How NCLB Could Look if America Looked Abroad

Sunday, 7 December 2008 Clay Burell Print This Post Print This Post

Doug Noon at Borderlands wrote a post, “Assessments for Learning,” that I want to stop time to respond to, but until that’s possible, this quickie:

Doug Linked to a presentation at the Forum for Education and Democracy that featured short-listed Secretary of Education Linda Darling-Hammond and others discussing performance-based assessment: “assessing students based on demonstrations of what they know, understand, and can do.”

You can view the full event here, or watch each speaker’s segment in video here. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, at least watch Darling-Hammond’s presentation. Here’s the blurb:

“What we have thought of as fairly rare in this country [i.e., the USA] is quite common in most of the high-achieving countries internationally,” Linda Darling-Hammond began. (See her presentation here.) Beginning with a list of 21st century skills, Darling-Hammond contrasted US tests – which require recall of a simple fact or ask students for a one-sentence explanation – with exams abroad that include designing science experiments, refining computer programs and explaining the reasoning behind solutions for complex problems. “[In many nations,] there’s a teaching and learning system, that operates to provide rich curriculum and strong outcomes,” Darling-Hammond said. “They are what assure that the higher-order skills are actually taught and practiced.” [emphasis added]

Darling-Hammond gives overviews of state and local assessment design and purpose from such high-performing countries as Finland, Hong Kong, and Australia, and includes the International Baccalaureate (IB) program as well. I challenge anyone to watch it and still argue that the rote bubble-filling of US assessment is the best way to go.

Also worth a watch are the presentations by Ann Cook of the NY Performance Standards Consortium, and by filmmaker and Consortium school graduate Kiri Davis. Again, see the site for more – and notice, at the bottom of the page, you can download

a report by Conveners Linda Darling-Hammond and George Wood, “Assessment for the 21st Century: Using Performance Assessments to Measure Student Learning More Effectively.”

Finally, if the Obama team is serious about listening to us at Change.gov‘s education page, then it can’t hurt to throw a comment there supporting Darling-Hammond as Sec. of Ed. She’s got the vision and values to help kids instead of corporations, and teach the whole child instead of the state test.

  • Share/Bookmark
  1. An Approach to Teacher Merit Pay I Could Live With
  2. NCLB, Obama, and Global Implications
  3. Daily Diigo Highlight
  4. How Radio News-Writing and -Announcing Make for Ideal, Literacy-Focused Performance Assessment

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Print This Post Print This Post

The entry 'How NCLB Could Look if America Looked Abroad' was posted on December 7th, 2008 at 5:51 am and last modified on December 7th, 2008 at 3:08 pm, and is filed under assessment, politics, project-based learning, school reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

9 Responses to “How NCLB Could Look if America Looked Abroad”

  1. Doug Noon writes:
    No. 1 — December 7th, 2008 at 7:37 am

    Thanks, Clay, for the notice. Actually, the post you’re referring to is this one, I believe.

    I agree with you about Darling-Hammond’s qualifications for the Ed. Sec job, and that we should let Obama know why it matters.

    Doug Noons last blog post..Harder vs. Smarter

    Clay Burell Reply:
    December 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Thanks, Doug. It was sort of both – that Harder v. Smarter post, though, was the wrong one to link to for this post.

    It’s probably coming up soon in another post, as promised on your comment thread there ;-)

    Stay warm.

  2. diane writes:
    No. 2 — December 7th, 2008 at 11:01 am

    I haven’t watched the presentation by Ann Cook yet, but I certainly intend to. As a teacher in New York State, I can tell you that the curriculum in the elementary schools is driven by the ELA and other standardized testing. High school teachers must teach to the Regents exams. Not much space for creativity, higher level thinking or innovation, though some of our staff members are incredibly adept at making learning fun for their students.

    dianes last blog post..CyberSmart! Africa

    Clay Burell Reply:
    December 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    Sorry to be late on this one, Diane. Is Cook/the Consortium responsible for that situation, or an alternative to it in NY?

    I really wish Obama would announce his EdSec and end the damned suspense already!

  3. Penelope M writes:
    No. 3 — December 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    Ooooh…this actually gives me some hope for the future of our education for the first time in a while. Definitely need to support the idea of a Sec. of Ed. who has these sorts of ideas.

    Clay Burell Reply:
    December 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    If the US could just overthrow the ETS (AP, especially) with an I.B. coup, that would go miles towards improving HS learning, imho.

    Hope is a strangely nice thing, isn’t it, Penelope?

  4. How Radio News-Writing and -Announcing Make for Ideal, Literacy-Focused Performance Assessment | Beyond School writes:
    No. 4 — December 7th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    [...] back at my last post about Linda Darling-Hammond on performance-based assessment, this type of learning-while-doing workshop measures performance across a wide range of literacy [...]

  5. An Approach to Teacher Merit Pay I Could Live With | Beyond School writes:
    No. 5 — December 18th, 2008 at 7:34 am

    [...] like, we need look no further than Linda Darling-Hammond for answers. Her presentation linked in an earlier post lays the groundwork for such [...]

  6. Beth writes:
    No. 6 — March 15th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    What are your thoughts on Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?

«
»