Round 2
by Education Blog
Posted on December 6, 2017
Over the next few weeks students in kindergarten through eighth grade will begin taking the MAP Growth Assessment for the second time this year. Algebra I students will also pilot the test this winter. Often when we hear the word assessment or test, fear runs through the veins of teachers, students, and parents. I think that this is partly the fault of the educational establishment. I believe that our attitudes have made us believe that testing is bad. Testing is an opportunity to see what a student knows, and as an educator what I need to do differently. Look at it another way, I’m coaching a third grade basketball team and we are tested each week when we play a game. I find out where players individual areas of improvement are needed, emphasize their strengths, and evaluate how I’m communicating these to them. It’s not the score or “grade” I’m looking for, but development or growth. I certainly believe that over testing is possible, but I think the conversation needs to change to meaningful testing. What is meaningful testing?
In my opinion meaningful testing is testing that produces results in a timely fashion that can be used to improve instruction. Each year our students take state assessments, and we don’t receive the final results until the end of the 1st nine weeks. How can instruction be improved and successes celebrated if information isn’t received in a timely fashion?
I think the most important thing we can teach our kids when taking an assessment is optimism. I was reading an article which led me to a blog by Eric Barker, Be More Successful: New Harvard Research Reveals a Fun Way to Do It. In the blog, Mr. Barker discussed a book by author Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage. The blog made some great points, but one particular study by METLife stood out to me. METLife saw such great results among happy salespeople that they tried an experiment; they hired people based on optimism. It turns out that the optimist group outsold their more pessimistic counterparts by 19% in year one and 57% in year two. Shawn explained “If we know the intelligence and technical skills of an employee, we can actually only predict about 25% of their job success. 75% of long term job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, which are normally how we hire, educate and train, but it’s predicted by three other umbrella categories. Its optimism (which is the belief that your behavior matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive stress.”
As we begin this MAP Growth testing window and enter the last few weeks of school let’s practice creating a culure of optimism.
Congrats to our AHS football team on a historic season!
Sincerely,
Tim Argo
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