What is in the Smarter Balanced Pilot Test?

Read Part I:
Smarter Balanced Test: Try It Out Before Your Kids Take It

Read Part II:
Smarter Balanced Comes to Ann Arbor a Year Early. Why?


And here is Part III.

What is in the Smarter Balanced Pilot Test and How Will It Be Given?

The Smarter Balanced Test is a non-timed test (although there is a certain amount of time that they expect the test to take. It is given on a computer. The testing can be split up over several days. The test itself includes a variety of types of questions, including questions that are "drag and drop" (you drag objects into a location and "drop" them there); "click stick" (also known as click-stick-click-drop, and it requires less fine motor skills); multiple choice; and short answer questions. All of the answers, including the short answers, are graded by a computer. Smarter Balanced calls the computer program that delivers the test the "test delivery system." I'm not sure why I find that so humorous, but I do.

There are two parts to the Smarter Balanced Test. There is a "non-performance task" section--estimated to be two hours long for the English Language Arts section, and two hours long for the Math section. And there is a "performance task" section, which involves a half-hour classroom activity that is supposed to provide a "baseline" for a theme, and related to that there is an ELA section (estimated at two hours long) and a Math section (estimated at an hour and a half).

The idea of the performance-based task is that it allows testing of critical thinking and problem solving. The example I was given was that if you had a class task about teen driving restrictions, that there would be baseline information shared about those, and students would then be able to incorporate that information into their activities.

The classroom task itself is considered "non-secured," but at the same time, "Students may take notes during this time, but the notes must be collected before proceeding to the PT. Students may not use notes taken during the classroom activity for the PT." (Source.) Also, if students are absent the teachers are supposed to try to give the students who missed a similar experience.

The pilot tests are not "adaptive," they are "fixed." (In other words, they are the same for every student. Supposedly, the actual test will be made adaptive next year.)

Read lots more about the Smarter Balanced test here:

Classroom Task and Performance Task Administration Guidelines

Frequently Asked Questions for Spring 2014 Field Test

Here are the goals of the Smarter Balanced test, as taken from the Smarter Balanced Assessment web site:

• Accurately describe both student achievement and growth of student learning as part of program evaluation and school, district, and state accountability systems; 

• Provide valid, reliable, and fair measures of students’ progress toward, and attainment of the knowledge and skills required to be college- and career-ready; and 

• Capitalize on the strengths of computer adaptive testing—efficient and precise measurement across the full range of achievement and quick turnaround of results. (emphases added)

Just a comment about that "valid, reliable, and fair measures" piece. In case it's not obvious, if you don't read well, you are not going to do well on the math test, even if you are a math whiz.

As for "efficient and precise measurement," given that computers will be assessing students' writing, I'm not sure how precise it will be, although it certainly will be efficient!


But enough about the test.
I'm more interested in the testing.

Consider subscribing to Ann Arbor Schools Musings by Email!

Math Lessons for Language People

One of the books I read over the summer was  When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge by K. David Harrison.  This book tackles the issue of languages with only a few speakers remaining, and asks--what do we lose when we lose these languages? Overall, I thought the book was interesting but uneven. At times the author tries too hard to prove that we lose a lot. (I sort of thought that was obvious, but maybe it's not.) There were two sections that I found very thought-provoking. One of those sections is very rich reading for math teachers.

Sign Languages

Harrison does have a fascinating discussion at the end of the variety of sign languages that are being lost. As he writes:

So far, there are 121 identified and named sign languages used in deaf communities around the world, but potentially a great many more remain completely undocumented. Many sign languages are now rapidly vanishing. This is in part because many deaf communities possessing unique sign languages are small, indigenous, and rural. . . Signed communication systems arise spontaneously wherever deaf people live. . . as soon as there is a community of deaf people. . . these systems develop into full-fledged languages, rapidly becoming as complex as spoken languages (pp. 230-231).

