Reflections

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the end of the semester. When did that happen? It’s strange to think that I’ve almost completed my last “normal” semester before Teacher Assisting, and it’s even stranger to think about all the teaching tools I’m familiar with now that I’d never really thought about until a few months ago. I guess methods classes will do that to you.Many of the new teaching tools I’ve been introduced to are technological. I’ve learned about digital text archives and hypertext. I even write wikis and podcasts now. How cool is that? Still, my favorite technological project of the semester has been keeping this blog. Of course, I knew blogs-and podcasts, hypertext, and wikis-existed before now, but I’d never thought about writing one myself. And I’d never even heard of an RSS aggregator. Discovering the purpose of all those little orange boxes on websites was definitely an “ah ha!” moment for me. But it’s one thing to know how the technology works, and another thing entirely to know how to use it in a classroom. After a few months of doing it myself, I realize that blogging with a feed reader has major potential.

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about my feed reader is that it’s such a clean, easy way to compile research. Rather than searching the internet and individual databases, bookmarking things from thirty-five different places, savings search results, printing hundreds of pages of database results that won’t be bookmarked, and carrying around absurdly large piles of research, I’ve been able to use my feed reader to do the searching for me. The information I want all ends up in one place, and it stays there until I tell it not to. Granted, that method doesn’t allow me to access all the information available in books, so I’m not advocating doing away with libraries. Searching the internet and electronic databases, however, provides constantly-updated information.  That’s something books just can’t do. Still, in order to search databases using a feed reader, a person must first have access to those databases. Otherwise it’s impossible to subscribe to the feed. I know some schools and individuals don’t have such access. Luckily for all us Michiganders, a driver’s license or state id allows for free use of the Michigan Electronic Library, which puts an extensive list of databases at our disposal. Even students whose schools don’t have database subscriptions can benefit from the technology. I’m not sure, but I bet several other states have similar resources.

As far as building research skills goes, gathering information with an RSS aggregator is just as educational as more traditional methods. Students still have to come up with search terms that will yield relevant results, and they still have to learn to quickly weed out “junk articles.” In fact, they probably have to get even better at it than they otherwise would, because the sheer quantity of information that comes into a feed reader is unbelievable (I couldn’t possibly have blogged on every interesting article I was presented with, but I did still read and learn from many of them, certainly more than I would have without the feed reader). Even so, using one to do research is much less time-consuming than researching the old-fashioned way. They don’t take long to set up, and once they’re set up they sort of run themselves. I can see spending a day or two early in the semester having students set up their own feed readers to collect information on an end-of-semester research paper topic. By the time they’re ready to actually start working on their piece, much of the information gathering will already have been done. And if the students blog about what they’re finding throughout the semester, much of their prewriting may be done as well. They’ll already have thought through some of the issues surrounding their topic, and probably have identified a more specific area of interest as well.

Another cool aspect of blogging is that depending on how publicly it’s done, it has the potential to give students a huge audience for their writing, and opens up the possibility of a dialogue between them and others who have an interest in their topic. For me, the comments I received on my blog posts were like an electronic form of peer response. They led me to think about what I’d left out that I should’ve included, and what I’d included that I should’ve left out. They revealed which of my ideas weren’t clear enough to be understood the way I meant them to be understood. And the neatest thing was that some comments were left by interested parties outside my class. How cool would it be for a student blogging about an indigenous tribe on the verge of disappearing (please don’t ask me why I thought of that example just now) to get responses from a professor teaching a class about that tribe, or an anthropologist who spent a year living with and learning about its members? I know there’s no guarantee that a student blog would generate such a response, but there is a guarantee that it won’t happen if the student only writes for classmates and teachers. With blogging, it’s possible.

 

An Article– and District– that Breaks the Mold

Ever since I began tracking articles about writing assessment earlier this fall, my feed reader has been inundated by headlines about schools and districts taking steps to improve their students’ scores on state-wide writing tests. At this point, I could probably write them by myself: Concern Over Student Performance on Last Year’s (insert state writing test name here) Leads District X to Adopt Comprehensive Writing Instruction Program Z. It’s pretty simple. And the articles are shockingly similar as well. All praise the new program’s emphasis on explicit instruction, and celebrate its proven ability to bolster student achievement, however it’s defined on that state’s test. Of course to me, explicit instruction has come to be synonymous with formulaic, prescriptive instruction, and bolstering student achievement means nothing more than drilling five-paragraph essays into students’ heads until they can’t help but churn them out in their answer booklets. Maybe I’m too cynical. But that’s why I was more than a little surprised to come across “Teaching the Write Way,” by Connie Eastburn. The article details Mapleton School District 32’s quest to improve its writing scores. But instead of adopting one of the programs I characterized above, the Oregon district has infused its writing instruction with technology that doesn’t consist of computerized essay scoring. The results are more than promising.When the grant was awarded, and the Writing Instruction Through Technology project was first implemented,

