The NPR radio program This American Life aired an update to their "The Giant Pool of Money" program from a year ago (called appropriately, Return To The Giant Pool of Money. The producers did a nice job, I think, on the details of the collapse.
The podcast is available from iTunes, and should be available from the show's website here shortly.
jd
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
CPS moves to online assessments
I attended a briefing for principals and test coordinators on the CPS district-wide assessment plan for the coming year. The briefing was given folks from the Department of Student Assessment, a part of the Office of Research, Evaluation and Accountability. Click here for a link to the Powerpoint presentation for elementary schools. The DoSA page also has a link to the high school strategy presentation.
I was primarily interested in Grades 3 - 8, so this summary only touches on that. CPS will administer three benchmarks assessments in reading and math this year, in October, January and May. (Here's a link for the complete assessment schedule.) The district is moving towards an online benchmark assessment, and is supposed to be working to get all schools ready to move to all-online benchmark assessments in 2010-11. Some schools (if they have the technology infrastructure) will be able to start with online assessment beginning with the winter assessment in January. (Constructed response questions will still be graded by hand, by teachers, and entered manually into CIM.)
Setting aside the tremendous limitations of multiple choice as an assessment tool (and how education, like so many things today, is inverted to serve the available technology, and not the other way round, but that's another discussion) ...
The advantage to online assessment is that multiple choice results are available immediately, instead of two to three weeks later. The disadvantages: getting the students used to the testing format and software (sigh, that this should be an issue -- we train them to be multiple-choice test-takers), scheduling test time in the computer lab, the inevitable network and software and computer problems, the extra burden on technology staff, handling accommodations in a computer lab setting, and no doubt other issues not immediately popping into my brain.
CPS is also moving to a second testing format, the Scantron Performance Series, which is a computer-based adaptive testing tool. "Adaptive" means that the testing software presents the test-taker with more difficult questions if he or she answered the previous question correctly; or an easier question if the previous question was answered incorrectly, until the testing algorithm can determine a performance level for the test taker. Students will take reading, math and science Scantron tests.
In 2009-10, Scantron is available as either an addition to the district benchmark assessment, or as a substitute. In 2010-11, students will take both tests, three times a year. This flows from the new Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman's emphasis on data collection as an education management tool. See Catalyst's 9/3/09 posting "Huberman outlines strategies to improve Chicago schools" for a brief overview.
The Benchmark Assessment is a criterion-referenced assessment, and so is intended to measure student mastery of particular skills (the criteria). [The math assessment question mix is also mapped to the Chicago Math and Science Initiative (CMSI) pacing guide for the four chosen CMSI math curricula (Trailblazers, Everyday Math, Connected Math and MathThematics).] As a performance measurement tool, the Benchmark Assessment is not so useful. The best proxy in the BA data for tracking overall performance has been the ISAT Predicted Scale Score, a guesstimate of how the student will perform on the state standardized test. The predicted score is supposedly anywhere from about 75% to 90% accurate (I just got our schools numbers so haven't seen yet how this relates to our results.)
The Scantron test is a performance measurement -- it doesn't say specifically what a student knows or needs to work on (which isn't to say necessarily that the Benchmark Assessment does, although that is its purpose), only where a student is in the mass of students, and is he or she making "progress" based on prior Scantron scores. The Benchmark Assessment is considered "low stakes" (no one's job is on the line, schools won't be closed because of scores, students won't be held back -- as opposed to "high stakes" like ISAT where all three of the above are the case).
I suspect that the Scantron test will come to be considered by school administrators and teachers as high stakes. I am guessing that the Scantron numbers will be the bottom line numbers to determine if students are "progressing", and therefore used by top-level administration to lean on principals and teachers.
jd
P.S. Writing assessments are built into the Reading Benchmark (3x a year, scored by teachers) plus one additional district-wide assessment, scored externally, that will be used for promotion determination. K-2 students will use one of three early literacy assessment tools (including DIBELS).
I was primarily interested in Grades 3 - 8, so this summary only touches on that. CPS will administer three benchmarks assessments in reading and math this year, in October, January and May. (Here's a link for the complete assessment schedule.) The district is moving towards an online benchmark assessment, and is supposed to be working to get all schools ready to move to all-online benchmark assessments in 2010-11. Some schools (if they have the technology infrastructure) will be able to start with online assessment beginning with the winter assessment in January. (Constructed response questions will still be graded by hand, by teachers, and entered manually into CIM.)
Setting aside the tremendous limitations of multiple choice as an assessment tool (and how education, like so many things today, is inverted to serve the available technology, and not the other way round, but that's another discussion) ...
The advantage to online assessment is that multiple choice results are available immediately, instead of two to three weeks later. The disadvantages: getting the students used to the testing format and software (sigh, that this should be an issue -- we train them to be multiple-choice test-takers), scheduling test time in the computer lab, the inevitable network and software and computer problems, the extra burden on technology staff, handling accommodations in a computer lab setting, and no doubt other issues not immediately popping into my brain.
CPS is also moving to a second testing format, the Scantron Performance Series, which is a computer-based adaptive testing tool. "Adaptive" means that the testing software presents the test-taker with more difficult questions if he or she answered the previous question correctly; or an easier question if the previous question was answered incorrectly, until the testing algorithm can determine a performance level for the test taker. Students will take reading, math and science Scantron tests.
In 2009-10, Scantron is available as either an addition to the district benchmark assessment, or as a substitute. In 2010-11, students will take both tests, three times a year. This flows from the new Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman's emphasis on data collection as an education management tool. See Catalyst's 9/3/09 posting "Huberman outlines strategies to improve Chicago schools" for a brief overview.
