractice insurance ceased covering claims a year after his departure</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So I asked my current dentist about how a consumer can tell that a dentist is good. Dentistry is highly specialized; what average consumer would be able to distinguish shoddy dental work from excellent dental work? How could I have possibly known that the cause of some of those trips to Dr. Bad Dentist was actually Dr. Bad Dentist? We talked about getting a second opinion, but what if the dentist offering the second opinion was Dr. Worse Dentist? Or what if the first dentist was Dr. Good Dentist and the second opinion was offered by Dr. Terrible No Good Dentist? There's really no way to know. My current dentist just shook his head and said you have to find someone you can trust. And I said again to him, Well, and how do I know I can trust someone?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was thinking about how sleek and prosperous and jovial and reassuring Dr. Bad Dentist was, never failing in his good cheer, and yet--he did some damage is what I'm saying. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My current dentist showed me some X-rays of what a filling should look like. He explained why it should look that way, and told me the principle underlying the practice. It all made sense to me. Then he showed me an X-ray of a filling of Dr. Bad Dentist's doing. He showed me the flaws and explained why they were flaws. This show-and-tell went a long way with me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The story of Dr. Bad Dentist is just an illustration. I'm thinking about mistakes I've made and mistakes my subcontractors have made--ones that I caught before I delivered them and ones that I did not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The mistakes are one thing--but one has to work with people whom one trusts to do their best work, to know what that best should be (and some people truly don't know and truly are unable to distinguish the good from the bad, but that is a different problem), and to fix mistakes when they make them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From the consumer angle: ask questions. Ask a lot of them. Keep asking until you understand enough to be able to tell if the words make sense. More on this later.</span></div>
Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-13657702712331237192012-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:002012-10-10T15:08:30.816-07:00If You Get Any Closer, You'd Be Me<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I'd just read </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sound-Fury-Corrected-Text/dp/0679732241">The Sound and the Fury</a></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Hamlet-William-Faulkner/dp/0679736530">The Hamlet</a>, </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and then started </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wise-Blood-Novel-Flannery-OConnor/dp/0374505845">Wise Blood</a></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> because I'd read an excerpt that was one of the funniest things I'd ever read. Those Southerners, you know. (I'm reading my way through my own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Gothic">Southern gothic</a> course now--I'll continue with <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/faulkner_william/">Faulkner</a>, then more <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Williams-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">O'Connor</a>, and go from there. I also want to read a biography of O'Connor, partly because she was such <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Williams-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">a strange person</a> and partly because I'm interested in her Old Testament theology, being as I was brought up in that tradition myself.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My daughters had read the excerpt, the part about Enoch Emery meeting the gorilla. The eldest by five minutes, the one who finished reading <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002">Anna Karenina</a></i> in two days (she liked it so well she didn't want to stop reading), went on ahead and did her own thing. She's busy making up a list of classics she wants to read and then ordering the books on <a href="http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php">Paperbackswap</a>. It's an ambitious list. She generously said, when I eyed the list with envy, that she'll loan me any book I like.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The other, my youngest, wasn't sure she fully understood the excerpt, or at least not enough to write the essay I'd asked her to write, so we talked about it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As we talked, we kept looking back at the text for evidence of what we were thinking and saying. We started from a reader response perspective--How did she feel when she read the excerpt? What did she like about it, what did she not like? What in the text created this or that effect for her? What did she think the author meant by this or that?--and moved to comprehension and making inferences--What did she think about Enoch? Why was he so different from other people? How did that difference manifest? What did he want? Why?--and then talked about patterns and motifs and style:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the use of color (especially the black/white)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the animal motifs (the umbrella handle is the head of a fox terrier, the gorilla)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">how seemingly harmless, everyday things transform into weapons (the joke box of peanut brittle, the landlady's cast-off umbrella)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the funny things--how Enoch never sets out to do anything without eating first; how Enoch is always thinking of something else the moment Fate is "drawing back her leg to kick him"</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the economy of writing--how O'Connor gives so much information about Enoch without any heavy analysis of his character, instead letting the reader feel smart and draw those conclusions</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The more we talked, the more we liked the writing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There was so much there to talk about, and the conversation led to one about the bigger meaning, that of transformation and of the human desire for connection and to be loved--how Enoch had intended to provoke the gorilla with some obscene insult, but then the touch of the gorilla's hand, even in this sort of perfunctory handshake, awakened in him a longing to be close to someone--anyone! even a jerk in a moth-eaten gorilla costume-- and how it's impossible to transform oneself simply by making some superficial outward change, just as it's impossible to find a shortcut to being loved or to force people to love you, that the only way to be loved is to be lovable, and so Enoch's attempt is doomed from the start.