July/August 2003

Abstracts

By Rebecca Wisniewski

Writing for our new Teacher Research column, Rebecca Wisniewski describes how she and her colleagues at a diverse, urban elementary school used student scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests to ask tough questions about classroom practice. She writes: "I felt that surely embedded somewhere in the school's MCAS score report would be ... clues to how we could better address our students' needs." Wisniewski identifies the key research questions the teachers explored:

"1.What do our MCAS scores tell us about our curriculum? Are there curriculum segments that are working especially well? If so, what are they and how can we build on them? To what curriculum areas do we need to pay special attention?

2. How are certain student subgroups, particularly our English-language learners, doing in relation to the general district population?

3. Given the high stakes associated with the MCAS test, what can we as a staff do to prepare our students better?"

Read Wisniewski's full report on her research and findings, as well as how the research was used to improve classroom practice at the school.

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For Discussion
Aligning District Tests and Curricula with State Requirements: Lessons of a "Model" Program

Under No Child Left Behind, school districts across the nation will be required to show student gains on new state-level assessments or risk being designated as in need of improvement. In an effort to raise student achievement on Maryland's rigorous state tests, officials of the Montgomery County Public Schools developed a grade-by-grade set of curriculum frameworks and assessments and contracted with Achieve, Inc., an independent nonprofit organization, to evaluate their effectiveness.

Achieve, which normally assesses accountability systems at the state level for "quality and coherence," praised the Montgomery County assessments as rigorous, high quality measures that are good predictors of students' performance on state-level tests. Achieve also indicated that, with some minor revisions, the district's curriculum frameworks "can be on a par with the best in the nation and the world."

In this interview with the Harvard Education Letter, Achieve executive vice president Matthew Gandal about the lessons educators from other districts can learn from the work in Montgomery County.

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New and Noteworthy
Teaching and Learning in a High-Stakes Environment

This article reviews two new studies showing the impact of high-stakes testing on teachers and students. In one study, researchers from Boston College have surveyed more than 4,000 teachers nationwide about the profound effects of state tests on teachers' choices about curriculum, classroom activities, and assessments. A second study, conducted by University of Arkansas researchers, shows that while many educators regard such tests as negative experiences for them and their students, students tend to worry less about the tests. For more information, see this issue's New and Noteworthy column.

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