May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A Call to Reform Testing and Define Success

By Lesley Hagelgans

The new Common Core State Standards and related assessments such as Smarter Balance have been commended for the depth of critical thinking required to show mastery. That level of achievement is a great goal for students with an IQ in the normal range, but it sets others up for failure. Asking a person with an IQ between 70-79 to answer an abstract question about literature or algebra on a test would be like asking a blind person to read a book that is not written in Braille. So why are the new state standards and the related assessments asking 7-14 percent of our students to perform this way?

Just because a person has a lower than average IQ doesn’t mean they can’t succeed in our world. Instead, we need to reconsider our definition of success. The Common Core State Standards, presented by The Governor’s Council, redefined academic standards. The implication is that if a student can master these Common Core State Standards, they will be christened as being successful. By default, a student who cannot master these standards is a failure. A significant portion of the population will not be able to master the Common Core State Standards due to limitations beyond anyone’s control, therefore a large segment of people will feel, “You are not good enough.” Why is it that only measures set by the Common Core State Standards determine whether or not individual students are successful?

Every educator can remember the informational charts from their child development classes. Physiologically, some people won’t develop the brain synapses necessary for critical thinking until their 20s. Other people won’t develop them at all. Yet, that cognitive ability is essential for demonstrating success according to the Common Core. When those students fail, they will feel like they are not good enough.  Their parents and teachers will feel like they did not do enough.

The answer is not a lowering of our standards and expectations. The answer lies in the process of testing itself. The field of education can learn a lot about learning from the field of neuropsychology. A person with a borderline functional intelligence may never grasp that y=mx+b, but if they were placed into a curriculum that supplied them with concrete real world experience, they could thrive. The key word here is concrete, because these kids are concrete thinkers.

Students in this category are often those same students who try desperately to succeed.  They may not become the next Warren Buffet or Steven Hawkings, but they can contribute in many positive ways to their community through trades-based professions – the backbone of the United States – given the right support. These students have to work two or three times harder than their peers and often demonstrate half the ability due to limitations nobody can control.

Issues like this often don’t show up until sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. Why?  That’s when the curriculum really starts to demand students to think abstractly. Once these adolescents consistently get the message they are not good enough, they shut down, disengage, or drop out completely.

What is the solution? That’s the challenge in education. We have to redefine success. Are we going to continue to tell these hard working kids they are not good enough because they cannot meet the demands of a rigorous curriculum? There are multiple measures that would identify the talents and limitations of students at an earlier age if cognitive diagnostic assessments were given to everyone. In a society that has become so data driven, we might be missing the most important data of all.

Rich data from cognitive diagnostic assessments would help educators to truly reach a child where they are and set them upon a path for lifelong success in various ways – gainfully employed, in any way, as a contributing, productive member of society.

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Mich. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

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May 13, 2013 By 3 Comments

Give Educators the Tools to Be Lifelong Learners

By Jim Szewc

In a recent post on gettingsmart.com, Powering Lifelong Learning Relationships, Tom Vander Ark, extolled some of the technological innovations that are promoting lifelong learning strategies.

The swift and exponential development and implementation of countless technological applications have created more efficient productivity possibilities, personalized learning opportunities, and instant social connectivity.  Technology is now a part of all of us, whether we are ready for it or not.  So, what will separate the trends of today from the revolutionary, culture-shaping movements of tomorrow?  It starts with how we, the lifelong learners, stay motivated, and what solutions we adapt to, embrace, and ultimately share. As the present culture has shown us, shaping a trend into a necessity of daily life is the first step toward creating a phenomenon that is truly irresistible.

Vander Ark points to what he calls “emerging solutions” for lifelong learning such as Bloomboard.com for individual learning plans and learning records and Edmodo for social learning opportunities. If they are to be successful, he says they must be properly “assembled and marketed coherently in the learning space.” Like most people today who are spoiled by a life of instant-everything, I would hope for and expect a quick rollout of professional development and learning systems like these to appear overnight.