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is what <a href="http://www.mhecommoncoretoolbox.com/close-reading-and-the-ccss-part-1.html">close reading</a> looks like.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is what the CCSS require, that students move beyond basic literal comprehension to an analysis of the elements in order to make connections between the text and culture, history, our personal experience, and, ultimately, to its greater universal meaning. All the while, the students must return to the text for evidence. What did the author say? Why? Why this word, why this gesture, why this action. Why why why why why. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Although we'd begun the conversation because my daughter had said she didn't really like or understand the story, by the time we were done talking, she liked it so well she wanted to read the whole of the novel.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(I couldn't remember if I'd read <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wise-Blood-Novel-Flannery-OConnor/dp/0374505845">Wise Blood</a></i> before, so I read it again. It's so good, and one of the funniest books I've ever read, especially in the first 100 pages or so--the woman on the train who, upon seeing the price tag still stapled to Hazel's suit, feels comfortable because she believes that places him, Hazel's insistence to all that he's not a preacher when he's clearly Jonah fleeing the voice of God, the sly asides--"After a few weeks in the camp, when he had some friends--they were not actually friends but he had to live with them--he was offered the chance he had been waiting for; the invitation"-- but the end is so horrifying and sad, I'm not sure my daughter will want to read it. I told her that, and she'll make up her own mind. Neither am I sure it would be as interesting to someone without a pretty solid understanding of the Old Testament, but maybe I'm wrong about that.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-12910932707940815882012-10-09T08:00:00.000-07:002012-10-09T10:02:12.623-07:00File Under: The Law of Unintended Consequences, Cross-Referenced to Undesirable Outcomes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://papers.nber.org/">National Bureau of Economic Research</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, hat tip to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/10/09/impact-time-between-tests">Inside Higher Ed</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, an indication that overtesting is a no bueno.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/~/ianfillmore/_ianfillmore/Home.html">Ian Fillmore</a> and <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/">Devin G. Pope</a> of the <a href="http://www.uchicago.edu/">University of Chicago</a> studied student performance on the <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html">AP exam</a> and found:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://papers.nber.org/papers/w18436?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw">. . . strong evidence that a shorter amount of time between exams is associated with lower scores, particularly on the second exam. Our estimates suggest that students who take exams with 10 days of separation are 8% more likely to pass both exams than students who take the same two exams with only 1 day of separation.</a></span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is of particular interest to me for a variety of reasons. Since the passage of <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml">NCLB</a>, testing in grades 2-12 seems to occur at an astonishing frequency. Not only are there state tests in ELA and math and, in some grades, social studies and science, but there are usually some kind of interim (benchmark, call them what you will) district tests administered once (or more) per quarter in both ELA and math, along with the classroom teacher's tests and quizzes in every content area, and then there are other supplementary tests administered in programs such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Reader">Accelerated Reader</a> (please don't consider this mention as an endorsement, more on this later).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Testing is not instruction. It seems obvious, but it needs to be said. When kids are being tested, they're not learning.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you asked why all the tests, teachers and district personnel would say that they need to test in order to find out if kids are learning. Which might be true if they weren't testing quite so much.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The more testing, the less instruction, the more homework. The burden for instruction is offloaded to the children. They're supposed to be teaching themselves. This, in spite of a growing body of research that tells us how ineffective homework is:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/homework.htm">The results of national and international exams raise further doubts. One of many examples is an analysis of 1994 and 1999 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data from 50 countries. Researchers David Baker and Gerald Letendre were scarcely able to conceal their surprise when they published their results last year: “Not only did we fail to find any positive relationships,” but “the overall correlations between national average student achievement and national averages in [amount of homework assigned] are all <i>negative.</i>”</a></span></span></blockquote>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(No one likes hearing that about homework. A teacher I know tells me that when she assigns less homework, parents complain. They worry their kids aren't working hard enough. As a parent, I was often astounded by the amount of homework expected from my children. Clearly no teacher ever sat down and worked his or her way through the material, or the teacher would have discovered that the time on task was excessive.