Mapleton’s 18 classroom teachers received laptops and projectors, and each building was outfitted with a modernized computer lab. Digital cameras were made available to each staff member, and four individual sets of 10 cameras apiece were available to teachers to check out and provide to their students for project work. Teachers [also] received comprehensive professional development throughout the school year, to help them learn how to use the new tools, as well as how to integrate them into instruction.

Since then, writing has taken on a whole new meaning for Mapleton students. The article outlines some of the many writing projects that now take place, which, I have to admit, are impressive. At the lower elementary level,

First-graders are creating biographies of friends for which they take photos themselves and add text, sounds, and visuals that bring their work to life. Second- and third-grade students have mastered the tools of Kidspiration…to organize their ideas and use in the creation of personal digital toolkits containing images, video clips, and text.

Those students go on to use their toolkits to create multimedia reports on topics of their choosing. District fifth-graders are using the technology for similar projects. For example, instead of writing a traditional book-report, one student used a digital camera to film herself talking about the book, and to capture the related artwork she had created. She then used Windows Movie Maker to merge all the clips into “multimedia report infused with digital imagery, video, music, and sound. Sixth-graders also used the digital cameras and Windows Movie Maker, but they combined them with iPods and Audacity (an audio recording and editing program available for free download online) to make oral histories of the district’s elderly residents, which will become part of the local Traveling Children’s Heritage Museum.

Now I know what you’re thinking. All this stuff is great, but what does it have to do with writing? A lot. Determining what to include in a digital story or report requires a great deal of thought on the part of the students. Not only must they consider the needs of their audience-an important aspect of more traditional writing-but they must decide what medium or combination of media is best suited to present that information in a meaningful way. Such a complex task could easily give rise to some very interesting conversations about genre. Then they have to either write, record, videotape, or design their own resources, or choose them from amongst the unbelievable number of possibilities available online. Each student’s individual tastes and personality are sure to play a part in that process, thus giving the final product its own unique voice. What’s more, the ability to present different types of information simultaneously through the use of audio, video recordings, still images, and text demands that students give a great deal of thought to the organization of their digital creations. That’s right, students can learn organization without writing a five-paragraph essay. One critique I’ve often heard of digital writing is that students aren’t actually writing anything, but that just isn’t the case. Not only does actual text play a role in their final products, but they also have to write scripts for their videos and audio recordings. Writing, in various forms, is a key part of the process.

Of course, the original goal of the technology project was to improve scores on standardized writing tests. I have to be very clear here: If I had things my way, standardized writing tests wouldn’t exist. But since they do, and there are all kinds of consequences for those schools and districts whose students don’t score adequately, instructional programs have sprung up all over the place that emphasize prescriptive approaches to teaching writing, by imposing prepackaged structures onto student essays, and completely ignoring the role of the audience in constructing meaning. They evaluate students by either focusing on the easily-measurable aspects of their writing, which are typically the ones that matter least, or by artificially quantifying aspects of writing that can’t be measured objectively. Yet despite all that, schools adopt those programs, believing that doing so is the only way to help their students pass the tests. Mapleton’s Writing Instruction Through Technology project proves that that is not the case. Since it was implemented, the percentage of the district’s fourth-graders meeting state standards on the writing test has climbed from 25 to 75 percent, all while the students were engaged in real writing tasks, which offered them choices of topic and structure, had a real audience and purpose, and could be completed successfully in a variety of ways. The implications are significant: It is possible to improve standardized writing test scores without standardizing instruction. Now if only more school districts would believe it.

