Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Evaluating Progress
I'm still intrigued by the notion that, at least in principle, what we ought to be evaluating is not ability but progress. For one thing, it feels more individualized to each student's needs, and it also feels more egalitarian, indifferent to prior advantages. My intuition about this feels pretty strong, but I'm well aware that even my strongest intuitions sometimes turn out to be mistaken. Would someone please give me all the best reasons against evaluating students on their improvement (leaving aside, for now, the practical difficulties such a procedure might present)?
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4 comments:
I believe it was my post that lead to this discussion, so obviously I fully believe in this method especially as opposed to grading strictly on ability. However, it is of course always helpful to come up with the best possible objection to an argument you feel strongly about. So I agree, I would like someone to oppose this as well.
At the moment, nothing comes to mind other than the practical difficulties we already discussed. Things like how to evaluate each individual student, student to teacher ratio, ect... In theory, I just think evaluating a student on how much they have improved and learned makes much more sense than what we do now, which is grading strictly on ability. I suppose some weak objections would be that someone who is capable of understanding the material should not be penalized for others who aren't as capable. One may think that in a certain class there is a limit to how much a student is able to progress, so if a student begins knowing nearly all they need to then it would be unfair to them because they cannot progress anymore. That is a very weak objection but one that someone opposed to this idea may use.
It may indeed be a weak objection, presupposing as it does that the aim of a given educational experience is to demonstrate mastery of some skill or subject matter. But if what we have been saying about normative development is right, then this is too narrow a view of what education should do. Besides, if something happens to be easy for you, and you do well in it simply by resting on your laurels, then in some sense you haven't actually learned much(and should have been in a more challenging class to begin with).
I agree completely, so we still need a strong objection. I am very in favor of this idea of progress vs. ability so I may not be the best person for this job.
I suppose you bring up an interesting point though, is education more about development or complete mastery of subject matter?
Perhaps the greatest objection would lie in a false dilemma of progress v. ability. While I think that evaluating progress is better in many ways than ability, a critique of the measurement of progress is a greater objection. Measuring progress may be better than ability, yet the idea of measuring a student will always fall short of the true value of education, unless the process of measurement, or the idea of it altogether, is radically changed or eliminated.
At this point, we have to ask why it seems that progress is a better goal to aim for than ability; I suggest that former allows a student to truly grow and learn in a way unique to them; and perhaps this unique fashion can lead to increased student autonomy and more normative development as well. Yet this would require a more robust form of 'progress,' if truly taken seriously. Surely, we mean more than just measuring relative progress on end-of-year tests.
So, to answer Matt's claim that progress represents a rather narrow view of education, we should eliminate the narrow nature of progress in terms of students caused by the shackles of not only individual measurement, but collective measurement as well. This could entail eliminating standardized tests, perhaps even grade levels. Eliminating grades would not infringe upon required content by public schools, it would merely allow students to take certain classes at very different times. While U.S. History may be required of all students, and math courses up through Trigonometry may also be required, certain students progressing quickly through math may take Trig. by their freshman year of high school, and History their senior year.
The critique of progress may lead one to object to the persisting relevance of measurement, and this is best answered by critiquing measurement and elaborating on an education that takes student progress and autonomy seriously.
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