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Not to mention the other obvious problems with such a scheme--I mean, have you ever launched some ambitious self-study program? To muster up the wherewithal is daunting enough for a grown-up of strong will, and yet, we expect this of a child who 1) lacks the body of knowledge and skills required for such self-study and 2) has yet to develop that kind of self-discipline.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What's sad is that the overtesting deprives kids of the joy of demonstrating what they've learned. When teaching is sound and kids are learning, they can't wait to show you what they know. That's when we know that the instruction is working.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">References</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fillmore, Ian, and Devin G. Pope. "The Impact of Time Between Cognitive Tasks on Performance: Evidence from Advanced Placement Exams." NBER. National Bureau of Economic Research, Oct. 2012. Web. 09 Oct. 2012. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kohn, Alfie. "The Truth About Homework." The Truth About Homework. Education Week, 6 Sept. 2006. Web. 09 Oct. 2012. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"The Impact of Time Between Tests | Inside Higher Ed." The Impact of Time Between Tests. Inside Higher Ed, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 09 Oct. 2012. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">UPDATE: fixed a bad copy-cut-paste.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-85925980818545594632012-10-07T14:22:00.000-07:002012-10-07T14:22:53.789-07:00Bad Teacher<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You may have heard the gotcha <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161370443/do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses">NPR story</a> about lighting a fire under teachers by giving them a bonus and threatening to take it away if students didn't show measurable improvements in math:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161370443/do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses">The teachers were given a bonus of $4,000 upfront — but it had a catch. If student math performance didn't improve, teachers had to sign a contract promising to return some or all of the money.</a></span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you threatened to torch a teacher's car if your kids' math scores didn't improve, the scores would probably go up. What does this really tell us? Nothing that we didn't already know. <a href="http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/pingle/Teaching/BADM%20791/Week%205%20Decision%20Invariance/Kahneman-Novemsky-Loss%20Aversion.pdf">People are averse to loss</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How silly is the premise of this study. Samuel Johnson said no one but a blockhead wrote for money, and I'd say this is twice as true of teaching. It's not a high-roller game.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average yearly salary of a full-time teacher is $56,069. This is significantly higher than $44,402, which is the average salary where I live, and slightly lower than $57,574, which is the median household income in <strike>Ventucky</strike> <strike>Bakersfield by the Sea</strike> <strike>Ventuckywood</strike> this coastal California town.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To put this into perspective, here are average salaries in other professions:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">attorneys: $112,760</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">blackjack dealers: $20,260</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">dentists: $146,920</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">funeral directors: $54,330</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">garbage collectors: $22,560</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">paramedics: $30,360</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">personal financial advisors: $64,750</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">police officers and detectives: $55,1010</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(<a href="http://www.bls.gov/home.htm">Information courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.</a>)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That and summers off make teaching look all right, I guess, in parts of the country where the cost of living is less than it is here--and yet, anyone who's spent more than five minutes in a (noisy, paint-splattered) classroom might understand that teachers earn their pay. (Many of them. Not the ones who spend the period painting their fingernails while students are supposed to be reading, or texting or emailing while students listen to audio of textbooks, or even </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">talking on their cell phones</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> while students run amok</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, and yes, I know of what I speak, these aren't idly selected hypothetical scenarios. Although to be fair, the fingernail-polisher was a substitute teacher; the others were all classroom teachers of many, many years' experience.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But how many teachers do you know got into the work because of the pay? Is money really what motivates them?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc">Hardly</a>. Money isn't the best motivator; what's best is "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc">to pay people enough to take money off the table</a>." When not worried about money from a survival standpoint, people are far more interested in challenge, mastery, and the chance to make a difference in the world, says <a href="http://www.danpink.com/">Dan Pink</a> in this talk for the <a href="http://www.thersa.org/">RSA</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Speaking of what doesn't work, I don't see that <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2012/06/making_teacher_evaluations_publicwhats_the_point.html">publishing reports of teacher performance evaluations</a> will serve any useful purpose. Incompetent or willfully mediocre (or worse) teachers who got lucky and are established in schools in affluent communities where students tend to be high-performers will continue to teach badly and will point to high test scores to justify themselves. And then public humiliation won't transform the bad teachers into good ones, although it might be the final gnat-like annoyance that inspires a good teacher of at-risk, low-performing students trotting off to seek employment in another field.