Unfortunately, to the contrary, the only way to make a large-scale rollout more feasible is if each solution mentioned is the collective offspring of what makes our country great.  This collective consists of several education-based for-profit and non-profit innovators and entrepreneurs that share a vision of universal progress and a strong desire and ability to make it happen.  These change agents share a vision and imagination for endless possibilities like the creation of partners in learning.  Their ideas are the foundation for a network of technological and social systems that can help those who are willing succeed in their jobs today, provide attainable possibilities for their future, and ultimately guide them toward the loftiest of their personal and professional goals.

From a macro view of emerging solutions that build lifelong learning relationships, I am selfishly pondering how this intriguing, all-inclusive collective will empower others in education careers to continually develop professionally.   The empowered who choose to learn and seek out new ideas on their own, are and will always be the early adopters of movements such as this; I know because I am usually first in line.  However, it is the other faction of our teaching corps and various levels of educational administration that are not always as willing to try something new. How can they be equally encouraged?  This will be the true marketing and design challenge of this concept of partnerships in lifelong learning and the solutions proposed here — “selling” an entire legion of educators on these optimistic dreams and ideas.  It will take not only the innovators and early adopters, but those change agents who take action to shift the professional learning paradigm toward a necessity of growth and the desire to continue learning.  If we can do this, imagine the possibilities ahead of us.

Jim Szewc teaches 4th grade reading in Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools.

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May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Equal Opportunity in Kindergarten

By Beth Hillerns

We want all of our children to be successful in school. As a parent, I want that for my own children. As a teacher, I know the parents and families I work with want that for their children. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed budget, along with two bills recently introduced in the State House (HF105 and HF821), would help our state’s students reach that goal by providing funding for all-day, every-day kindergarten.

As committed as parents are to their children, some students don’t enter school with the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. They may not have the exposure to language and literacy that children in homes with highly educated parents have. One thing we can do to counteract their lack of readiness is to provide students with a literacy-rich environment in preschool and kindergarten. And while pre-school programs are important, Minnesota needs to start by fully funding all-day, every-day kindergarten.

Currently, our districts are only reimbursed for a half day of kindergarten. This lack of funding means that districts generally have three options: 1) offer only half-day kindergarten (or full-day, every-other-day kindergarten); 2) offer full-day kindergarten but use part of the general-education fund to pay for it; or 3) offer both full-day and half-time kindergarten and charge for the second half of a full-day program.

All of these are problematic and only serve to perpetuate the achievement gap. Many districts in high-poverty areas choose to offer full-day kindergarten at no charge to parents, but they are reimbursed by the state for only about half of the cost. Imagine what they could do if the state fully funded kindergarten and they could reallocate those funds.

Five years ago when my son was four, we began looking at kindergarten programs and found that the district we lived in would charge us for a full-day program. Yet, even if we were willing to pay for it, there was no guarantee of admittance. All parents who willing to pay the fee were entered into a lottery, making the fee and the lottery barriers to educational opportunity and steeping the system in inequality.

As a working mother, I wanted my child in a high-quality, full-day kindergarten program. To make that happen, I ended up driving him 30 miles away to a district where we didn’t live. The long car ride through traffic to a place without his neighborhood friends was difficult, but I believe the academic and social benefits of the full-day kindergarten program were worth it.

Full-day kindergarten options should be the norm for all students. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, full-day kindergarten has numerous benefits, including better attendance, higher academic achievement, enhanced behavioral and social development, and an easier transition to first grade. Minnesota can and should provide those benefits to its students.

Most of us think of the K-12 experience as beginning at age 5, but the truth is it begins in unequal opportunity without a full-day experience for every child. We need our legislators to take another step towards equal educational opportunity: Fully fund all-day, every-day kindergarten for all students.

 

Beth Hillerns teaches Title I at East Central Elementary School near Sandstone, Minn. She has taught for the past 10 years in urban, suburban, and rural schools in Texas and Minnesota.

 

 

 

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April 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A Call for Investment: Our Schools, Our Children, Our Future

By Kathleen Sullivan

Teaching is challenging, rewarding, exciting, exhausting, and never boring. Actually, every day is a new adventure. Lately, I’ve been struggling; Not with teaching students, but with everything else that goes along with being a teacher in a needy urban district where resources are stretched thin.

