UCLA SMP EdNews, Special Edition

by Jenée Gossard and Linda Smith, SMP Faculty

The Testing Challenge
In recent years, schools have been challenged to teach meaningful curricula while increasing standardized test scores to meet the ever-rising targets prescribed by No Child Left Behind.  Many teachers feel frustrated because the standardized tests do not capture their students’ actual skill and concept development.  Even school or district benchmark assessments tend not to reflect student knowledge.

To help educators address this testing challenge, UCLA SMP offers a three-day Data Institute in which participants learn to examine their student data in new ways, trying to discover how students understand these assessments and what their thinking is behind the answers they choose. Participants are encouraged to return to their schools, examine their own student data, and hypothesize about why some students do poorly on their assessments.

One Teacher’s Inquiry
At Miramonte Elementary School (Mountain View SD), sixth-grade teacher Laura Gaber decided to investigate why her students performed poorly on their six-week benchmark assessments, even though she had observed these students clearly demonstrating their knowledge throughout the unit of study. 

To find out how her students were thinking as they took the language arts benchmark assessment, Laura did an item analysis. She was surprised by the kinds of mistakes her students made and curious about what led them to choose certain wrong answers.  She suspected that instead of thinking about what the question was asking, the students looked for any answer choice that seemed related to the question.  If an answer choice seemed to relate to any aspect of the question, that was the one they chose.

To help students learn to focus their thinking on the questions themselves, Laura modified old benchmark assessments by blanking out the answer choices. She gave her students the reading comprehension portion of the assessment and told them to write in a possible answer for each question. The students shared their answers in pairs and discussed why they thought their answers made sense.  Then Laura gave them the same questions, with the multiple choice answers included, and asked them to choose the answer closest to their written response.  When students corrected their tests, all were amazed at how well they did.  A large majority scored 80 to 90 percent correct.

What Made the Difference?
What caused the increase in students’ scores?  Laura wanted to know if their thinking had changed, and how. She decided to ask the students what they thought made their scores rise. She had students compare their original scores with their scores using this new strategy on the same assessment. Students were excited by their improvement. In her conferences with students, many explained that when they had to write an answer before seeing the choices, they had to think differently about what the question was asking. Then when they looked for an answer that was closely aligned with their written response, they felt more confident in their choice.

“This method provided students a way to scaffold their thinking…it built a bridge from their thinking to the test questions,” Laura stated.

Sharing the Success
Laura shared her results with the other sixth-grade teachers who followed the same strategy and experienced similar results.  On their next six-week assessment, sixth-grade students applied the strategy with the result that more than 80 percent of students scored at the benchmark or challenge level.  Debbie Pak, Miramonte literacy coach, shared these results with other grade levels.  Teachers in the fourth and fifth grades tried the strategy and saw 44 percent of fourth-grade and 38 percent of fifth-grade students rise out of the lowest intensive performance band toward the benchmark.

Many Miramonte teachers are now trying a modified version of this strategy in other areas of the assessment (e.g., vocabulary) and discussing ways that students can use the strategy on the upcoming California Standards Test. Teachers are hopeful that using this strategy will translate into higher scores that demonstrate what their students know and can do on state tests.

Thoughts about Students and Testing
by John Otterness, SMP Faculty

We tend to believe that the best way to improve students’ performance on standardized tests is to teach them “correct” information and hope they will remember it long enough to find the correct answers on the test.  We teach students that the way to succeed on a standardized test is to read each question carefully, then read each answer and select the best one.  However, what students actually do after reading the question is pick an answer they know something about – often without relating it to the question.  In addition, students at underperforming schools are led to believe that the test is about showing what they know.  As a result, they are more likely to select answers that contain something they know rather than answers that relate to the question.  In contrast, students at higher-performing schools tend to approach standardized tests as a challenge to find the answers the test-makers intended.  The Miramonte Method helps students change their focus from looking for an answer containing something they know about, to looking at how the question relates to the information given, and then finding the answer that best matches what the question has asked.

Download Miramonte Elementary School’s Test-Thinking Strategy (The Miramonte Method) to try in your classroom!

See below for three resources that you can use to support test-taking preparation in your classroom:

Calkins, Lucy with Kate Montgomery, Donna Santman and Beverly Falk. A Teacher’s Guide to Standardized Test Scores: Knowledge is Power. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998.

Taylor, Kathe and Sherry Walton. Children at the Center: A Workshop Approach to Standardized Test Preparation, K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998.

Bernhardt, Victoria L. Data Analysis for Continuous School Improvement 2nd edition. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education, 2004.

An invitation to grant writers, Small Learning Community (SLC) project directors and coordinators, principals and superintendents . . .

Join us on May 12, 2006 for a free grant writing workshop designed to give applicants a thorough understanding of the U.S. Department of Education's Request for Proposal (RFP) for Smaller Learning Communities Grants and successful strategies for responding to that RFP.

Download the informational flyer.

Funding Resources for Schools

New Faces of SMP

This Month in SMP History

UCLA SMP EdNews is published monthly.  If this newsletter was forwarded to you, and you would like to subscribe for yourself, please send an email to the EdNews Administrator with either “HTML” (if you prefer to receive HTML emails -- which look like web pages) or “NO HTML” (if you prefer to receive plain text emails) in the subject line. Likewise, if you are already subscribed, but merely wish to change your HTML or plain text preference, please follow the above protocol. You may also contact the Administrator if you would like to unsubscribe from EdNews, with “REMOVE FROM LIST” in the subject line. Any email requests to the EdNews Administrator not pertaining to subscription issues will be ignored.

If you have questions or comments regarding the content of our newsletter, please direct them to the EdNews Editor.

A nonprofit school reform initiative of the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, the UCLA School Management Program (UCLA SMP) is devoted to the sustainable transformation of public schools into learner-centered organizations where all students can achieve at high levels.

UCLA SMP works with educators, building and district administrators, and community members to improve student achievement by fostering well-managed schools where professional development enhances teacher effectiveness, builds community, and results in personal transformation.

Since the program was launched in 1992, UCLA SMP has worked with over 800 schools in districts throughout California.