In terms of The Smarter Balance Assessment, I enjoyed taking it, but can see areas in which students may struggle. We had discussed, as a group, our problems when being given the test in class. One comment was that the preparation involved for taking the test was confusing and overwhelming and I would agree. Nobody needs to begin their test having to go through a list like this...
Another concern was that the questions were so disorganized in terms of how to answer and/or respond to the problem posed. Although, I enjoyed answering these questions, as a future math teacher, I understand why a student, who is not prepared for a test of this format, would be easily thrown off and perform below their actual understanding of material on this assessment. Going into this activity, we were not prompted with much, other than to log in and pick a grade and topic...then try out a few of the questions. I found the questions quite interesting, and I think they may more accurately test the students' understanding of the material they were supposed to have been taught. I think with proper preparation and framing by the teacher, students would not be so thrown by the varying types of questions, because I believe that being able to switch from one format of question to another is a skill that can and ought to be developed. I just wonder how much time we, as teachers, have to spend on trying to prepare students for this type of test format, and whether we even want to be teaching in response to this particular test.
Just going through the 9th Grade math portion of the test, one thing I was concerned about was question 2 shown below:
It's difficult to read the question here, but it ask students to find possible centers for a tangent circle to the original circle, and asks students to show their work in the box designed for paragraph writing. If you're unfamiliar with the work involved with mathematics problems (especially geometry questions), which I doubt you are, you would recognize how difficult it can be to explain in words how you solved a problem. For me, the process of solving this problem required diagrams, equations, and drawing/erasing lines and values. How do I write all of my steps in one word processing box, especially under the pressure of a time constraint, and knowing that this is the 2nd of who knows how many questions...?
The last confusing aspect of this exam that I remember from class is the issues with navigation throughout the text. The arrow navigation buttons would not allow you to move onto the next problem without having entered some answer to the current problem, which I would think most students are not used to, having taken the ACT and GRE myself, knowing that this is not the case for those tests. I wish I had gotten to try out this function myself more, as I think I was too focused on answering the problems...but this would also require some preparation for students in order to efficiently navigate the test.
Ultimately, I think the Smarter Balance Test, at least the math section, can be an effective tool for measuring a student's mastery of certain grade level's math content. My only concern is that it would require a lot of preparation, in order to get students comfortable with the changing format of the test, and the ways in which to navigate the test.
I'm wondering whether those of you who took the English portions of the exam experienced similar issues as those of us who took the math portion.
Ms. Nao,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job at articulating your thoughts and providing a non-bias approach to a difficult issue. I appreciated that you approached the matter of the Smarter Balance Assessment from multiple sides. Also, when you said, "it has been difficult to understand where my beliefs lie in terms of these various forms of testing for both students and teacher" I got a real sense that you have been putting a lot of cognition into situation and the implication Smarter Balance Assessments may have on students and teachers. I think it's great that you commented on some major down falls of this assessment platform. I like that you steered clear of the political issues that these types of test elicit and you stuck to the educational issues. I think that is a good teacher move to start with as you continue to assess and modify your beliefs on these types of assessments. You brought up great points that have helped me take a deeper look at the Smarter Balance Assessment.
This is a great perspective on the Smarter Balance Assessment. I too took one of the math tests, but found it extremely frustrating. I completely agree with you when you say that adequate time would need to be provided to students to become familiar with the interface. Even navigating through the pages I felt to be quite confusing. As younger teachers, we are going to have more experience with technology than most teachers out there. If students are provided time to learn the testing interface, will students that have teachers that are less experienced with technology be disadvantaged strictly because their teachers are less knowledgeable about computers?
ReplyDeleteOne of the issues that I brought up with this type of testing is the elimination of test taking strategies. As a product of a certain educational time, we were taught test taking strategies that involved looking through problems before starting and coming back to problems we couldn't understand. The biggest problem I had with navigation, much like you said, was that to move to the next question an answer had to be input. To me this removes the strategy part of the assessment, you try your best and there isn't much need to think strategically in terms of taking the test. The test provides questions that match your level so if you were to get problems wrong then come back to them because you marked them so you could return, what happens to the test? Do you still have default easier questions? Does this remove the need to come back. Or how easily can you come back? But now that I think more about this topic, maybe eliminating test taking strategies from the assessment is a good thing. That way we are not spending time on educating students how to approach standardized tests but truly measuring what they know.
I didn't have a problem such as the one that you showed where students were asked to show work for a math problem in a text box. This is ridiculous and I think I would have a hard time doing/showing my work in this way. How could we expect students who are less familiar with these topics than us to adequately and accurately answer this question.
You pose so many interesting thoughts and raised so many questions in my mind. Part of my assessment of this Smarter Balance Assessment is due to a sufficient number of questions and a lack of experience with this type of testing in general. It will be very interesting to see how these computer assessments make their way into our classroom as new teachers.
Hello Ms. Nao!
ReplyDeleteI was interested to read a math concentrator's opinion on the Smarter Balance Assessment. For me as a Spanish major, I did not feel that I was at all adequately able to tackle some of the higher level math problems I saw on the test. That being said, I haven't taken a math class since the pre-calc class I took my sophomore year. I was glad to see that you agreed with what I found about the organization of the test in that it was "disorganized in terms of how to answer and/or respond to the problem posed." I can imagine that this would throw students off a lot! As a math teacher I would want a simple format that did not change with every question for consistency. I would not want the format of the test to get in the way of students showing off their awesome math knowledge!