Silver Creek HS

Monday, October 09, 2006

Writing Assessments-what are they good for?

One of the many reasons I often lament the fact that I ended up teaching English instead of Math or Science is the lack of simple common shared assessments. And when our department decided to use common writing prompts to use as a point of discussion when we talk about student achievement, I was ready. However, I have since talked myself into and out of thinking that this schoolwide writing assessment is a good idea.

Don't get me wrong. I want to be able to look at data for my class and compare it to other classes, other teachers' classes, the entire school. I want my students to learn from the data about their weaknesses and strengths. I want to learn from the data about my own weakesses and strengths. I want to be able to go to Teacher A and ask how come his students consistently score 4s in the thesis category while mine are still in the 2s. Great idea right?

What if the common assessment in its current format produces tainted data? The argument here being that each teacher will score the essays with their own bias so the data can't be compared because it won't be accurate. So this writing takes up precious instructional time to give us information that is only as good as the person who scores it. If we are looking for an accurate measure of student performance, then the schoolwide writing assessment is a bad idea.

Or is it? Does data have to be perfectly accurate in order to be useful? Charles Babbage, a famous mathematician from the 1800s, once said "Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all." (See that? There is evidence that I learned something in my Masters' program.) Currently, we have no data. The schoolwide writing assessment will give us some data.

Maybe the argument I have been having with myself about whether or not the schoolwide writing assessment is good or bad is really about how to use the data rather than how accurate that data is. Are we looking for a measure of individual student's writing skills? Are we looking at what students are learning? Or are we looking at what teachers are teaching?

If the purpose of the data we gather from a schoolwide writing assessment is to inform teaching practices then how can it be a bad idea? If we look at the results as simply a place to start asking questions - of ourselves, of our students, of each other, then it is a good idea. I want to learn from other teachers. Period. We have to start somewhere.

posted by Laurie @ 7:59 PM