Teaching the Write Way
Connie Eastburn
T.H.E. Journal
Volume 35, Issue 7
July 2008
Full Text

 

Lessons from a second language writer

At the core of the study of writing assessment is the question of what and how we should actually be assessing. Should we focus on meaning over “correctness,” correctness over meaning, or both equally? And what impact does our choice have on our students? In Writer Identity and ESL Learners, Linda A. Fernsten uses a case study of a college-aged second language writer in her class to examine how ESL students corm their identities as writers, and what role their teachers play in that process. Her findings, I believe, should inform not only the answers to those questions, but also the way we teach and assess all writers, not just those who happen to be working in their second language.In her response to the question “who are you as a writer?” the ESL student, “Mandy,” explains her difficulty integrating what Fernsten calls expressive writing-that which “privileges individual control over textual meaning and production”-with the “traditional formal discourse” typically required in academic settings. She says she often has trouble getting started, but that once she begins writing she “can babble on forever. However, this often gets [her] into trouble with run on sentences and other grammatical errors Especially with organization.” In other words, when she tries to fully express her meaning, the “correctness” of her writing often deteriorates. As Fernsten explains,

Mandy did not question her ability to write out ideas as she took on the copetent identity when saying she can “babble on forever.” She moved to [perceiving herself as having a] deficit, however, when she thought about the structure of that writing with its grammatical requirements and need for the prescribed organization.

In fact, in a later conference Mandy expresses contempt for the idea that correctness is what matters most in writing:

When I think of writing-I really see writing as like someone’s individual expression and I think if someone writes in a certain way that another person doesn’t agree with it really doesn’t mean it is wrong. You know, I think that is just their style but a lot of people are like, “No, that is wrong, you shouldn’t have done it like that, like you have to go by this structure. And I personally don’t understand like how they can put limits and structures and like borders and wall[s] around writing.

Clearly, Mandy has serious, valid misgivings about the way her writing has been responded to and assessed in the past. She explains that when teachers reword her writing, it “ruins” it, making it more theirs than her own. It’s important to note that despite that less-than-positive sentiment, Mandy had made it into a junior-level university writing class at the time the article was written. Her reflections were not the result of being unsuccessful in an educational system that privileges traditional academic discourse, but rather of the feelings of alienation she had experienced as a second-language writer whose expressive abilities had often been stifled by demands to make them conform to someone else’s idea of correctness. Those feelings have led her to assume a kind of split identity when it comes to writing. On the one hand, she knows she’s competent in explaining her ideas through writing. On the other, she feels she lacks the ability to do so in a way that meets others’ requirements, which she resents being subjected to to begin with.

So what does all this mean for teachers? The way I understand them, Mandy’s reflections seem to reinforce the idea that in order to foster a feeling of competence in student writers, it’s extremely important not to interfere with their expression of the meaning they wish to convey. When we force them to use language our way, and impose our structure upon their ideas, we take away their writing. And I think that is most likely to happen when we adopt assessment methods that promote “objective” responses to writing. The rubrics often used in classrooms and on standardized tests tend to focus on conventional ideas about correctness, and favor ready-made structures like the five paragraph essay, because they simply can’t take into account all the possible forms a given essay could take when composed by different students. Electronic writing instruction programs are problematic in that respect as well, because they too are incapable of recognizing and responding to the ideas in a student’s writing, especially when those ideas aren’t presented in the structure the program is designed to produce. Thus, by relying on those and similar methods to assess, and guide instruction, teachers may actually by robbing their students of the right to own their own writing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that students don’t need to learn how to properly punctuate a sentence, or know which verb tense to use in a given situation. What I am saying is that I think it’s important that we teach them those things in the context of clarifying and refining their own words and structures, not adopting somebody else’s. That way we can reinforce the inherent oneness of expressive and academic writing, and also help them each develop one cohesive identity as a competent writer.

Writer Identity and ESL Learners
Linda A. Fernsten
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
Volume 52, Issue 1
September 2008
Full Article

 

I don’t get it.

At the risk of beating a dead horse (ok, I’ll admit that at this point it’s more of a reality than a risk), I just have to point out the article that I came across yesterday. It was the title, “Maine Looks to Cut Standardized Writing Tests,” that first drew me in. A state getting rid of tests instead of adopting more of them was just too unbelievable to ignore. And when I actually started reading, it just got better.

According to the article, the state of Maine is reconsidering its current testing regimen due to budget constraints, and the fifth and eighth-grade writing tests are at the top of the list of potential cuts. But how much difference can eliminating two writing tests actually make? A lot. In fact, the Maine Department of Education says that “eliminating the March tests…will save up to $140,000.” I find that number sadly comical. For only $140,000 per year, a state can stress out our kids-not to mention their teachers-about a writing assessment that doesn’t actually assess their writing, and waste time that could be spent actually teaching and learning writing. What a deal. But the powers that be assure us that we must subject our students to standardized writing tests (not to mention tests in all the other subjects). They claim that if we don’t, we won’t be able to tell whether or not our kids are learning, and there won’t be any accountability. But if that’s true, then why does Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connery-Marin say that by cutting the fifth and eighth-grade writing tests, the state would be “trying to save money in places ‘that will have the least impact on the classroom’”? First of all, we know that implementing standardized writing tests has a negative effect on what happens in class. Connery-Marin’s statement could indicate that he doesn’t believe that has happened in his state, and so nothing will change, either positively or negatively, if the tests are removed. That said, there is also another side to his statement that I find quite amusing. If eliminating the two writing exams will have little impact on the classroom, it means that teachers must not be garnering much helpful information from the results to begin with. They must not be as useful for refining instruction and assessing student writing skills as we’re always told they are. In fact, they must be so irrelevant that teachers can teach well and students can learn well, even without them. Of course I already knew that, and if you’re reading this, you probably did too. So if federal law allows for the removal of certain tests, and the state knows that those test aren’t useful, why in the world does it take a budget crisis for someone to say, “hey, maybe we don’t really need these”? I just don’t get it.

