I have long thought that "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing" was an interesting idea. There would be a test for something like Third Grade Arithmetic. A student has to pass that test to pass Third Grade Arithmetic. The second purpose is if the student does not pass that test, then the school does not get paid for teaching that student Thi…
I have long thought that "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing" was an interesting idea. There would be a test for something like Third Grade Arithmetic. A student has to pass that test to pass Third Grade Arithmetic. The second purpose is if the student does not pass that test, then the school does not get paid for teaching that student Third Grade Arithmetic. This generalizes across the entire public school curriculum. There are tuning parameters. For example the system could have more finer-grained tests, or fewer tests of larger scope each.
One failure mode is that, since the students have to pass the tests for the schools to get paid, the tests could become garbage tests that anyone could pass without knowing anything, so the existing schools are guaranteed to get paid whatever they do. When there was just "High Stakes Testing," some schools and school systems were already cheating. A fix is to add "Free Entry." Anyone can set up a school to teach willing students, any such students must be allowed to take the same tests on the same terms, and if these students pass the test, then the new school gets paid the same. "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing with Free Entry" then becomes a version of 3. Unlike 3a or 3b, this does not use a percentile to determine passing, but a fixed test threshold. In principle, every student could learn the material and pass; every student could fail to learn the material and fail.
In terms of "Controlling the tests," if this is just a mental exercise, then I sketch out the curriculum myself, which can be fun. For a real system, however, the only mitigation I have seen is transparency; every parent gets their child's fully graded tests back, can see every question, and can see how each question was graded. This makes clear to parents on what students are actually being graded. For further transparency, anyone can take any of the tests, for the standard fee, seeing the tests and their results. Also, the curriculum and testing standards need to be announced ahead of time, so schools can know what to teach, but parents who do not home school won't necessarily pay attention to that..
One problem you do not consider is the school cheating — the teacher either telling the kids what the questions on the test will be or rewriting the text after the kid hands it in. I gather it happens with the present system.
Cheating is absolutely a risk. One aspect of dealing with cheating is "...on the same terms...." I skipped details to keep the post shorter. If Public School Teachers get to administer these tests themselves with no oversight, then Charter, Private and Home Schools get to administer these tests themselves with no oversight. Pursuing this scheme for real probably requires something like proctoring the high stakes tests off-site by people who are not allowed to be connected to any school system, or allowing all schools, including Charter, Private and Home Schools, equal involvement in proctoring.
That said, for me "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing" is an interesting gedanken experiment. It requires being more explicit about what Public or publicly-funded Education is supposed to achieve. It also starts to drive home to what extent should anyone be accountable for anything in this area.
I have long thought that "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing" was an interesting idea. There would be a test for something like Third Grade Arithmetic. A student has to pass that test to pass Third Grade Arithmetic. The second purpose is if the student does not pass that test, then the school does not get paid for teaching that student Third Grade Arithmetic. This generalizes across the entire public school curriculum. There are tuning parameters. For example the system could have more finer-grained tests, or fewer tests of larger scope each.
One failure mode is that, since the students have to pass the tests for the schools to get paid, the tests could become garbage tests that anyone could pass without knowing anything, so the existing schools are guaranteed to get paid whatever they do. When there was just "High Stakes Testing," some schools and school systems were already cheating. A fix is to add "Free Entry." Anyone can set up a school to teach willing students, any such students must be allowed to take the same tests on the same terms, and if these students pass the test, then the new school gets paid the same. "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing with Free Entry" then becomes a version of 3. Unlike 3a or 3b, this does not use a percentile to determine passing, but a fixed test threshold. In principle, every student could learn the material and pass; every student could fail to learn the material and fail.
In terms of "Controlling the tests," if this is just a mental exercise, then I sketch out the curriculum myself, which can be fun. For a real system, however, the only mitigation I have seen is transparency; every parent gets their child's fully graded tests back, can see every question, and can see how each question was graded. This makes clear to parents on what students are actually being graded. For further transparency, anyone can take any of the tests, for the standard fee, seeing the tests and their results. Also, the curriculum and testing standards need to be announced ahead of time, so schools can know what to teach, but parents who do not home school won't necessarily pay attention to that..
One problem you do not consider is the school cheating — the teacher either telling the kids what the questions on the test will be or rewriting the text after the kid hands it in. I gather it happens with the present system.
Cheating is absolutely a risk. One aspect of dealing with cheating is "...on the same terms...." I skipped details to keep the post shorter. If Public School Teachers get to administer these tests themselves with no oversight, then Charter, Private and Home Schools get to administer these tests themselves with no oversight. Pursuing this scheme for real probably requires something like proctoring the high stakes tests off-site by people who are not allowed to be connected to any school system, or allowing all schools, including Charter, Private and Home Schools, equal involvement in proctoring.
That said, for me "Dual Purpose High Stakes Testing" is an interesting gedanken experiment. It requires being more explicit about what Public or publicly-funded Education is supposed to achieve. It also starts to drive home to what extent should anyone be accountable for anything in this area.