A rolling thread where we are teachers

;)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html?hp&_r=0

where are these clowns getting the 'keep resubmitting until you get it right' idea from?

also

Mark D. Shermis, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio, supervised the Hewlett Foundation’s contest on automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experiment. In his view, the technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.

With increasingly large classes, it is impossible for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing assignments, he said. Plus, he noted, critics of the technology have tended to come from the nation’s best universities, where the level of pedagogy is much better than at most schools.

“Often they come from very prestigious institutions where, in fact, they do a much better job of providing feedback than a machine ever could,” Dr. Shermis said. “There seems to be a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world.”

= let's not kid ourselves southwest northern state u

e-boox watch students, report on them to teachers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/technology/coursesmart-e-textbooks-track-students-progress-for-teachers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&hp&

“They caught me,” said Mr. Tejeda, 43. He has two jobs and three children, and can study only late at night. “Maybe I need to focus more,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/education/score-corrections-qualify-nearly-2700-more-pupils-for-gifted-programs.html?hp

The errors were discovered when two parents, one a statistician, complained that their children had been incorrectly scored, the department said.

According to Pearson, three mistakes were made. Students’ ages, which are used to calculate their percentile ranking against students of similar age, were recorded in years and months, but should also have counted days to be precise. Incorrect scoring tables were used. And the formula used to combine the two test parts into one percentile ranking contained an error.

Earlier this week, the department said that score reports for 400 students had been lost, but that those tests had been found and were being scored.

One parent, Rena M. Ismail, 36, who had been told that her 5-year-old son, Hyder, was not eligible for a gifted seat, said the department informed her that her son had scored in the 89th percentile, when, by her math, he was in the 91st.

“I knew he got it,” she said. “I could see it. They told me I was mistaken.

“I am an educated person. I know how to add and multiply, and I knew he got in by his score sheet.”

http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/full/

Then came the question from hell out of Louisiana: "What are the qualities of a good leader?"

One student wrote, "Martin Luther King Jr. was a good leader." With artfulness far beyond the student's age, the essay delved into King's history with the civil rights movement, pointing out the key moments that had shown his leadership.

There was just one problem: It didn't fit the rubric. The rubric liked a longer essay, with multiple sentences lauding key qualities of leadership such as "honesty" and "inspires people." This essay was incredibly concise, but got its point across. Nevertheless, the rubric said it was a 2. Puthoff knew it was a 2.

He hesitated the way he had been specifically trained not to. Then he hit, "3."

It didn't take long before a supervisor was in his face. He leaned down with a printout of the King essay.

"This really isn't a 3-style paper," the supervisor said.

Puthoff pointed out the smart use of examples and the exceptional prose. The supervisor just shook his head and pointed out how short the paragraphs were.

"You know, it's more of a 2," the supervisor repeated. "Not enough elaboration."

Puthoff quickly learned these were not arguments he could win. But as time went on, he found himself having more and more of them.

The great myth of rubrics as an objective panacea. They've been front and center in my board since I started 15 years ago--in the provincial marking I did for a few summers, in this thing that came in a few years ago called TCLP ("Teaching Critical Learning Pathways"--took me forever to stop accidentally calling it TLCP, after the "No Scrubs" group), in just about anything we come up with at the grade level (speeches, art assignments, etc.) They definitely make life easier--check, check, check, 3+, next--but the idea that you can eliminate the whims of subjectivity (setting aside whether you've even want to) is an illusion. From the linked article:

Although DiMaggio had been through a training process, he found himself tripped up as he began scoring the essays. What made the organization "good" as opposed to "excellent"? What happens when the kid doesn't answer the question at all, but writes with excellent organization about whatever the hell he wants?

And the people who do the training often have no idea either. I still remember a question on mean and median from one of the provincial tests--check that, assessments--I marked one summer. At first we were instructed that if the kid did everything right but had the two concepts backwards, that was an NE--not enough for a grade, essentially a zero. After 15 or 20 minutes of debate about this, word came back within the hour that such answers should be given a Level 2 (in the C-range). I guess you could say that's good, that they ultimately got it right, but I wonder instead about their original contention that such an answer deserved a zero.

What I generally do with a rubric is work backwards: go with my initial sense of what grade I want to give, then make the rubric fit the grade. I don't think where I end up is any more subjective than working in the other direction.

otm. grading is the art of pretend objectivity.

this is not surprising at all
i have friends who do grading for TOEFL and IB essays and everyone acknowledges that it's a bit of a farce but also not a bad way to make some extra cash
i don't think it means that grading rubrics are useless, just that factory grading is flawed

That's actually why I stopped doing the provincial marking: for the first few summers, there was lots of really valuable discussion every step of the way ("Is this a low 3 or a high 2? Why?"), which went on for as long as necessary, but gradually that gave way to no discussion, here's the rubric, now mark x number of booklets in y amount of time or you won't be invited back.

I don't know, LL--the main value I see in rubrics is from the teacher's point of view, that they make it easy to mark a class set of something very quickly. I don't know how much students get out of them. They're supposed to clarify for the student why a certain grade was given--look at the categories, look at the criteria--but if I try to write thoughtful commentary to go along with my grade (which takes time, which is why they can be useful as a teacher), to me that's just as good.

Actually, I realize they're supposed to be prescriptive, too: here are the expectations for the assignment, here's how the grade will match up with how well you meet those expectations. But I think I do that anyway when I make up an assignment sheet: here's what I'm looking for, and there'll be (for example) 12 marks for your information, 5 marks for the quality of your writing, and 3 marks for neatness and overall presentation. I think that plus relevant commentary when you mark the assignment works just as well.

i'm not gonna sit around on a sunday morning debating the utility of rubrics, but i find them useful for more than just speed and ease. just as one little example, my students sometimes also like to use them as a checklist to make sure they're paying attention to the assignment and have done what they need to do in order to succeed on the assignment. assignment sheets help, but they need to see it in several different places/ways sometimes. the usefulness of a rubric really depends on a wide array of very different factors, many of which don't really apply to the situation being described in the mass standardized grading above.