Maine Looks to Cut Standardized Writing Tests
Fosters.com
October 22, 2008
Full Text

 

Narrative Evaluations

How do students react when teachers don’t grade? That’s the question Dr. Sylvia Bagley wanted to answer when she embarked upon a two-year study of student perceptions of the alternative evaluation system in place at a local high school. The school, referred to in the study by the pseudonym “Progressive Secondary School,” is a relatively small, private school. Teachers there do not assign students letter or number grades, but instead rely on non-numeric rubrics, portfolios, and narrative evaluations to guide assessment.The opinions expressed by the students regarding the evaluation system caught my attention, not so much because of the reasons they liked it, but because of the reasons they didn’t. Fifty-nine percent of the participants expressed that they “really like[d]” receiving narrative evaluations overall, citing the fact that such detailed feedback helps pinpoint what they need to work on, as well as what they do well. Those same students, however, also shared what they believe are the drawbacks to not having a traditional grading system. I wasn’t too surprised to read that some felt the teacher-written narratives were too specific and required too much work, because they require students to actually go back and address their weak spots. What did surprise me-and not in a good way-was the response of one specific student: “I do not like that I can’t be or say I’m an ‘A’ or ‘B’ etc. student. I am competitive with my academics, and with narratives it’s harder to do that.”

Somehow I don’t think that student wants to get letter grades so she can compete with herself. She wants to be able to rank herself against her classmates. She wants to know who she’s “smarter” than, who’s “smarter” than her, and how far she has to go to get to the top of the class. (Interestingly enough, the school also uses some form of a rubric with each evaluation, which rates students according to four levels of achievement that could pobably be translated fairly easily into a letter grade). I don’t know about you, but to me that’s not a very healthy or productive attitude toward learning or assessment. And it isn’t the student’s fault. She’s the product of an educational system (and culture) that promotes and thrives upon competition, even in contexts and situations where it has proven to be extremely counterproductive. If I had no other reason to dislike traditional grading, her comment would be enough to make me give narrative evaluations some serious consideration.

But are narrative evaluations really worth the trouble? I think they just might be, because, as student “Bethany” explains, they make assessment instructive, and relevant to each individual student:

Students who are used to simply doing what’s expected of them, and then receiving grades based on a point system, may be in for a rude awakening once they arrive at Progressive, given that it’s impossible to hide or ‘slip by’ at a school which places such a strong emphasis on personalized feedback.

While that may seem like a bad thing to some students, I think it’s actually a very positive aspect of this type of evaluation. Writing the narratives requires teachers to give substantial thought to the growth of each individual student of the course of completing a given project or assignment, and from one assignment to the next. There is flexibility for them to take into account not only what the student actually did, but how he did it, what he learned while doing it, and what he can do to continue to grow as a student of the applicable subject. In fact, as the article explains,

The very nature of assessment at Progressive requires that students learn to view assignments as a useful tool for growth, rather than simply a teacher-determined statement on ‘how they are doing.’

To me, that should be the nature of all assessment.

The truth is that my interest in narrative evaluation, particularly in the writing classroom, has a lot to do with the type of feedback I received from my writing teachers when I was in high school. While they did have to assign me a letter grade (which could change if I chose to revise), they also made comments in the margins, and provided a detailed, thoughtful paragraph about what they saw in my paper. They told me what went through their minds while they read, how my words made them feel, what they connected with, and what they didn’t. They recognized the things I had done well, but also explained what I could have done better, and how. To this day, I still remember many specific comments they wrote in those paragraphs, and I still apply their advice to my writing. The feedback I received became an integral part of my growth as a writer. That wouldn’t be the case if my teachers had just scribbled a red letter at the top of the page. That’s why I find the idea of an entire school using narrative evaluations so encouraging, especially in the context of a writing classroom, where the sincere response of an interested reader really does matter.