Numbers and Language

The other chapter of the book that really got me thinking was the chapter on numbering systems. Here, I believe there is an opportunity for some really great math lessons (Chapter 6, pp. 167-200--I'm only going to talk about bases here, but for math teachers there is some really great food for thought in this chapter about all kinds of math concepts).

I was a very good math student, but a better "English and other languages" student. And one part of math that I never fully understood (I got it, but I never really "got" it) has to do with counting in other bases. Yes, we learned to count in base 2, and base 5, and base 12. . . but the truth is that my mind was really "converting" from base 10 to the other bases.

From reading this book, I started understanding that languages embody their math bases, and that not every language uses base 10. Chapter 6, Endangered Number Systems, is all about this. In the Pomo language of California (which now has fewer than 60 speakers), the counting system is in base twenty. The number 20 is "1 stick," and 400 is "1 big stick."

Some languages count with body parts. Fingers and toes seem obvious, but other counting systems rely on arms, elbows, and even nostrils and collarbones. The Kewa people of Papua New Guinea count in base 4, using the hand as the basic unit--but they omit the thumb!

It goes on--there are many languages in Papua New Guinea, and among them the Aiome employ a base-2 counting system; the Loboda use both base-5 and base-20 systems; the Huli use a base-15 system; and the Bukiyip use base 3 and base 4.

Harrison notes that non-base-10 languages may have a cumbersome way to say a number that we think is important, like 1,000, but on the other hand, "non-decimal bases make it easy to say other numbers. In base-15 Huli, 225 is expressed simply as ngui ngui (15 x 15). Compare this to the relatively complex English expression 'two-hundred and twenty-five (2 x 100) + (2 x 10) +5. (p. 191)."

As I read this, it occurred to me that developing lesson plans that teach the way some other languages think about counting would be a natural way to teach about various math bases. For instance, could students design their own (non-base 10) counting system using body parts or other things that we find around us? Which

And at the same time, it would achieve one of my ulterior motives--to keep U.S. students from thinking that what we do in our country, and in English, is the only or best way to do things.*

*Fueled by a recent conversation I had with a graduate of a local high school who told me she never took any foreign language because "I'm American, and I live here, and we use English, and I don't need it--it's not important." 

A Foolish Consistency

If not for Ms. Grumet, my 10th grade English teacher, a conversation today would not have reminded me of the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In honor of Ms. Grumet, and of Mr. Emerson himself, here is the passage I thought of, because it covers a multitude of sins.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- ` Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood .' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance," 1841

Emerson, you know, thought a lot of himself. I shall ask you, instead, to forgive my inconsistencies.

Landslides and Lakes: Geology, English, Hydrology

Warning: This post is not about Education. It is about my education, though.

I've been completely fascinated by a blog that Ed Vielmetti sent me to: Dave's Landslide Blog. I've been learning a tremendous amount about geology and geography (okay, I already knew a fair bit, but not about landslides). They seem to happen around the world nearly every day.

Right now there is a huge lake (at least 12 miles long and over 300 feet deep), growing daily, that was formed by a landslide in January. It is about to overflow any day now, with the possibility of a ginormous (I like that word) flood. Many villages have already flooded, more are about to be flooded. All in a part of Pakistan that I didn't even know about. And there are all sorts of politics going on in the area. The Pakistan-China road (Karkoram Highway) has been blocked and flooded. And if there is a disaster, it will be because the government didn't step up to the plate and prepare. Did I mention that the area is incredibly beautiful? Welcome to Gilgit-Baltistan, where the Attabad Lake has formed in the Hunza district. The lake is about to overtop tomorrow or the next day. How big will the flood be? I've been checking, practically hourly. (Picture taken from Dave's Landslide Blog.)

Another thing that is really interesting to me is the English of the Pakistani news sources--the English reads really differently from ours. Turn in to the Pamir Times to see what I mean. It reminds me of a debate I read about in one of my English classes, over whether there is, or should be, a single World English, or multiple World Englishes. Reading the Pakistani news sources, I lean toward Englishes.