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Yes, the students learn subject matter throughout the year and they are assessed on it throughout the year. Those are the grades that wind up on their progress reports and end of year report cards (for elementary and middle school). I've never considered the EOGs to be indicative of how much, or how well, my child has learned that year -- again, that's what report cards and parent/teacher conferences are for. EOGs serve no purpose for individual students. They exist to rank/rate school performance. In my experience at four high scoring schools (elementary & middle), those scores are high because the schools basically stop teaching and dedicate the last quarter of the year to review and test prep. The schools that don't freak out and have EOG pep rallies (I kid you not) tend to have lower test scores. It has very little to do with how smart the kids are or how much they learned.
Yes, the students learn subject matter throughout the year and they are assessed on it throughout the year. Those are the grades that wind up on their progress reports and end of year report cards (for elementary and middle school). I've never considered the EOGs to be indicative of how much, or how well, my child has learned that year -- again, that's what report cards and parent/teacher conferences are for. EOGs serve no purpose for individual students. They exist to rank/rate school performance. In my experience at four high scoring schools (elementary & middle), those scores are high because the schools basically stop teaching and dedicate the last quarter of the year to review and test prep. The schools that don't freak out and have EOG pep rallies (I kid you not) tend to have lower test scores. It has very little to do with how smart the kids are or how much they learned.
Let's see if this makes any sense... a parent is okay with assessments throughout the year but believes reassessing the student on some of those topics at the end of the year is no longer a valid assessment of the student? Like it or not, no athlete has won a medal showing up for practice and being disdainful of the final.
If the child was actually learning throughout the year, the school wouldn't have to scramble to run through test prep exercises. I suspect that, amongst other reasons, the beliefs of some parents are behind the easing up of academic rigor in US. I expect my kids to do well throughout the year and also ace the EOG to demonstrate they have the required understanding and knowledge.
Until we arrive in utopia, there always will be competition for resources and the need to differentiate your knowledge and skills. End of year assessments, while not perfect in all circumstances, serve a useful purpose. It looks like some parents disregard school performance while ignoring the fact that the parts (individual student + teacher performance) make up the whole (school performance).
People throw phrases like "schools basically stop teaching". Well, what are they doing then? Let me guess... doing a recap of what the kids were taught and should have mastered?
I am not surprised that we have politicians succumbing to the angst of parents aghast at CC and anything else that endeavors to raise the bar and mandates that students demonstrate consistently good skills and knowledge when compared to their peers, whether locally or globally.
Last edited by local2rtp; 07-22-2014 at 11:26 PM..
? Like it or not, no athlete has won a medal showing up for practice and being disdainful of the final.
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Poor analogy. Athletes training for a given race or competition do the same things over and over each day to better themselves, ONLY to win the medal (game, competition). I'd like the exact opposite to happen with my kids - I'd like them to actually learn something and have a thirst for knowledge.
And if you learn something in September and it's a topic not built on for the rest of the year, chances are you're going to forget some of it by the end of the year. My kids learned landforms in September of their 5th grade year, built models and the whole 9 yards. Hard as it may be to believe, landforms weren't a part of any lesson for the rest of the year and they needed a refresher at the end of the year.
Now if they'd been training to run a sprint in the Olympics, there would have been no worries. That's all they'd be doing every day for 9 months (or however long).
Final grades on a report card are a reflection of what a child has learned over the course of a year. EOGs are reflective of one day. A late bus, a fire alarm going off in the middle of the night, domestic abuse the morning of the test (yes, I know a teacher that had to deal with that) - all can impact an EOG score. Let's not act like one test on one day is the end-all and be-all.
Poor analogy. Athletes training for a given race or competition do the same things over and over each day to better themselves, ONLY to win the medal (game, competition). I'd like the exact opposite to happen with my kids - I'd like them to actually learn something and have a thirst for knowledge.
And if you learn something in September and it's a topic not built on for the rest of the year, chances are you're going to forget some of it by the end of the year. My kids learned landforms in September of their 5th grade year, built models and the whole 9 yards. Hard as it may be to believe, landforms weren't a part of any lesson for the rest of the year and they needed a refresher at the end of the year.
Now if they'd been training to run a sprint in the Olympics, there would have been no worries. That's all they'd be doing every day for 9 months (or however long).
Final grades on a report card are a reflection of what a child has learned over the course of a year. EOGs are reflective of one day. A late bus, a fire alarm going off in the middle of the night, domestic abuse the morning of the test (yes, I know a teacher that had to deal with that) - all can impact an EOG score. Let's not act like one test on one day is the end-all and be-all.
**standing ovation**
Quote:
Originally Posted by local2rtp
If the child was actually learning throughout the year, the school wouldn't have to scramble to run through test prep exercises. I suspect that, amongst other reasons, the beliefs of some parents are behind the easing up of academic rigor in US. I expect my kids to do well throughout the year and also ace the EOG to demonstrate they have the required understanding and knowledge.
Just curious - to what era are you comparing current academic rigor when you say that the US has eased up? I was in elementary school (gulp) 35-40 years ago, and we didn't have EOGs. I'm pretty sure my parents didn't either. Or my grandparents.
Do you have children in school? Particularly in elementary school? For an 8 year old, the EOGs are not about what you actually learned and absorbed all year long. It's about rote memorization of everything that is going to be on the test, and the ability to sit still for three hours and not screw up shading in the bubbles.
For high school and college students -- yes, I do believe "finals" or end of course tests are a better reflection of their grasp of the overall course material. Generally, at those levels, the coursework builds on itself, so the final is actually an assessment of how well the student understood the objective of the coursework.
Not that it should make a difference, but you may be surprised to know that I am a big fan of the Common Core. But the Common Core is simply a curriculum that states what students should be learning (and in what order) by the end of each year. It is NOT a test.
The purpose of NC EOGs is to provide state educators and citizens with data showing student
achievement and to meet the accountability requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Considering that, up until last year, students were required to retake the EOG if they failed, I'm pretty sure that the "to meet the accountability requirements of NCLB" part of that statement was the priority.
I can only assume that local2rtp does not have children in public elementary school.
one day soon, my rising 4th grader's test score will show up. She will have scored above grade/average in math. She just told me the other day she doesn't like math because there's so much of what they do that she doesn't understand. Should I rejoice in her EOG score, or work with her to improve her self-confidence and abilities? Should I make sure she masters the 7 different ways they add using Common Core, or once we identify the one that she "gets" and then work on her mastery of that ONE?
My child's EOG results arrived today in the mail. She was a third grader this past year. I see from the postmark on the envelope that it was mailed yesterday.
Let's not act like one test on one day is the end-all and be-all.
Is that the main concern? I believe in higher grades EOGs/ EOCs are a part of the final grade, not 100% of the final grade.
Besides, unless there is an epidemic of fire alarms going off, I don't see one test on one day as being necessarily bad. That is how the world functions. It isn't always synchronized with our wishes.
My analogy is perfect. The athlete competes, the student studies. That should be the core competence for those fields. Excluding the precocious kindergartener who knows she will be a rocket scientist, the rest have to stay abreast of plenty. Current education practices are not designed for specialization from lower grades, so the burden is on the student to learn, understand, and remember. Not perfect but until some radical changes occur, end-of-year assessments are an integral part of schooling. But I get that we won't agree on this topic.
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