Yet while I find the idea of narrative evaluations very promising, I also recognize that their true usefulness depends upon the teachers writing them. If they don’t contain quality feedback, they won’t be any more useful than a letter or number grade. And I also understand that it just wouldn’t be realistic for a teacher who has 150 students to try to write narrative evaluations for every assignment in every class, at least not if the assignments are to be returned before the students graduate from college. Still, if I had things my way, narrative assessment would definitely have a place in writing instruction, at least in my classroom.

High School Students’ Perceptions of Narrative Evaluations as Summative Assessment
Sylvia S. Bagley
American Secondary Education
Volume 36, Issue 3
Summer 2008
Full Article

 

Assessing (Hand)writing

It’s no big secret, at least not to teachers, that standardized tests don’t measure what they’re supposed to measure (why politicians and test writers refuse to understand that remains a mystery to me, although I’m quite certain money has something to do with it). I’ve always known that to be true, but “Pupils with Poor Handwriting ‘Do Less Well in School Tests’” just reminded me of the scope of the problem. Published in Britain’s The Telegraph, the article reflects on the actual physical process of writing as it relates to test taking. More specifically, it discusses the results of a study that showed that “children who struggled to write fluently devoted more brain capacity to getting words onto a page. This often interfered with their ability to generate ideas, select vocabulary, or plan what to write” on tests. In other words, kids with bad handwriting had a harder time thinking about their meaning than other kids, because all their resources were concentrated on physically forming the letters. In addition, researchers hypothesized that the reason girls outscored boys on this year’s Sats (a British academic assessment) could be because boys tend to have poorer handwriting, which leads to poorer handwritten compositions. In fact, “one of Britain’s biggest exam boards recommended earlier this year that “adults…be allowed to act as ‘scribes’ during tests.” And lest you think that the researchers are blowing the handwriting issue out of proportion, it’s important to review the findings of David Wray, Dr. Jane Medwell, and Dr. Steve Strand of the Times Educational Supplement.  Upon analyzing the “handwriting speed and ability of almst 200 pupils in three schools,” they discovered that “pupils with average or poor handwriting had only a 40 per cent chance of reaching national standards in Sats taken at the age of 11.”  Handwriting is a component of those writing Sats, so it makes sense that poor handwriting would affect the scores… But should it? The researchers concluded that “handwriting can crowd out the composing process” students must go through to create a solid piece of writing. To me, that process is one of the main things we should be concerned with. 

I understand that Britain’s assessment system is very different from the one in place in the United States, and relies on very different administration and scoring mechanisms. Still, I find the handwriting example from the UK to be quite relevant to the assessment that takes place in this country. Granted, in order for students, or anybody else, to effectively transmit meaning through writing, others must be able to read what they’ve written. However, if a given student lacks the fine motor skills to produce legible handwriting, does that mean he can’t write well? Well yes, it does mean the student can’t physically write well, but I’m not convinced it means that the student can’t write well— thoroughly develop an idea, sustain an argument, choose lively, accurate language, and engage the reader. So how can those skills ever be assessed without handwriting coming into play? Word processors and talk-to-type programs come to mind (of course, simply using those sorts of programs would NOT make the same old standardized assessments suddenly more fair or valid). But at this point, computerized writing assessment is far from being the nation-wide norm. What’s more, on the rubrics used to score the writing portions of Michigan’s MME and MEAP tests, illegibility is grounds for an essay to receive a zero, or be deemed unrateable. I suspect that similar criteria are in place in many other states. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying good handwriting isn’t important. Of course it is. And I realize that most students taking the tests probably write legibly enough for their essays to be scored. Still, I’m sure handwriting-related failures happen, because our assessment system is structured to allow them to happen. So the question I’m left with is this: is it fair to label a student a less-than-proficient writer when really the deficiency is in handwriting? Are the two really the same thing? I don’t think so. To me, even though a low score due to writing illegibility might be relatively rare, the potential for it to happen is just another shining example of how the tests in place to evaluate student writing ability don’t really evaluate writing ability at all.