I am struggling with teaching well over 100 children a day while wearing so many other hats. Our students walk through our doors saddled with burdens. Some children are from difficult home lives, some are homeless. Others have arrived on our doorstep from war-torn nations, refugee camps, or from countries of sheer chaos. Students often show up hungry. Others are in need of shoes and clothes. Some are grieving the loss of a parent, which vary from parents who have no contact with their children, to parents who have died or been killed, to parents who have been lost to addiction, mental illness, or incarceration.

Even so, teaching is easy compared to the mental anguish and emotional drain of serving as counselor to children who are emotionally scarred. Our social worker/adjustment counselor oversees 600 students four days a week. She has a consistent caseload of 40 students, and an additional 10 plus extra students each day to tend to as each daily crisis arises. If you do the math, you will understand that teachers absorb much of the pain and agony some students bring to school with them each day.

In addition to students in crisis, we are also teaching students with intellectual, emotional and mental disorders with limited special education support in our classrooms. I love my job, I love my students, but I am exhausted and drained. If teachers are to prevail at making every child successful, we need help in our classrooms. We need help to meet the needs of our kids who are experiencing personal and emotional crisis. We need special education assistance for our students who need individual support.

When I think about what our struggling students lack, I have come to realize that no matter what their burdens are, they are each lacking consistency. School is their safety net. School is their refuge. Each day, for eight hours, they are safe. They have structure and they are surrounded by people who want them to grow into productive, conscientious, caring adults. For our students to succeed, they need assistance within the walls of that refuge.

Teachers will teach all students. Teachers will accommodate workloads and differentiate instruction to reach all types of learners. We will provide kindness, empathy, and respect. We step in when counselors are not readily available to children in crisis. When special education students are not getting enough individual attention, teachers spend extra time to meet the needs of these students and give them the academic support they need to make gains. How do we continue to spread ourselves to meet the needs of all our students?

Should we invest in staffing counseling within our schools so that counselors have reasonable caseloads of students and teachers can teach? Should we rethink how special education services are delivered by special education teachers so that students are properly supported, and budget appropriately?  Should we have additional staff to teach and support the large number of English language learners so that they are successful in meeting standards?

The answer is yes. We need to invest in our kids by providing them with access to counseling. We need to invest in our kids by providing our special needs students with specialized teachers working alongside general education teachers in their classrooms. All children can learn with the proper emotional and academic support no matter what their challenges. Some may learn differently, at a slower pace, or at different levels, but they can achieve if we provide the proper support.  We must support our students.

 

Kathleen Sullivan teaches 5th grade science at a public school in Malden, Massachusetts.

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February 15, 2013 By 3 Comments

School Safety: Licensed to Teach

by Mary Cathryn Ricker

Crossposted from her Notes from MC blog

So I guess the NRA says the answer to stop school shootings is more guns, joining the smattering of elected officials who recently have promoted the idea of arming teachers and principals. This approach is wrong.

If a place like Ft. Hood, TX which has some of our planet’s most deadly weapons carried by some of our planet’s most deadly professional soldiers, can be reduced to carnage by a single armed assassin, then what makes The NRA think that arming a nation of just-right-book loving, denim jumper wearing, wooden apple bead necklace creating, white board marker toting school teachers (and the rest of us) will be effective?

You want to arm me? Good. Then arm me with a school psychologist at my school who has time to do more than test and sit in meetings about testing.

Arm me with enough counselors so we can build skills to prevent violence, have meaningful discussions with students about their future and not merely frantically adjust student schedules like a Jenga game.

Arm me with social workers who can thoughtfully attend to a student’s and her family’s needs so I. Can. Teach.

Arm me with enough school nurses so that they are accessible to every child and can work as a team with me rather than operate their offices as de facto urgent care centers.

Arm me with more days on the calendar for teaching and learning and fewer days for standardized testing.

Arm me with class sizes that allow my colleagues and me to know both our students and their families well.

Arm my colleagues and me with the time it takes to improve together and the time it takes to give great feedback to students about their work and progress.

Until you arm me to the hilt with what it will take to meet the needs of an increasingly vulnerable student population, I respectfully request you keep your opinions on schools and our safety to yourself NRA. Knock it off.

Mary Cathryn Ricker is the St.Paul Teachers Union President, and was an English and History teacher. This piece was featured on the MoveOn.org Facebook page.  To read Mary Cathryn Ricker’s personal blog, Notes from MC, click here.

