To anyone who knows anything about education, it’s a stunning comment. Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said in Bowling Green that:
“Teachers don’t know how to develop good assessments. And the huge thing is that they don’t know what to do with the information to change instruction.”
Wow!
When the US Air Force checked me out in 1971 to program the first generation of teaching technology machines ever used for operational pilot training, one of the first things I learned was the vital importance of assessment in real education. Very simply, good teachers must constantly evaluate where the student is in the learning process so that future teaching can be adjusted to meet the student’s needs.
Without continuous assessment of student progress, teachers are left clueless about how their instruction is working for students.
So, here we are after 20 years of KERA, and our commissioner of education says our teachers don’t know some of the most important things about teaching. That is indeed a “huge thing.”
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Teachers don't know key part of their jobs?
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2 comments:
Dick
For the record I was talking about my experience in a former district. However, our Senate Bill 1 initiative is heavily focused on helping teachers with assessment literacy and instructional interventions. This is the key to helping more students succeed. Teachers are asking for this type of support since teacher prep programs do not consistently provide this type of suppport across all areas of diverse student needs these days. It is almost impossible to prepare teachers for everything they will face. That is why job embedded professional development and support is so important. Thanks for highlighing these needs for teachers in classrooms
RE: Terry Holliday's comment:
Thank you, Commissioner Holliday, for adding input to this discussion.
The Kentucky School Boards Association coverage of your comments didn't have the clarification you provided, but I suspect that is because the KSBA folks know we have similar problems here.
We at the instititute fully agree with you that professional development is going to be one of the keys to getting the sort of effective, dramatic changes our students need.
The challenge is going to be determining exactly how we can best do that, and then make sure every teacher has access to the "right stuff." Given the shaky quality of much research in education, it is going to require a lot of insight from you and your staff to make the right choices in what is a less-well understood environment than many of us would like to have.
Where we see answers, we'll continue to highlight them. Some places to start are those schools I recently mentioned in the blog that do well on both KCCT and ACT testing despite higher rates of poverty. Policies in those schools need to become better known elsewhere in Kentucky.
I'd also like to see some work in places using Singapore Math. This is the world-leading instructional system in math, and we do have a few places in Kentucky that are using it. If it pans out there, we need to spread the word.
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