Pupils with Poor Handwriting ‘Do Less Well in School Tests’
Graeme Paton
The Telegraph
October 17, 2008
Full Article

 

MCTE

I really wish the person who decided to schedule the vice presidential debate the night before the annual MCTE conference would’ve reconsidered. It would’ve been much easier to pry myself out of bed at five am on Friday if I hadn’t stayed up to listen to Senator Biden and Governor Palin on Thursday. That said, attending the conference was definitely worth being sleep deprived. Keynote speaker Barry Lane kept me laughing for the entire first hour. I had a great time at one of his workshops last summer, and I thought his address on Friday was just as entertaining. Although he occasionally seems to be wandering, he always ends up making an interesting point. I was especially intrigued by his idea about having students rewrite advertisements they find in newspapers and magazines. I think that’s cool because 1) it has a visual component, which some students will find very appealing, and 2) it ties in perfectly with Linda Christensen’s book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word, which I’m currently reading for class. The process of rewording an ad forces students to think about the message underlying the image it contains. It’s inevitable that, in the process of analyzing that message, they will begin to develop an awareness of the social issues present in our society, which, as Christensen explains, is the first step in teaching for social justice. I didn’t expect to end up thinking about social justice education during Lane’s speech, but I think it fit.

After the keynote, I headed to a breakout session on the process of getting published. I know it’s a little early in the game for me to be thinking about that, but I was interested anyway. When I picture my life a few years down the road, I see myself writing articles and/or books, so why not take the opportunity to learn a little more about how it’s done? The editors of the LAJM, Kia Jane Richmond and Doug Baker, did a nice job explaining some of the more practical aspects of submitting pieces to journals. They also gave us the opportunity to talk in groups about any ideas we had for potential articles. As an English Ed. student, it was a little intimidating to talk about my senior thesis with a practicing teacher I’d never met, but I did it anyway. And I’m glad I did, because he reassured me that the ideas I was playing around with were interesting, and worth writing about.

Out of all the other sessions I attended, there is one that stands out in my mind. In that session, teachers Jessica Whiteside and Rebecca Schmidt explored ways of using various kinds of creative writing, often in conjunction with technology, to help guide students into more “formal” writing endeavors. They showed various examples of creative writing projects that had helped their students demonstrate their ability to distinguish between the appropriate use of formal and informal language, identify and cite sources, and analyze literary works, along with a host of other skills. They emphasized the fact that those abilities, which they had developed through the use of creative writing, also apply to what many consider to be more “academic” writing (aka research papers, analytical essays, etc.). I found their experiences encouraging, because they supported my belief that creative and “formal” writing are not two distinct entities at all, but instead are just slightly different manifestations of the same process. In fact, I’m almost certain that idea is going to figure into my senior thesis in one way or another. Just listening to other people who felt the same way-not to mention the comments of the audience members who weren’t so sure- made me more excited to begin my research. What more could I possibly ask for from a conference?

 

Right Questions, Wrong Context

          You could say I stumbled upon this post by accident. Although I grew up in the digital age, I have a love-hate relationship with all things computerized. In high school, while all my classmates were busy typing away in the computer lab, I could usually be found curled up in the hallway, furiously scribbling in my five-subject notebook. Despite the fact that I’ve been proficient on word processors since I was about nine years old, it took me until my sophomore year of college to teach my brain to work in front of a computer screen. A notebook and pencil are still my preferred writing tools, and I almost always use them, at least to get started. Nevertheless, I completely understand why so many people prefer computerized composition, and I don’t deny that word processors are incredibly useful in the writing classroom. Despite my own personal preferences, I can’t imagine teaching a writing class without allowing my students the option of drafting and editing on a computer. It was my opposing feelings about computer-aided composition that initially attracted me to the article “On Writing Tests, Computers Slowly Making Mark,” which turned up in my feed reader despite the fact that it’s slightly dated. Published in Education Week in February 2007, the article discusses the possibility of the writing portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) becoming computerized. Once I began reading, however, I was drawn in not by the debate over the merits of computerized writing assessment, but by the way that debate illuminated certain issues that are relevant to standardized writing assessment in general, regardless of how it’s administered.

