According to a piece by Catherine
Gewertz in Education Week (08/14/12), tests for common core skills and
knowledge won’t be ready until 2012-2015. Sample test questions have been
developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers. The groups are working on a
“different approach to test items”, which will require an in-depth
understanding of what is being tested. Two problems are bothering educators, so
far. One is whether those who create the tests will be able to create questions
like the samples. The other is whether students will understand how to answer
these types of questions, or in other words, how to prepare them for testing.
It seems that we shouldn’t be so worried about preparing students for testing, but instead we should be making sure that students gain an in-depth knowledge of the content they are studying and how to put their critical and creative thinking skills to work to solve problems related to the content. If so, they should do well on the tests.
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