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My friend and colleague Carrie, who works at a test publishing organization, sent me <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0">this</a>, from the NYT, about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0">whether we expect too much from teachers</a>:</span><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 15px;"></span></span></a>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0">Last year, at an Aspen Institute conference, the education historian Diane Ravitch was asked her wish list to improve schools. At the top of her list: universal prenatal care — which, of course, has nothing to do with the classroom. Or so it would seem.</a></span> </blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0">Of course, Ms. Ravitch wanted to make a point. As we slash services in deeply impoverished communities and reduce school budgets, how can we expect that good teachers alone can improve the lives of poor children? Poverty, of course, can’t be an excuse for lousy teaching. But neither can excellent teaching alone be a solution to poverty.</a></span></span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/can-great-teaching-overcome-the-effects-of-poverty.html?emc=eta1&_r=0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 15px;"></span></span></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The problems in education are so much bigger than the person standing in the front of the classroom. But that's overwhelming and makes us feel bad. It's a lot more comfortable to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and stick teachers with the blame.</span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-59943307151650012262012-09-20T13:13:00.001-07:002012-09-20T13:13:08.897-07:00Kick'em When They're Up, Kick'em When They're Down<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. . . <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x33q6c_don-henley-dirty-laundry-live_news">in the immortal words of Don Henley</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Attacking poetry is nothing new, though back in the day it seemed like it might have been a fair fight.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley called poets "<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html">the unacknowledged legislators of the world</a>," poetry was still a brawny contender. Rich brewers might have snickered at Shelley behind their hands, but probably most educated people nodded as solemnly as my dog when I talk to her (she doesn't speak English, which limits her participation in the discussion, but she's agreeable company and likes the sound of my voice) whether they understood him or not. Then, to be a poet--to be <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/heroes/hero5.html">a man or a woman of letters</a>--was a goal worth aspiring to.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Now, says <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich">Adrienne Rich</a>,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview15">poetry is either inadequate, even immoral, in the face of human suffering, or it's unprofitable, hence useless. Either way, poets are advised to hang our heads or fold our tents. Yet in fact, throughout the world, transfusions of poetic language can and do quite literally keep bodies and souls together - and more.</a></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So useless is poetry that the notion that business folk might learn something--anything--from reading Wordsworth is greeted with incredulity:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/09/businesses-pay-british-professor-teach-them-about-wordsworth">It may sound like a nice day out in beautiful surroundings, but can walking around Lake District sites synonymous with Romantic poet William Wordsworth really offer business leaders and local entrepreneurs the crucial insights they need?</a></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Without having heard the whole of the interview, it's difficult to know whether the professor who teaches the course is patiently explaining or limply defending his work when he provides a "<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/09/businesses-pay-british-professor-teach-them-about-wordsworth">rationale</a>" for the study of Wordsworth's poetry (I'm guessing the former). That the associate dean begins his defense with "<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/09/businesses-pay-british-professor-teach-them-about-wordsworth">Although some people laugh at the idea of learning from poetry</a>" makes you suspect that he is one of those <i>some people; </i>why else introduce that which has no credence? Who laughs at the idea of learning from poetry? Tell me their names.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">These who <a href="http://bible.cc/psalms/1-1.htm">sitteth in the seat of the scornful</a> are probably people who never learned critical thinking, because, as <a href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/nussbaum/">Martha Nussbaum</a> says,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/08/19/3297258.htm">students exposed to instruction in critical thinking learn at the same time a new attitude to people who disagree with them. They learn to see people who disagree not as an opposing sports team to be humiliated, but instead as human beings who have reasons themselves for what they think....</a></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Just as ignorance leads to fear of and contempt for what we don't understand, Nussbaum says that learning to examine another's perspective leads to creating a foundation of mutual respect:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/nussbaum_interview/2315794.html">And this is important not just for the individual thinking about society, but it’s important for the way people talk to each other. In all too many public discussions people just throw out slogans and they throw out insults. And what democracy needs is listening. And respect. And so when people learn how to analyze an argument, then they look at what the other person’s saying differently. And they try to take it apart, and they think: “Well, do I share some of those views and where do I differ here?” and so on. And this really does produce a much more deliberative, respectful style of public interaction.</a></span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If we laugh at the idea of learning from poetry, why read poetry at all? Why do we expect children <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf">to begin reading poetry in first grade and continue through high school</a> and into college? Why indeed, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Not-Profit-Democracy-Humanities-Public/dp/0691154481">as Martha Nussbaum asks, do we study the humanities</a>? And what will be the consequences when we stop?