The Benchmark Assessment is a criterion-referenced assessment, and so is intended to measure student mastery of particular skills (the criteria). [The math assessment question mix is also mapped to the Chicago Math and Science Initiative (CMSI) pacing guide for the four chosen CMSI math curricula (Trailblazers, Everyday Math, Connected Math and MathThematics).] As a performance measurement tool, the Benchmark Assessment is not so useful. The best proxy in the BA data for tracking overall performance has been the ISAT Predicted Scale Score, a guesstimate of how the student will perform on the state standardized test. The predicted score is supposedly anywhere from about 75% to 90% accurate (I just got our schools numbers so haven't seen yet how this relates to our results.)
The Scantron test is a performance measurement -- it doesn't say specifically what a student knows or needs to work on (which isn't to say necessarily that the Benchmark Assessment does, although that is its purpose), only where a student is in the mass of students, and is he or she making "progress" based on prior Scantron scores. The Benchmark Assessment is considered "low stakes" (no one's job is on the line, schools won't be closed because of scores, students won't be held back -- as opposed to "high stakes" like ISAT where all three of the above are the case).
I suspect that the Scantron test will come to be considered by school administrators and teachers as high stakes. I am guessing that the Scantron numbers will be the bottom line numbers to determine if students are "progressing", and therefore used by top-level administration to lean on principals and teachers.
jd
P.S. Writing assessments are built into the Reading Benchmark (3x a year, scored by teachers) plus one additional district-wide assessment, scored externally, that will be used for promotion determination. K-2 students will use one of three early literacy assessment tools (including DIBELS).
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A couple of updates
I realize this blog has been very quiet over the past couple of years. Or rather, I have not posted very much. Despite the enormity of the financial crisis, I don't think there is anything new, or unexpected there. Yes the details of how the latest act began and played out are of some interest, and the jockeying over the possible restructuring is somewhat revealing. But overall, it was all to be expected: more and more extended speculation and risk-taking to seek historically shrinking rates of profit until the precarious structure collapsed, and set the stage for the next act.
One year after poo really hit the fan on Wall Street, it perhaps bears repeating Marx's description of financial crises: they are not the destruction of value, but a powerful (even violent) means of centralizing wealth (CW/Vol. 37, aka Capital Vol. III, p. 468). In this regard, the crisis represents a violent ratcheting up of the polarization of wealth and poverty.
There are a few threads in the recent news that highlight that stood out to me.
First, as Nasser Saber pointed out in his book Speculative Capital, an important element of speculation (Saber defines speculative capital as capital used in arbitrage), taking advantage of price differences in different markets. As speculative capital develops, the arbitrage opportunities shrink, requiring either larger sums to be committed to arbitrage to achieve the same return, or a kind of arms race to get ahead of the arbitrage crowd by shrinking the trading time through faster computers and smarter software. "Flash trading" is a way of exploiting price differences, or soon-to-be price differences by learning of upcoming (measured in milliseconds). [And today, only just today I am sad to say, I discovered Nasser Saber's blog on finance and speculative capital, and so I direct the reader to his blog for any more on speculative capital.] See e.g. NYSE's Fast-Trade Hub Rises Up in New Jersey in the July 30, 2009 Wall Street Journal. It also explains the significance of the theft of Goldman Sachs computer code used to power its trading juggernaut: see The Man Accused of Stealing Goldman's Code.
A second thread has to do with the destruction of value (as opposed to wealth), to wit the cash-for-clunkers program and the subsequent destruction of functioning automobiles to take them permanently off of the market (as automobiles, some value persists as scrap, see a YouTube video Cash for Clunkers: How to destroy an engine for instructions on how you can do this at home -- kids, ask your parents first! The video is sad in a way, and pornographic in the worst sense of the word). And the destruction of the tart cherry crop in Michigan (Bumper Cherry Crop Turns Sour: Tons of Unharvested Fruit Rots Under Government Program to Keep Prices Stable).
jd
One year after poo really hit the fan on Wall Street, it perhaps bears repeating Marx's description of financial crises: they are not the destruction of value, but a powerful (even violent) means of centralizing wealth (CW/Vol. 37, aka Capital Vol. III, p. 468). In this regard, the crisis represents a violent ratcheting up of the polarization of wealth and poverty.
There are a few threads in the recent news that highlight that stood out to me.
First, as Nasser Saber pointed out in his book Speculative Capital, an important element of speculation (Saber defines speculative capital as capital used in arbitrage), taking advantage of price differences in different markets. As speculative capital develops, the arbitrage opportunities shrink, requiring either larger sums to be committed to arbitrage to achieve the same return, or a kind of arms race to get ahead of the arbitrage crowd by shrinking the trading time through faster computers and smarter software. "Flash trading" is a way of exploiting price differences, or soon-to-be price differences by learning of upcoming (measured in milliseconds). [And today, only just today I am sad to say, I discovered Nasser Saber's blog on finance and speculative capital, and so I direct the reader to his blog for any more on speculative capital.] See e.g. NYSE's Fast-Trade Hub Rises Up in New Jersey in the July 30, 2009 Wall Street Journal. It also explains the significance of the theft of Goldman Sachs computer code used to power its trading juggernaut: see The Man Accused of Stealing Goldman's Code.
A second thread has to do with the destruction of value (as opposed to wealth), to wit the cash-for-clunkers program and the subsequent destruction of functioning automobiles to take them permanently off of the market (as automobiles, some value persists as scrap, see a YouTube video Cash for Clunkers: How to destroy an engine for instructions on how you can do this at home -- kids, ask your parents first! The video is sad in a way, and pornographic in the worst sense of the word). And the destruction of the tart cherry crop in Michigan (Bumper Cherry Crop Turns Sour: Tons of Unharvested Fruit Rots Under Government Program to Keep Prices Stable).
jd
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