For my first blog entry on C3Teachers, I thought it would be a good idea to publicly admit an exceptional failure on my part. So here goes — A question very much like this one appeared on a test I once administered in my 8th grade US History class:
Which of the following Supreme Court cases established the power of Judicial Review?
Quite predictably, what followed were the letters A, B, C, D, with a supreme court case listed beside each.
In my defense, it was an easy question to slap on the test. I was in my early in my career, and had no assessment training in teacher preparation.
I had a fantastic textbook that had great resources. It included primary sources, well written narrative, and some good questions to prompt my students’ thinking. Or so I thought.
Since the textbook was impressive, I figured the same had to be true for the related “Test Generator.” So, when I plugged the Michigan coding for a standard we were working on the question about the Supreme Court was spit back…it was a no-brainer.
I now see that my decision to use a textbook assessment was akin to opening the drawer in my kitchen to get a take out menu instead of cooking dinner for your family. On the surface, it seems like enough, and it’s easy. But, is it really the right thing to do?
I’ve learned a lot since I put that question (and unfortunately, others like it) on my tests. It took experience, time, and most recently the Common Core State Standards and the C3 Framework to open my eyes
Three years ago, when whispers of a national movement to do for social studies what the Common Core had done for ELA and math met my ears, I began to think about what next generation assessments might look like for the content most near and dear to my heart. I served on the teacher collaborative in the development of the C3 Framework, and what I was reading in the review process excited me.
When I look back at that question about the Supreme Court, the first thing that springs into my mind is why do I care about the names of these court cases? And, maybe more importantly, why should my students care?
Should it just be about naming the court case? Or, is it more about making sure that students know what Judicial Review is? And, can that be measured on one multiple choice question?
I am now a social studies consultant working with teachers in the northern part of lower Michigan, and I’m taking my message about assessment on the road to the 25 counties I service.
Through this work and my work on the C3 Framework, I’ve set about righting the wrongs I did to my students every time I asked them to cram a useless facts into their heads.
My current work is focused on the student assessments being used to measure teacher effectiveness in my state. As is the case in many states, Michigan teacher evaluations are based partially on student test scores. Because Michigan is a Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium state, social studies teachers will be deemed effective or ineffective based upon student scores on a literacy test.
We all own literacy. I get and respect that. However, I wanted my social studies teachers to have access to more authentic assessments, and so Performance Assessments of Social Studies Thinking (PASST) was born.
It quickly dawned on me that others in Michigan were probably grappling with the same issue, so I sent some feelers out and quickly got lots of collaborators. Eventually, any teacher who wanted to join this process with us had a location within driving distance at which they could embark upon the journey.
We spent what seemed like countless hours planning and realized that our work was going to be a long-range multi-year effort. It’s now grown into a blended learning experience with the C3 at the center.
If you’ve ever had that juicy secret you’ve wanted to spill, but couldn’t for fear of major repercussions, you’ll understand what I went through as the only member of the planning group that had any idea what was in the C3 Framework at the time. As we muddled through our work, the public review of the C3 was taking place. And for once, it seemed like everything was coming together nicely.
So, what did we come up with? —– Well, we are proud to say that we have an entire assessment suite of smart questions that are available free of charge to all Michigan US history teachers.
To do this, we scrapped factoid knowledge.
That was blasphemy for many of the ‘stand and deliver’ folks, but we kept pushing, and over the course of year one, 273 teachers were trained to play with the idea of marrying content to skills. We soon realized we had something big on our hands, and it was spreading quickly.
What else can we say about the assessments….
- They target every nook and cranny of Michigan’s content expectations.
- They are C3 aligned.
- They are teacher developed and for everyone.
Our assessment work will be expanded over the next three years as we develop new materials in world history and geography, civics, economics, and the history of Michigan.
We did all this without a budget, but with the dedication of a tireless crew of volunteer teachers who felt like I did when I had my wake up call.
So, you’ve made it this far reading my post, and I suppose I can’t leave you without telling how it all worked out!
I invite you to find out more about PASST at our official Moodle site at http://passtmoodle.wmisd.org.
There you’ll find a wealth of information, probably more than you wanted to know about the teachers, the rationale, and the purpose of our work. You can take some sample tests and be among the first to find out when the full suite is available (we’re on track for June 2014!)
If you still have questions, feel free to “Ask me about the PASST”
