Keeping Up With The Joneses

Girden (2001) writes that the general idea of Standard-Based Reform would set standards for every student regardless of one’s personal background or the particular location of his or her school. I don't see much to argue with here, but the text went on to say. That such accountability provides flexibility to schools that “. . . would permit them to make the instructional and structural changes needed for the students to reach the standards" (p. 27).

I have to say, that in my particular corner of the world, this last statement is pure fantasy. I have yet to see how standardized assessment provided one iota of flexibility to the curriculum, especially when it involves students who are doing poorly on the endless succession of benchmark testing, reassessments, etc. This, it seems, cuts down flexibility to a trickle, if that.

It would be interesting to see a case study which uses authentic assessment in such a way that each standard is accessible to each child in ways that prove that she or he understands and can generalize the principals of the standard. These standards would be reached via a plethora of student work that capitalizes on his or her learning style and multiple intelligences. Results (proof) would be stored in a portfolio that moves each year with the student.

Unfortunately, folks tend to be driven by data, even if that data reflects some ambiguous percentile on some ambiguous assessment. We have a need to compare, contrast, and see how we are comparing to the Joneses. Well, sometimes the way Jones operates doesn't work particularly well for Smith.

Taking data using authentic assessment would provide rich qualitative information such as student feelings about their accomplishments, the difficulty of the tasks, the relevancy of the task/standard to his or her life, and so on. The results of these qualitative data could easily provide quantitative results too. Example: 65% of the student who chose to do a class speech on the Civil War as their final grade project, covered all expectations listed in the syllabus.

Authentic education just makes sense.