          One of the concerns the article raises about computerized writing assessment is that schools vary in the number of computers they have at their disposal. For that reason, some schools would need a much bigger window of time to administer the test to all their students. I know what you’re thinking. So what? Who cares? Let them do it over two or three weeks instead of a few days. What’s the difference? Well, as the article puts it, “that strategy can raise concerns about test security.” Hmm. There’s something very wrong with that statement, besides the fact that it’s reminiscent of a press release from the Pentagon. Why should the test have to be kept a secret? My interpretation of the reason is this: if schools are allowed to administer the tests over a longer period of time, student A, who takes the test on day 1, could potentially reveal the prompt to student B, who won’t take the test until day 7. Thus, student B would be left with six precious days to plan his or her response. My question is, why do people spend so much time thinking about the security of test, without ever bothering to ask themselves why a writing test has to be secure to begin with? I’ve never heard of any professional writer who can sit down and produce his or her absolute best work in only a few hours, without the benefit of being able to think about the topic, talk to others about it, or research it. The very idea is laughable. In fact, I don’t think many writing teachers would encourage students to do that kind of writing if it wasn’t mandated by high-stakes testing. If the real goal is to obtain an accurate reflection of students’ writing ability, and if we insist on doing so without allowing them to choose their own topics, we should at least be willing to pass out the test prompt a few weeks beforehand! We should be talking about it in class, and researching it in the computer lab! We should be watching movies and singing songs about it! We should be doing whatever will help our students gain as thorough an understanding of the topic as possible before sitting down to take the test. The issue is not how to make computerized testing more secure. The issue is the fact that test security is a concern to begin with. Whether it’s computerized or not is irrelevant.

          The concern over security fits quite nicely with another aspect of computerized writing assessment addressed in the article. If a test is computerized, should students be allowed to use the spell-check and thesaurus programs that are standard in most word processors? The board that was developing the computerized version of the NAEP writing test at the time of the article’s publication believed they should, because “those word-processing devices have become so prevalent in schools, and society at large, that it does not make sense to ask students to work without them.”  Director Rosanne Cook goes on to explain that, “it [word processing without the benefit of editing tools] creates a very artificial environment for the writing test that is not what they’re accustomed to.”

Now wait just a minute. If the claim is that it’s unfair to ask students to produce “good” writing under artificial circumstances, I couldn’t agree more. But what in the world would make anyone think that artificiality isn’t already an issue? As I explained earlier in this post, the conditions under which standardized writing assessments are typically administered are already structured in a very artificial manner. Nothing about them resembles the way real, non-test writing takes place. Furthermore, it could easily be argued that if students are familiar with being timed as they write to a prompt, it’s probably because of the testing virus that has infected their schools, making it illogical to argue that test writing isn’t artificial because it’s also practiced in classrooms. This is not a problem that could occur if a computerized writing assessment isn’t structured properly. It’s a problem that already exists, and will continue to exist as long as standardized writing tests have a place in our educational system. 

On Writing Tests, Computers Slowly Making Mark
Sean Cavanagh
Education Week
Vol. 26, Issue 23, p.10
February 14, 2007
Full Article

 

A disappearing comment…

Hi everyone!  For some reason a comment I received about my last post won’t show up, even after I approve it.  So, in order to allow everyone to see it, I’ve copied its content into the space below:

apangealearning
http://apangealearning.wordpress.com/ | bwallace@apangealearning.com | 63.138.205.98

Dear Ms. Holmes;

Thank you for taking time to look at our press release about Apangea Learning Writing. I also appreciate you taking time to provide us feedback.

Just to clarify, we are not a curriculum. Apangea Learning Writing is a supplement to curriculum. Our solution is a tool for teachers to use to help teach students a structured approach to writing and help them meet the specific proficiency requirements mandated by high-stakes state exams and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Helping to eliminate the risk of these students slipping through the cracks, our product provides school districts a cost-effective safety-net to catch these students before it is too late.

Our goal is to help students succeed academically (please click on the following link http://www.apangea.com/videoHtml/kayla-highRes.htmlto hear first hand how we are helping to change students lives). That being said, we are always looking for ways to improve our products to better achieve our goal. I invite you to be part of this solution. Since your evaluation of Apangea Learning Writing was based exclusively on a press release and three screen shots, we would like to give you more in-depth exposure to our solution.

Please contact me directly (bwallace@apangealearning.com / 412.894.9943). I would like to provide you a live demonstration of the product with our CEO and Co-Founder, Louis Piconi (I believe you are in Michigan, so this will be conducted over WebEx). Once you have viewed the product in its full capacity, Louis would welcome any constructive feedback you could offer to help improve this so that more students can benefit and achieve academic success.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Yours in learning,

Brian D. Wallace

 2008/09/15 at 4:19 PM

 

Ok, I’m back.  Now that that’s done, allow me to make a few clarifications.  Firstly, I understand that my analysis of Apangea Learning Writing was based on a limited number of screen shots and a press release.  I did not, and do not, claim to be an expert on the program.  However, those screenshots, along with the press release, did show me enough to be able to recognize the instructional purpose underlying the program’s creation.  As I’m sure you can tell, I do not agree with that purpose.