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February 11, 2013 By 6 Comments

School Safety: Is a teacher with a gun an oxymoron?

by Melody Rivera

“The mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, and the great teacher inspires …”
Tim Daly, actor and president of the Creative Coalition at a recent Sundance Film Festival luncheon.

I’d like to ask Daly, our communities and policy makers, what does a teacher with a gun do?

To me and to most of the colleagues I’ve spoken with, the idea of a teacher with a gun in the presence of students violates our educator code of ethics.

In the forlorn aftermath of the Newtown shooting in CT, we teachers have been on edge. Approximately 2 months ago, teachers were praised all over the media for their bravery, hard work and commitment to education. The media was plastered with signs supporting the work of teachers in the classroom and in life-threatening situations. Today, those same signs of support have a lethal weapon attached to them.

The reality of our urban school systems in the United States is that guns are already very much present within our youth. So are gangs, knives, brass knuckles and just about every other attack weapon a person can think of when violence and hatred are on the agenda.

I’ve been teaching in urban schools systems since 2009. The first 3 years of my career were spent in the Springfield Public Schools System in the state
of Massachusetts. Numbers from FBI data suggest the city of Springfield to be among the top 12 most dangerous cities in the nation, according to the
Republican Newspaper’s article in May of 2011. A 2010 Northeastern University study, ranked Springfield, MA as the second most segregated city in the nation for Hispanics, trailing behind only Los Angeles.

These statistics only hint at how grim and challenging the situation is for teachers in the area where I teach. The reality behind the statistics is this:
In my second year of teaching the 4th grade at a local elementary school, I had 2 of my students bring deadly weapons into my classroom and threaten to use them lethally against another peer. The first weapon was a set of adult- sized brass knuckles. The second was a blade the student used to threaten to kill another of my students while flailing and lunging upon him, and was provided by his father. Both students were 8 years old.

Now let’s fast forward to the middle and high school levels in the same district. There you will find gangs that have overtaken schools with their power and influence and have made the metal detector an archaic monument. My mother, a veteran teacher of almost 30 years in this school system, has been approached by her student gang members offering her protection from any imminent danger. This is the reality of the America’s urban classrooms. The students are experts at violence, guns and hatred. How wise does it make us to propose more violence and inexperienced teachers with guns as a solution to the problem?

Instead of more violence and less education, here’s a thought: let’s educate ourselves on the reason and solution for the increased violence, suicide and
mental health problems prevalent in our youth today. The questions should be: why are these shootings on the rise? Why is the suicide rate among our
young also escalating? And why is cutting back on educational programs and professional staff such as school psychologists the go-to answer if we want positive results?

The federal government didn’t trust teachers to just teach, thus the new teacher evaluation systems became a federal mandate in order to ensure that every educator was proficient in their craft. In addition to the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees most teachers possess, teacher evaluation systems also encompass a plethora of data, performance notes and evidence-based on administrative observations of the educator to ensure a qualified and proficient teacher in the classroom. Yet, some states and their legislation are giving teachers the green light to hold a lethal weapon and to bring it into their classrooms after a miniscule 3-day training? How will I be proficient at handling a lethal weapon in a high-stress and emotional environment with only 3 days of training under my belt?

I believe in protecting our schools. Yet I believe that protection should be provided by highly trained staff capable of using weapons effectively on a daily basis. I also believe in changing the world for the better, preferably by non violence and by imbuing ignorant, violent minds with education.

Melody Rivera is a World Language Teacher in the Chicopee, MA school district.

If you are a member of the National Education Association, please visit http://bit.ly/VivaNEA to share your thoughts on school safety!

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February 4, 2013 By 1 Comment

Common Core: What We Have Here is a Learnable Moment

By Lesley Hagelgans

Within the district where I work, the Common Core State Standards were shared with Math and Science teachers in January 2011 – just six short months after the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices approved them.  The information provided by the administration within my district was complimented by research shared at the Gates Convene especially from groups like America Achieves.  My participation in the Gates Convene was an enriching opportunity to learn about what is going on in all aspects of education reform including the Common Core State Standards and related assessment consortiums.