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I see it as a sort of Mad Max meets <a href="http://www.sabotagetimes.com/music/secret-garden-party-2012-camels-mud-wrestling-and-backstage-with-orbital/">mud wrestling</a>. In contrast to the inner world Shelley describes, one that can be transformed by reading:</span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html">Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.</a></td><td align="RIGHT" valign="TOP"><i><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html"> </a></i></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html">All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. “The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know.</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> References</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">Coalson, Robert. "'There Is No Values-Free Form Of Education,' Says U.S. Philosopher."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"><i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">. Radio Free Europe: Radio Liberty, 21 Feb. 2011. Web. 20 Sept. 2012.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nussbaum, Martha. "Educating for Profit, Educating for Freedom." <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">ABC Religion & Ethics</i>. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 19 Aug. 2011. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. <http: articles="articles" htm="htm" religion="religion" www.abc.net.au="www.abc.net.au">.</http:></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">Reisz, Matthew. "Businesses Pay British Professor to Teach Them about Wordsworth | Inside Higher Ed." <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Businesses Pay British Professor to Teach Them about Wordsworth | Inside Higher Ed</i>. Inside Higher Education, 9 Aug. 2012. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">Rich, Adrienne. "Legislators of the World." <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Guardian</i>. Guardian News and Media, 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">Shelley, Percy B. "A Defence of Poetry." <i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A Defence of Poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1909-14. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay. The Harvard Classics</i>. Bartleby.com, 10 Apr. 2001. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. </span></span></div>
Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-74147009308298579882012-09-18T11:27:00.001-07:002012-09-18T11:27:34.542-07:00Education for All<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.uopeople.org/groups/tuition-free-education">University of the People</a> offers online tuition-free <a href="http://www.uopeople.org/groups/programs">degree programs in business administration and computer science</a>. General education classes in <a href="http://www.uopeople.org/groups/general_education_new">arts and sciences</a> are part of the degree programs.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">More <a href="http://www.uopeople.org/">here</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's back to <a href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/nussbaum/">Martha Nussbaum</a> for me.</span>
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0BfH_sQIZek" width="560"></iframe>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-24017824587101237172012-09-16T08:57:00.000-07:002012-09-16T09:00:20.151-07:00Where Ask Is Have<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That meaningful conversation about the <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/">Common Core Standards</a> I was asking for?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here it is, by <a href="ttp://textproject.org/about/ehh/">Freddy Hiebert</a>, of <a href="http://textproject.org/about/">TextProject</a> and the University of California at Santa Cruz, in her blog <i><a href="http://textproject.org/frankly-freddy/">Frankly Freddy</a></i>:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://textproject.org/frankly-freddy/the-critical-role-of-narrative-text-in-the-common-core-state-standards/">Acquiring knowledge is the <em style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">raison d’etre</em> of the Common Core. In the digital-global world, the “haves” are the ones who have knowledge and know how to acquire more knowledge. When you know something, you can build on this knowledge and in this way knowledge grows. Knowledge begets knowledge. The “have nots” are the ones who depend on others to filter their knowledge through talk radio, television shows, and conversation.</a> <a href="http://textproject.org/frankly-freddy/the-critical-role-of-narrative-text-in-the-common-core-state-standards/">(Hiebert, 2012)</a></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The problem with the latter is obvious, for the boredom factor if nothing else: all those recycled opinions with no facts to back them up. The more you learn, the more you're curious about, the more you want to learn.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And so early access (or obstacles) to knowledge can change a kid's destiny:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~jsteele/files/04082317412924405.pdf">In one sense the economic forces that have improved the lives of all minorities in America make the educational disparities more dire. The economy has become and is likely to remain “knowledge- driven”; making a living increasingly requires most individuals, regardless of race or gender, not only to pursue higher education, but to draw fully upon its resources to develop the kind of skills needed to compete and thrive in the job market (Hershberg, 1998; Murnane & Levy, 1997). Individuals unable to attend or finish college are, more than ever, at risk of being left behind (Fullilove & Treisman, 1990). The apparent irreversibility of the knowledge-driven economy underscores the importance of addressing the per- sistent underachievement of underrepresented minority stu- dents at all levels of schooling.