Secondly, I realize that Apangea Learning Writing is meant to be a curriculum supplement, not a freestanding curriculum.  If I gave any other impression in my original post, I did so unintentionally.  My issue is with the type of curriculum that would make use of such a program.  What was clear to me from the get-go, and what I believe was made quite clear in the response I received, is that the program is designed to help students succeed on standardized tests.  Therefore, if a given school chooses to use Apangea Learning Writing to supplement its curriculum, it seems reasonable to assume that the aforementioned curriculum is designed to teach students to succeed on standardized assessments as well.  The program is simply another method of teaching to the test, hence the title of my previous post.  Unfortunately, the kind of writing required to succeed on standardized assessments does not match my definition of “good” or purposeful writing.  Furthermore, I do not believe that teaching a student how to score as proficient on a test is the same thing as teaching a student how to be a truly proficient writer.  For that reason, it seems that a program designed to produce truly proficient writers would have to look very different from a program designed to produce good test scores.  In my mind, those two goals are incompatible. 

Now that all that has been addressed, let me just say that I’m extremely interested in gaining a more in-depth understanding of how the program is designed.  Since the opportunity has been offered to me, I see no reason not to follow up on it, and when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know what I find out.

 

Talk about teaching to the test!

Well, here it is. The next example of just how damaging test scores can be. According to a press release from Earthtimes.org, The Nation’s Report Card has revealed that 75 percent of American high school seniors are less than proficient writers. Apparently it’s a crisis of epic proportions, at least if I believe the headline. (If you ask me, the bigger crisis is the way that percentage was determined. I’m not certain that I would be able to write proficiently if I was given only 25 minutes to respond to a prompt, but that’s beside the point…at least in this post.) So what is the nation to do? Enter Apangea Learning Writing, “a new solution designed to help students achieve writing proficiency.” The online program, recently released by Apangea Learning,

provides students differentiated writing instruction through its six-step writing process that is based on one of the world’s largest bodies of cognitive research. Instruction and feedback is provided through Apangea Learning’s “intelligent” proprietary tutory technology and live, certified teachers who instruct students online– providing school districts a cost-effective way to tutor students in writing.

It sounds good, and it’s bound to be much less expensive than hiring additional teachers. So what’s the problem? As far as I can tell, just about everything.

One of the claims made in the press release is that the new program relieves teachers of the responsibility of providing preliminary feedback to their students. In doing so it claims to allow them to dedicate their time and energy to “value-added activities.” To be honest, I don’t know exactly what that phrase means, but I have a hard time thinking of a lot of activities that are more valuable than providing feedback to students on their writing. When I read that the program’s live tutors “provide feedback within minutes,” I grew even more suspicious. How in the world can anyone provide meaningful feedback to student writing in minutes? I had to know more, so I Googled it. That’s how I came across Apangea Learning’s blog.

Naturally, the most recent post was the press release I was reading. However, the blog version included pictures. I was initially annoyed by the fact that the images were too small to see in detail. However, when I clicked to enlarge them I realized that their small size was nothing more than good common sense on the company’s part. The first picture was meant to demonstrate the type of assistance students can receive as they compose their thesis statements. I didn’t have a problem with the idea that a thesis statement lets the reader know where the essay is going, but I can’t imagine the feelings of the poor student whose thesis statement is two sentences long and comes half way through the second paragraph, since according to the Apangea Learning Writing automated (yes, I said automated) tutor, it must be contained within the final sentence of the introduction.

The next image was even more upsetting. In that case, the simulated student, Brian, was being assisted with the composition of his thesis statement, this time by a real teacher. The following sentence is representative of the feedback he received: “You have a main idea, but you need three supporting points.” The whole thing reeked of the five-paragraph essay. It suddenly became very obvious how feedback could be provided so quickly. It isn’t hard to come up with comments like that.

I didn’t think I could get any more irritated, but I was wrong. The real icing on the cake– or fly on the manure pile in this case– is that students are rewarded with gift cards for advancing through the system. No kidding! The message here was pretty clear to me: write to pass the test and we’ll pay you. As I read, I found myself wondering what Alfie Kohn would think of such a program. I’m pretty confident that he wouldn’t be any more thrilled about it than I am.

Despite my own reservations, I know there are people out there who will buy wholeheartedly into the idea that this is the way to raise writing scores. They’re probably the same people who buy into the idea that standardized tests are the best way to evaluate writing proficiency. But I’m absolutely convinced that they’re wrong on both counts. If developing proficient writers is the problem, Apangea Learning Writing is certainly not the solution.

National Crisis: 75% of High School Seniors Are Not Proficient Writers:
Apangea Learning Announces New Solution to Combat Crisis
By Earthtimes.org
September 2, 2008
Full article