How Top Countries Test: Lessons for Arne Duncan from Linda Darling-Hammond
Published May 07, 2009 @ 10:52AM PT
In one of my recent criticisms of the much-hyped McKinsey report, I promised to follow up with the following presentation by Linda Darling-Hammond, of the Stanford School Re-design Network, that compares and contrasts the assessment approaches of the world's top-ranked education countries to those of the United States. The presentation is from a conference sponsored by the Forum for Education and Democracy, which describes Dr. Darling-Hammond's presentation with this blurb:
“What we have thought of as fairly rare in [the USA] is quite common in most of the high-achieving countries internationally,” Linda Darling-Hammond began. Beginning with a list of 21st century skills, Darling-Hammond contrasted US tests - which require recall of a simple fact or ask students for a one-sentence explanation - with exams abroad that include designing science experiments, refining computer programs and explaining the reasoning behind solutions for complex problems. “[In many nations,] there’s a teaching and learning system, that operates to provide rich curriculum and strong outcomes,” Darling-Hammond said. “They are what assure that the higher-order skills are actually taught and practiced.”
It's 20 minutes long, but well worth the watch (the discussion of science assessments around 15:00 is especially noteworthy).
For those of you who don't know, Darling-Hammond led Obama's education transition team, and was the top choice for Secretary of Education among many progressive education reformists. Instead of getting this education professor to lead our reforms, though, Obama chose instead Chicago's Arne Duncan, who never taught in a classroom and has no background or advanced degrees in education. It's hard not to regret that choice - and not to wonder why we hear almost nothing about Darling-Hammond's ideas from Duncan - while watching the presentation.
Anyway, enjoy:
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Comments (5)
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Author
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Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.
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Wonderful video.
I found myself thinking during most of it, "you know, I did those kind of tasks in many of my AP classes." Sure enough, at about 16 minutes into the video, Darling-Hammond says something like "we can look at AP classes and Honors classes for these tasks". (referring to tasks that develop rich skillsets instead of fact-based recall)
So, it turns out that we already have the materials that test 21st century skills in the United States. In standardized format, no less! What's keeping these materials from other schools, other students?
(time? money? antiquated teaching models?)
Posted by Marc Pare on 05/07/2009 @ 11:41AM PT
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Here's my take on why Darling-Hammond wasn't selected. It's a "for what it's worth."
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/05/linda-darling-hammond-didnt-play.html
Posted by Sharon Higgins on 05/07/2009 @ 01:40PM PT
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One way in which our assessments differ from everyone else's is in our insistence that students work in groups, and our downgrading of kids who have trouble doing so. We thus penalize shy, socially awkward children, including many with diagnosed or undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome.
My problem with Darling-Hammond is that she is a huge supporter of the kind of project-based group learning that so stymies the "left-brainers" I write about. Here's what she has to say:
[quote]
If you think about the ways we have to be functioning adults, it’s in context where we have to work in groups on hard problems that need creative solutions, that require problem solving, and it’s getting to do that work well that is really part of the major goal of education in the 21st century. So when you think about project-based learning, learning that results in demonstrations of performance, exhibitions of what kids can do in real tasks that have brought these kind of novel challenges to them to solve, you can see that when an individual student or a group of students come together to solve a hard problem to figure out how to do research how to do inquiry, how to investigate, how to put their ideas together, how to figure out which ideas have the most grounding, how to present what they’ve done, they have to do a lot of social, personally intelligent work. They have to be able to figure out how to relate to one another, how to divide tasks, how to solve problems, how to probably run into dead ends, pick up the pieces, reorient, and go in a different direction — all of that develops children’s abilities to be socially capable, emotionally capable and grounded, and, in the long run, also intellectually capable. And those pieces all come together when you’re working on project-based, experiential learning activities.
[unquote]
----
Many American educators have way over-estimated the percentage of time people in the work force actually spend working in groups; the degree to which social skills can be taught through mandatory group work; and the amount of time students in other countries spend working in groups. They also haven't considered how many children dislike working in groups--as many children will vehemently tell you, if only more people would listen.
Katharine Beals, Ph.D.
Author of the forthcoming Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World: Strategies for Helping Bright, Quirky, Socially Awkward Children to Thrive at Home and at School (Trumpeter: September, 2009)
Posted by Katharine Beals on 05/08/2009 @ 07:41AM PT
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Katherine, I think most teachers would be reasonable enough to accomodate students diagnosed with clinical disorders when it comes to group work (which, by the way, is not the thrust of the video selection above - performance assessment is).
Students not liking the experience of teamwork or collaboration, though, seems more problematic. The dislike could be seen as justifying the need to set up situations in which socially awkward students can work on that awkwardness (and as a classroom teacher, I and most teachers I've known have been very sensitive to how they group the awkward ones).
I want to resist the notion that adult success doesn't rely so heavily on social skills - resist it heavily, in fact. My three decades in the adult world strongly suggest the opposite is the rule.
I'm not, though, suggesting that there aren't times when students who cannot adapt should be continually forced to try. It's definitely complicated - but when I think of my decade in the classroom, not a situation I've faced very often (and I am a listener and observer for such things).
Posted by Clay Burell on 05/08/2009 @ 08:10AM PT
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Katherine,
I understand what you are saying. I run a project-based classroom, but that doesn't mean that individuals are not allowed to be individuals. Forced group work is a misunderstanding by teachers who are following "programs" to implement this or implement that. In a well facilitated project, kids have lots of choices, time for solitary design, times for reading alone, times for joining or not joining the group. As well, there are other times when knowledge needs to be shared, help is needed, some kids watch while others do things, and roles are switched back and forth throughout the process. This is dynamic and allows what we call differentiated learning, or allowing multiple intelligences to evidence themselves. Overall, the socializing is key to the group effort and the constructed project knowledge. Done right, it is an enjoyable experience. If forced by a teacher, it become not enjoyable.
Posted by Terry Smith on 05/10/2009 @ 08:48AM PT
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