</a> <a href="http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~jsteele/files/04082317412924405.pdf">(Fried et al, 2001)</a></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At our house, we're constantly looking things up. Last night, we were walking the dog in the canyon. It was a starry night, and so we were talking about the stars, and the names of the constellations, and how these came from myth, and how none of us knew the real story of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_(constellation)">Cassiopeia</a>. When we got home, we looked it up.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We look up ridiculous things, too. Yesterday morning, we were reading the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><i>New York Times</i> </a>online, and saw the great video by <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_cunningham/index.html">Bill Cunningham</a> about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/show/onthestreet">shoes</a>, and got interested in <a href="http://www.mbfashionweek.com/photos_and_videos">Fashion Week in New York</a>, and looked it up.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Another night, the dog and I were walking with my youngest-by-five-minutes daughter, and she was telling me she wasn't good at English and writing.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Me: </b>But you scored in the advanced category of the <a href="http://star.cde.ca.gov/">STAR test</a>. You must know something.
</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Daughter the Second: </b>I guessed. I don't understand it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(Not that I believe that a test score is the final determination of what a kid knows or doesn't know; it is, as everyone in the industry agrees, merely a snapshot of student performance at a point in time. But I did think the score was a piece of data that I could use to bolster my argument.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then we agreed that for both of us, even if we know something about something, we don't feel like we really get it unless we have a thorough understanding of how it works.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We talked about it more. I told her the <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/09/7.html">7% story</a>. I asked her if she felt she lacked the capacity to understand English and writing, if her brain worked in some way that prevented her from understanding it. She thought about that for a second, and then said, no, she probably could learn it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which brought us to talking about how so much information is available now, and which brings me to a favorite poem by Christopher Smart, "A Song to David":</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_813959155"><span id="goog_813959156"></span>A Song to David</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,<br />And drops upon the leafy limes;<br /> Sweet Hermon's fragrant air:<br />Sweet is the lily's silver bell,<br />And sweet the wakeful tapers smell<br /> That watch for early pray'r.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Sweet the young nurse with love intense,<br />Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence;<br /> Sweet when the lost arrive:<br />Sweet the musician's ardour beats,<br />While his vague mind's in quest of sweets,<br /> The choicest flow'rs to hive.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Sweeter in all the strains of love,<br />The language of thy turtle dove,<br /> Pair'd to thy swelling chord;<br />Sweeter with ev'ry grace endu'd,<br />The glory of thy gratitude,<br /> Respir'd unto the Lord.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Strong is the horse upon his speed;<br />Strong in pursuit the rapid glede,<br /> Which makes at once his game:<br />Strong the tall ostrich on the ground;<br />Strong thro' the turbulent profound<br /> Shoots xiphias to his aim.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Strong is the lion—like a coal<br />His eye-ball—like a bastion's mole<br /> His chest against the foes:<br />Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail,<br />Strong against tide, th' enormous whale<br /> Emerges as he goes.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> But stronger still, in earth and air,<br />And in the sea, the man of pray'r;<br /> And far beneath the tide;<br />And in the seat to faith assign'd,<br />Where ask is have, where seek is find,<br />Where knock is open wide.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Beauteous the fleet before the gale;<br />Beauteous the multitudes in mail,<br /> Rank'd arms and crested heads:<br />Beauteous the garden's umbrage mild,<br />Walk, water, meditated wild,<br /> And all the bloomy beds.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Beauteous the moon full on the lawn;<br />And beauteous, when the veil's withdrawn,<br /> The virgin to her spouse:<br />Beauteous the temple deck'd and fill'd,<br />When to the heav'n of heav'ns they build<br /> Their heart-directed vows.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Beauteous, yea beauteous more than these,<br />The shepherd king upon his knees,<br /> For his momentous trust;<br />With wish of infinite conceit,<br />For man, beast, mute, the small and great,<br /> And prostrate dust to dust.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Precious the bounteous widow's mite;<br />And precious, for extreme delight,<br /> The largess from the churl:<br />Precious the ruby's blushing blaze,<br />And alba's blest imperial rays,<br /> And pure cerulean pearl.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Precious the penitential tear;<br />And precious is the sigh sincere,<br /> Acceptable to God:<br />And precious are the winning flow'rs,<br />In gladsome Israel's feast of bow'rs,<br /> Bound on the hallow'd sod.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> More precious that diviner part<br />Of David, ev'n the Lord's own heart,<br /> Great, beautiful, and new:<br />In all things where it was intent,<br />In all extremes, in each event,<br /> Proof—answ'ring true to true.</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Glorious the sun in mid career;<br />Glorious th' assembled fires appear;<br /> Glorious the comet's train:<br />Glorious the trumpet and alarm;<br />Glorious th' almighty stretch'd-out arm;<br /> Glorious th' enraptur'd main:</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Glorious the northern lights a-stream;<br />Glorious the song, when God's the theme;<br /> Glorious the thunder's roar:<br />Glorious hosanna from the den;<br />Glorious the catholic amen;<br /> Glorious the martyr's gore:</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><br /> Glorious—more glorious is the crown<br />Of Him that brought salvation down<br /> By meekness, call'd thy Son;<br />Thou that stupendous truth believ'd,<br />And now the matchless deed's achiev'd,<br /> Determin'd, dar'd, and done.