<p>kayf–the teacher asserts that the grading was simply based on use of sources (which in itself is clearly not reading comprehension–sources can be dropped in in a plethora of bad, non-useful ways, which woudl not demonstrate comprehension.)</p>
<p>The teacher than asserts that the prompt promotes a personal (ie not source-based) response.</p>
<p>these are both in the passage i quoted and you requoted.</p>
<p>I have said, from the start, that I do not know if these assertions are true. But since the argument here had seemed to deviate from what the text was discussing, it seemed useful to attempt a redirect toward what was and was not being critiqued in this piece.</p>
<p>Again, reading comprehension is important. Perusals of letters columns in newspapers, reactions to blogs, columns written in response to other opinions, etc, demonstrate that knowing what one is reading–what is being asserted and what is not-- is vital to useful discourse between citizens. I applaud a test that usefully measures those skills. They are woefully rare these days.</p>
<p>It appears that you are defining personal as non-source based. That is what I was asking for, and finally you respond. I think personal is an ambiguous word, especially went used as in “meant to elicit a personal response.” The teacher does not clearly state your interpretation. I can only guess whether she meant to be misleading. There are only two choices, one that she meant to be misleading, two, that she herself wrote unclearly.</p>
<p>kayf (back at post 34): Yes, it’s possible that the prosecutor wanted to exclude very liberal and/or opinionated people from the jury. I suspect that the prosecutor might have wanted to avoid long discussions in the jury room–especially if they led to a hung jury!</p>
<p>Garland, the “meant to elicit” still leaves it as less than clear, but thank you for explaining the gargon. So given that the test material clearly explains that material from the readings is to be used, do you think the teacher was trying to be vague?</p>
<p>However, since tht is the crux of her argument, I can’t see why she’d be writing this if she didn’t think the problem existed–she seems clear that there is a disconnect between question and grading rubric–this is what she’s objecting to, so I don’t think she’d be intentionally vague. If she didn’t think the disconnect was there, there would be no motivation for this column.</p>
<p>The general instructions to the writing part says</p>
<p>In this test, you will be writing about texts that you will be reading. Your writing
will be scored on
• how clearly you organize your writing and express what you have learned
• how accurately and completely you answer the questions being asked
• how well you support your responses with examples or details from the texts
• how correctly you use grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and
paragraphing</p>
<p>I agree, we don’t know what year test the writer was complaining about, but I find it difficult to beleive they have made instructions less clear.</p>
<p>As to the writer’s motivation – maybe she doesn’t want reading comprehension tested, only free range writing. Maybe her class received bad scores, and she can not accept her role in the problem.</p>
<p>If the former–that would be truly bizarre–never met an English teacher who didn’t think reading was vitally important. If the latter, basing her argument on assertions she didn’t believe were true would be a poor way of advancing it.</p>
<p>Right, the most recent post by kayf gets at the heart of the matter: When they revamped the test, so that the tests in 2011 onwards were different from the earlier tests, did they remove the very clear instructions to refer to the written material, at each point in the short responses? At the same time, did they leave the rubric unchanged? These are the 2-point short responses that are in question, not the 4 point “holistically graded” responses.</p>
<p>I could believe that had happened. Couple this with questions that ask “What do you think about blah blah blah?” and you have a scenario where a student could give his/her own opinion, without referring to the text in the test (despite having excellent reading comprehension). It would be legitimate to think of this as a “gotcha,” if it happened.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t know the practice in New York. Do the teachers read the instructions to their own students, or do outside examiners come in to give the tests. Do the outside examiners always follow the script? And what did the script look like for 2011 onwards?</p>
<p>(You see why I have never been selected for a jury.)</p>
<p>^I don’t know. I do know that a long time ago the 8th grade teacher gave an example of an essay where the question was something like “If you were to host a visiting student to your community what would you show them?” The kid responded that he wouldn’t show him anything because he community was a bastion of self-righteous rich people. He ranted on with perfect grammar about everything he hated about his town. He got a zero, because he was deemed not to have answered the question. Most of us parents thought that the answer “There’s nothing worth showing and here’s why” was an answer, but did go home and tell our kids to play it safe as they could well be dealing with literal minded teachers.</p>
<p>It’s like when they lost points for not showing work for things they thought were so easy they did them in their heads.</p>
<p>On page 26 (and many other places, apparently any time a reading is given)</p>
<p>The teachers are instructed to say</p>
<p>In this test, you will be writing about a text that you will be reading. Your writing will be scored on:</p>
<p>• how clearly you organize your writing and express what you have learned
• how accurately and completely you answer the questions being asked
• how well you support your responses with examples or details from the text
• how correctly you use spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation</p>
<p>From the instructions to teachers, it seems that those words are included in a box the students also have. </p>
<p>It really doesnt seem to change from year to year.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>First the student must specifically refer to the points raised in the paragraph that is the subject of the test: This is her quote from her essay telling her students they “need to fail” this test:
“In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero.”
Can anyone give any reason why a teacher should somehow think it is nefarious to expect an 8th grader to answer a question, and that if they don’t answer the question, they should still get credit for a response that is noble and beautiful?</p></li>
<li><p>The teacher claims that the students were “tricked” into writing a personal response instead of commenting on the written passage and that this was an “insidious and deliberate machination”. Does anyone truly believe this? I guarantee you that in NYS, if a test upon which schools’ reputations and funding is based, improperly caused lower scores by “tricking students”, the superintendents would be up in arms and this would be a front page story in the New York Times. Instead, the Times only reported that:
" NOVEMBER 2011 New York is one of two states in the nation to post statistically significant declines on the National Assessment tests. John B. King, the education commissioner, says the state is certainly going in the wrong direction, but has a plan to spur students’ achievement. “The new Common Core Learning Standards will help get them there,” he says."<a href=“New York City Student Testing Over the Past Decade - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/education/new-york-city-student-testing-over-the-past-decade.html</a></p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think the designed to “elicit a personal response” is either deliberately amgiuous or idiotic. I think in theory a question could be designed to elicit a “generic” not “teacher’s gargon” personal statement and still expect there to be the examples or details from the readng, WHICH ARE CLEARLY CALLED FOR.</p>
<p>I liked the article. One of the reasons I like the article is very anecdotal – I had a kid, who at the end fifth grade, years ago, <em>flunked</em> a simple standardized writing prompt because it was off topic. The question, if I recall, was, if you could choose to be a character in this book, which one would you be? The student had to write a one paragraph response, and he chose to write something along the lines of, “I would not want to be a character in this book,” and went on to explain why, in a very grammatically correct and coherent way." It was an original and amusing response. He didn’t respond to the question in the predictable way. It was very well written, however. The paragraph was much more readable and to the point than many of the paragraphs which <em>passed</em> through the filter. </p>
<p>I couldn’t have cared less about how he did on that silly test. Except that apparently, not passing this writing prompt meant there was some question as to whether or not he would be allowed to go on to sixth grade. His teacher asked for it to be rescored by different readers, though,and the second time, he <em>passed.</em> So, that was the end of that.</p>
<p>I am not against standardized testing. I grudgingly accept that it is a way to enforce some sort of accountability in some schools. If not for testing, I believe that some schools would be even worse than they are, sadly. But sometimes, failing one of these tests is really, not a sign of writing incompetence, IMO. They are purported to assess writing ability, but I am not sure they really do.</p>
<p>Thumper and mstee, what you say may be true, but in this case, imho, this teacher’s rantings do not speak well of her or her profession. The instructions to the test are clear and fair. The goals of the test are reasonable. That many here support the teacher makes me wonder, how can teachers be held accountable.</p>