As I was reacquainted with the Smarter Balance assessments last week, I was thinking about teachers who haven’t even seen the Common Core State Standards yet.  The Common Core State Standards were passed in Washington, D.C. in June of 2010, and many teachers will have their evaluations tied to assessments that evaluate student success with the Common Core in spring of 2014.  Why does information take years to trickle down through bureaucratic structures before it lands in the hands of the people it will arguably affect most – teachers?

As recently as last year, I have met teachers from across the country that are not familiar with the Common Core State Standards for various reasons.  I teach in a small school district with limited resources where much of the curriculum design lands in the capable hands of teachers.  I am aware that larger school districts with huge transient populations employ professionals to write assessments and units tied to the Common Core; this information is shared with staff at a convenient time for reforming curriculum whole scale.  Both limited resources and large bureaucratic structures have been cited as reasons for teachers lacking awareness.

What we have here is a learnable and teachable moment.

  • On a systemic level, let’s look at the schools where the Common Core has been integrated and share what works and what does not.
  • As teachers, we need to use our time for sharing resources and strategies to meet the new literacy demands instead of simply lamenting them.
  • Both administrators and teachers need to find ways of replacing something they already do instead of feeling the drain of doing one more thing.
  • Everyone should use platforms like VIVA Teachers, America Achieves, and Hope Street Group to share and retrieve information that will help students be successful.

One last thing, I challenge the Department of Education to study where the Common Core thrives.  Do students excel when the Common Core State Standards land directly in the hands of those teachers who derive their own unit plans tied to common assessments linked to the Common Core or is success better nourished in those districts where teachers had less of a hand in the instructional design but a bounty of professional development to help them teach units and lessons designed by others?

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Michigan. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

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January 31, 2013 By 13 Comments

Teacher prep: Let’s get clinical

by James Kobialka

Teaching is not a profession which can be taught through lectures and reports. Just  as doctors must be trained in hospitals, in practices, so must teachers be trained in classrooms in what is called the clinical model of teacher preparation.

I remember student teachers coming into my high school class. They would sit at the back of the class, scribbling in notebooks. After two weeks of this, they’d teach one lesson and disappear, presumably off to present a signed form and get a degree.

I finished my own teaching degree in May of 2011. I spent well over 300 hours teaching. I designed lessons, units, and curricula. I watched others teach. I videotaped classes; I wrote reflections; I received critiques; I did research; I earned my degree with ink and tears, as did the rest of my cohort.

I feel privileged to have been taught by great teachers. Every step of the way I was supported and challenged.

Not everyone made it. Some quit. They couldn’t hack the long hours and the stress of teaching. While I feel for them, I also am thankful. Their leaving did not hurt students – if they had burned out in their first year of teaching, it would be a different story.

Those of us who graduated did so knowing who we were – not as people, but as educators. We had a feel for our classroom persona, our strengths and weaknesses, our goals.

A lot of eyes are turning towards teacher preparation right now. 25 state school chiefs recently agreed to “take action” towards renovating their states’ teacher licensure and preparation programs.

Their recent report identified “Licensure” as a main area to change. I hope they will focus on the clinical model of teacher preparation that mimics how doctors are trained.

The state chiefs aren’t the only people asking these questions. How do we train good teachers? How do we know whether a first-year teacher will have a high- or low- performing classroom? How do we train what TNTP called the “irreplaceables”?

Here are your answers:

Stop hiring people who worked in industry for fifteen years and think that qualifies them to teach high schoolers.

Stop hiring subs who have been in the system for ten years but never designed their own lesson.

Stop hiring people who majored in Education but have never stood in front of a class.

Call up Clark University, my alma mater. Call up the Urban Teacher Residency United. Call up any of a long list of schools. . Ask them which of their recent graduates need a job – because many of us still do.

Start hiring people with classroom experience. Start hiring people with portfolios, with lessons, who can show you videos and student work samples. Hire people who know their weaknesses as educators and are willing to improve them.

Learn from the programs that work. Stop sending low-performing teachers to endless Professional Development lectures; set them up with a mentor instead. Have them reflect, read, write, and think – just like we want our youth to.

I wouldn’t trust a doctor who has never been in a hospital. I would never trust a pilot who hasn’t flown.