</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Are there any lines in literature more beautiful, more full of hope than these:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"> But stronger still, in earth and air,</a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/">And in the sea, the man of pray'r;<br /> And far beneath the tide;<br />And in the seat to faith assign'd,<br />Where ask is have, where seek is find,<br />Where knock is open wide.</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">References</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Aronson, J., Fried, C. and Good, C. (2001). Reducing the effects of negative stereotype threat on African American college students by shaping theories of intelligence. <i>Journal of Experimental Psychology.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Hiebert, Elfrieda. (2012). It's not just informational text that shapes knowledge acquisition; the critical role of narrative text in the Common Core State Standards. <i>Text Project.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Smart, Christopher. A song to David.<i> Poetry Foundation.</i></span></div>
Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-15736719278426656492012-09-15T09:47:00.000-07:002012-09-15T09:47:01.673-07:007%<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There was some point in junior high school when I stopped understanding math. I kept attending class, did the homework, and got good grades. In high school, I took algebra and geometry and then scored well enough on the <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/reg.html">PSAT</a>, <a href="http://www.collegeboard.org/">SAT</a>, and <a href="http://www.actstudent.org/">ACT</a> to have been recruited by <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/">colleges thousands of miles away</a> from my home in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Mountains">Appalachia of the West</a>. What the.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Except for geometry (which I loved, I know not why), I did not understand a bit of anything having to do with numbers (as previously discussed <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2010/03/you-gets-what-you-pays-for.html">here</a>). How did I continue to do okay at something I did not at all understand?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Maybe my happiest moment in <a href="http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/">college</a> was when I found out I never had to take another math class again ever, not ever, never. Years passed. I graduated. More years passed. I had a bunch of bad jobs, from hostess at Denny's to secretary at an auto repair shop (previously discussed <a href="http://lesliehallandinkspot.blogspot.com/2012/02/beautiful-and-confused.html">here</a>) to scheduler at a home health agency (where my biggest responsibility was bringing my supervisor a cup of coffee from the stand on the corner and then sitting in her office and listening to her talk about how the divorce was going). I never needed to know more math than what I was pretty competent with, i.e., adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and finding percentages. Whew.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then after three years of working in the criminal justice system, I decided that crime-fighting was not for me, and decided to return to my One True Love: English. Which would mean grad school, which would mean taking the <a href="http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/faq/">GRE</a>. I wasn't worried; I'd always kind of liked taking standardized tests, probably because it gave me a chance to do my favorite thing in the world: sit in a corner and read with no one talking to me. That the reading material wasn't always of the finest didn't trouble me. Like gutter winos who drank Night Train, I'd read whatever was available. (Still do. Yesterday while waiting for my daughter at the orthodontist's, I read <a href="http://www.alaskamagazine.com/">Alaska Magazine</a>, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/">FORTUNE</a>, and some other rich people magazine.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So the first time I took the <a href="http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/faq/">GRE</a>, I did as well as one might expect on the verbal reasoning and analytical writing, and about as poorly as anyone could possibly do on the quantitative reasoning. I was no longer able to pass as someone with a minimally adequate understanding of math. I did so poorly that when I took the GRE a second time, I bubbled randomly for the quantitative reasoning <i>and improved my score by 7%</i>. I don't mean to mislead anyone; this made no significant improvement. If there had been a cut score for far below proficient, that is where my score would comfortably have settled like a little toad in a pond.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was thinking about this because my daughters' <a href="http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/">CA STAR test scores</a> came in the mail yesterday. And because I read <a href="http://deadspin.com/5893189/what-happens-when-a-35+year+old-man-retakes-the-sat">this</a>, about <a href="http://deadspin.com/5893189/what-happens-when-a-35+year+old-man-retakes-the-sat">a grown man who submits to taking the SAT</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />As a side note, I'd like to say that one might think this math handicap extends to data analysis, but it don't. I love data. Love it. I love the patterns--sometimes there is even a narrative.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was reviewing longitudinal test result data for a high school and saw some patterns that might tell a story: a strong majority of incoming freshmen scored in the advanced category, but that there was a steep downward trajectory, with about half as many grade 11 students scoring so well. I have more investigating to do to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions--is this typical of all high school students in the district, state, country, or is this just this school? Could the difference partly be explained by a large influx of lower-performing students at grade 11? What other factors might influence these results?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">These might be numbers, but there is a narrative, there are characters, there's a plot with conflict, action, and, one hopes, resolution.