I'm positive the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" was all about debating the utility of rubrics. No other time makes as much sense.

ILXteachers: i'm hoping one of you can help me out -

my friend and her partner are thinking about moving to california from NZ, and i'm trying to find info on how teaching jobs work for foreigners. she is just finishing up her teaching degree this year, so she has never actually worked as a teacher. my amateur google skills didn't turn up much info, so if anyone has a useful link or two, i'd greatly appreciate it (i REALLY REALLY want my friend to move here).

what part of california? a lot of districts aren't hiring right now because of the state budget crisis.

here's the best link for finding public school teaching positions: http://www.edjoin.org/advancedSearch.aspx

i'm not sure her teaching credential would have reciprocity in california. but supposing it did, here's how she could parlay that into a california teaching credential.

http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/leaflets/cl870.pdf

thanks! i think they are looking at LA, but i don't know how soon it would happen - it all depends on her partner's job situation. in fact, i think there is only a slim chance that she will be able to even get a work visa for herself, but i still want to track down info for her.

ILXteachers: i'm hoping one of you can help me out -

my friend and her partner are thinking about moving to california from NZ, and i'm trying to find info on how teaching jobs work for foreigners. she is just finishing up her teaching degree this year, so she has never actually worked as a teacher. my amateur google skills didn't turn up much info, so if anyone has a useful link or two, i'd greatly appreciate it (i REALLY REALLY want my friend to move here).

― just1n3, Friday, July 19, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://j1visa.state.gov/

Best of luck to both of them!

This is the teacher programme: http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/teacher

a j1 visa is how i got here! and that was 5 years ago... actually, it hadn't occurred to me to get her looking at that, i was focused on how she would get a work visa as part of a couple since her partner will get job sponsorship, i think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-OLldU8Vi8

it's an education, anyway

so tired

Back at it tomorrow. As I'm standing outside trying to round up kids in my class, thinking of asking each one of them "Are you going to bust my chops this year?" before entering the school. If they can't answer no to that question, I don't want 'em.

What if they say, "No, I was thining of busting your nads instead."

Both expressions turn up in Scorsese films (slightly different rendering of the second)--I went with the milder. If that is their comeback, I'm going to assume they've seen Goodfellas, and then it's "Welcome aboard!"

I'm positive the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" was all about debating the utility of rubrics. No other time makes as much sense.

This is brilliant.

Parent interviews tonight (and tomorrow). I've been doing these for 15 years--the tank's empty, nothing left to say. A teacher and I were saying it'd be fun, one year, just to take out the report cards and read from them word-for-word for the entire interview. Or to at least respond to every question in report card-ese:

Parent: "How are you tonight?"
Me: "With some assistance, I am doing fine."
Parent: "Where should I sit?:
Me: "You are encouraged to sit there."
Parent: "So--any hope for my child?"
Me: "You consistently demonstrate an ability to ask exactly the right questions."

our father came home from one of these one time and said to my sister, "your teacher said you don't even have the brain capacity of a gnat but i defended you and said that you do."

I'm goofing around, and not referring to any particular student. If your sister's teacher actually did say that, that's amazing--you'd be out of a job today!

Australia != Canada, Phil.

(Sorry)

new zealand != australia, james redd and the blecchs.

Knew that was coming.

new zealand is australia's canada tho

A rolling thread in which we are incompetent geography teachers

we won't fret about any of this.

No, wouldn't want to let a little thing like this come between me and my favorite far-flung posters.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/when-parents-yank-their-kids-out-of-standardized-tests/281417/

Teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School voted unanimously earlier this year not to give the district’s required reading and math test. They encountered predictable resistance from district officials and harsh criticism from outside observers. Many students and parents, however, sided with the teachers.

The PTA and student government leaders voted in support of the teachers, and many parents sent in “opt-out” letters to exempt their children from testing that they viewed as an inappropriate measure of teachers’ effectiveness. And so when administrators came to class with lists of kids who needed to take the tests during the spring testing period, many students were exempted and others students simply refused to go with the administrators.

bonkers

jess hagopian is doing the lord's work

now i just wanna opt out of all kinds of stuff

or get my mom and dad to do it on my behalf

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/great-teachers-dont-always-want-to-become-principals/281483/

just realizing recently that everyone around me with power over my employed life, for the rest of my career, is likely to be a questionable teacher or someone with fantasies of administering control, i.e. an administrator : /

that is one of the scariest moments, agree
also why i will not be pushed any further in that direction
it's where creativity and enjoyable human interaction goes to die

i still wanna be an administrator at some point tho if i ever just become a full time journalism teacher, prob not

http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb

"We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product," Thrun tells me. "It was a painful moment."

suck it, barbarians

haha, my first thought was "eat it, losers"

…

the folx at work imply that if i am gonna wanna be on their good side i am gonna wanna learn about adminispeak pedagogical techniques and prove that i can use them :/

'statistics show' that i should, apparently

ugh instructional design

how can a field full of educated people who educate others be so submerged in idiocy and sloganeering

ambition

these people need copies of orwell's 'politics and the english language' in their faculty mailboxes

or someone needs to force them to do a beckett and write everything in a second language so that they're denied every single little encrustation of verbiage whenever they want to express their thoughts

i have so many things to say but i am not going to 1) type them all out or 2) do so here.
but yeah, try doing all this in a different language and then get back to me with some hella jargony bs