So why do we think we can trust teachers who’ve never been in front of a class?

James Kobialka teaches Science and English in Worcester, MA

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January 28, 2013 By 3 Comments

Teacher Talk on School Climate: Armed and Pedagogical?

By Kori Milroy

The recent Sandy Hook school massacre has brought about a nationwide focus on school safety and security.  Ideas for improving security range from an across the board ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, to placing an armed guard in every school building.  Some groups have called for teachers and/or administrators to be armed with guns or Tasers. What do teachers think about all this? [Click to download]  Are they ready and willing to be armed?  The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions released a statement opposing arming teachers, but some teachers have embraced the idea, filling up free firearms training sessions being offered in Ohio, Utah, and Texas.

On this episode of Teacher Talk, Chicago Public Schools teachers Conor Fitzsimmons and Jennifer Christiansen share their opinions on school safety and security, and the prospect of teachers carrying guns. Download the episode here or stream it below. to listen in on Kori, Conor’s, and Jennifer’s conversation about the vision, and add your own voice to the mix by leaving a comment here on the VIVA Teachers website, below this post.


This is the third installment of Teacher Talk, an ongoing series of conversations between teachers talking about education policy.
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January 24, 2013 By 2 Comments

Why rely on Test Companies, Instead of Teachers, to Create Assessments?

By Jessica Choi

Joshua Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) which consistently ranks in U.S. News and World Report’s top 100 high schools, recently said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it.”

Why is this a revolutionary idea?

Teachers assess students every day. Why weren’t teachers the obvious choice to write the Common Core assessments? Don’t we trust teachers to create quality tests?

Teachers CAN Write Quality Tests
While teaching for MCPS, I was hired to help write the ESOL 4 semester exams. It was an honor.

Teachers from different backgrounds, different levels of teaching experience, and different teaching styles came together over the summer to create the end of semester exams. We were trained and had an advisor who kept us on track. We studied the standards and worked in teams to develop questions for each of the standards. The hardest part was developing questions that would be fair to students of different races, different socio-economic statuses, and students with special needs.  In our group, there were teachers who taught each of those populations, so we worked together to modify questions so that they would be fair for all of our students.

Revision is the Most Important Part
The test went through editing and a formal review process before it was given to students. After the first administration of the test, teachers were asked to send their students’ results for each question and any comments or suggestions they had to the test facilitator.

Maybe ESOL teachers are just super-awesome (as I have often suspected), but I think this would happen in other departments too: ESOL teachers loved giving feedback on the exams. That year and every year after, teachers offered lots of comments, corrections, and suggestions for new questions. Teachers felt empowered because they were not just being told what to do; their professional opinion was being respected.

Although the test writers had done everything we could have to make a fair and balanced test, when the test was administered teachers found questions that were not fair. Those questions were dismissed from the students’ final scores and they were revised for the following year’s test.

How do corporations revise their test questions each year? All the secrecy surrounding test creation means that teachers (the test administrators) are never asked what problems they observed or how they would revise the test for the following year. This seems like a missed opportunity for creating a truly fair and balanced assessment.

Crowd-sourcing Teachers
Teachers are essential to test revision. After every administration of the Common Core assessments, teachers should be asked for comments and corrections so that the questions can be revised appropriately.

Teachers could also be an indispensable part of test creation. Teachers could choose the best questions written by test companies for each standard or they could write their own questions for the assessments.

Giving teachers a voice in the tests they have to administer motivates them to take ownership of the assessments and of their outcomes.

Crowd-sourcing Students
Students could also create good questions for the Common Core assessments if given the right directions and incentives.

Teachers often ask students to write sample test questions to review for tests. Sometimes teachers use the questions students have written as the real test questions. I think students would create appropriate questions if awards were given for the best ones.

If students write the questions, then teachers could choose the best ones for each standard.

The Role of Test Companies
Test companies should serve as a facilitator. We need an outside company to manage the technology, analyze the data, choose the final questions and keep the final product a secret before the test.

But test companies currently operate in an academic utopia where they create assessments based on how students should interpret questions. Tests need to be written by teachers who have a better understanding of how students will interpret questions.

What do you think? Could students and teachers create better assessments than corporations?

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