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-5579666497086659512012-09-10T09:41:00.000-07:002012-09-10T09:41:07.465-07:00Free Education for All<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Did you know you can take free university courses online?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm">MIT Open Courseware</a>, there are more than 2,000 classes available. For free. This is simply amazing. (Maybe you knew about this and it's ho hum to you.) Students can learn about anything, about everything, can build their own program of study.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">MIT Open Courseware even offers <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/courses/">classes designed for high school students</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">More resources for online learning, all free:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/200-free-online-classes-to-learn-anything">200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything</a> from <a href="http://oedb.org/">Online Education Database</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses">500 Free Online Courses from Top Universities</a> from <a href="http://www.openculture.com/">Open Culture</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/online/courses/index.html">Stanford's Free Online Courses</a> from <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/">Stanford University</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://oyc.yale.edu/">Open Yale Courses</a> from <a href="http://www.yale.edu/">Yale University</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's like someone just giving you <a href="http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76">thousands and thousands of dollars</a>. </span>Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071572443948722504.post-62337409300433841182012-09-07T18:04:00.000-07:002012-09-07T18:04:02.154-07:00What I'd Like to See. . . <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">is some kind of real discussion of the <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/">Common Core Standards</a>, instead of something like <a href="http://www.paragoulddailypress.com/articles/2012/09/06/local_news/doc5047d5fd8cfc2722772485.txt">this</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.paragoulddailypress.com/articles/2012/09/06/local_news/doc5047d5fd8cfc2722772485.txt">"One thing that the Common Core addresses is quality versus quantity," said Dr. Nicholas Jankoviak, coordinator of federal programs for Paragould School District. "With Arkansas Frameworks we're talking about student learning expectations, with Common Core, we're talking about standards." Jankoviak said Common Core would also better prepare students for college and career readiness and would provide a national standard for students who may move from one state to another. "So what you have is a child from Michigan coming to Arkansas and in Michigan they have a set of standards they're working with," Jankoviak said. "Then when they move to Arkansas, they find that it is much more rigorous here. So that child in Michigan was not adequately prepared for what takes place in Arkansas."</a></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Or <a href="http://www.thedailymail.net/articles/2012/09/06/ravena_news/news/doc50462918e8064393587506.txt">this</a>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.thedailymail.net/articles/2012/09/06/ravena_news/news/doc50462918e8064393587506.txt">". . . the program will be tougher and more comprehensive, and is expected to better prepare students for life beyond the district. “It’s a more rigorous program, and the standards are designed so all students, when they graduate from high school, will be college and career ready,” Smith said. “People around the state are very excited about this because it is a strategic commitment to raising the standards and bringing consistency to the educational program." </a></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(Both mentioned by <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/contributors/catherine.gewertz.html">Catherine Gewertz</a> in <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/09/common_core_starts_the_school.html">Curriculum Matters at EdWeek</a>.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rarely do I see anyone write about or hear anyone talk about the Common Core Standards who has read through not just the standards themselves, but all the ancillary materials.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Do the Common Core Standards actually address quality over quantity? No, not really. Does alignment with the Common Core Standards guarantee a more rigorous or even just a more consistent educational program? No, not at all. That would be impossible.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's all in the implementation. Even the best, most comprehensive standards are meaningless unless sound instruction lays a solid foundation and sound assessments are used to evaluate progress. A thoughtful approach to curriculum and assessment design could address quality over quantity. A haphazard, just-get-it-done approach will not. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As far as rigor goes, I'm thinking that one can't transform oneself from TV-watching, chip-eating, pajama-wearing couch sloth into superfit triathlete overnight. It's a mistake to demand rigor simply so we can say that our programs for students are rigorous. It's a mistake with serious consequences for the students most at risk. We need to keep our intention in front of us at all times. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In this case, our intention may be to make sure that students "will be college and career ready."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To make that happen, we have to determine where students are in their learning and identify where we think they should be. Then we figure out which are the gaps that prevent them from attaining that destination and think about strategies--as many and as varied as possible-- to bring students from where they are to where they should be.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Every teacher, school administrator, district superintendent, and school board member should read the Common Core Standards just to be informed, just to know what the conversation should be about, just to be able to review curriculum and assessment materials. Parents should, too.</span><br />
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Lesliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06876702627115609073noreply@blogger.com2