About a year ago I tracked my time for five weeks and reported the results in my post What Do You Do All Day? I'm feeling the need to do that again, because once again I'm feeling slammed-to-the-wall busy while simultaneously wondering why I don't seem to be accomplishing anything.
I've been wanting to do this for a while, but it seems like there's always something 'special' going on that's going to skew my time in a misleading way. For example, I don't plan to start until sometime after next week, because next week I'll be bringing my kids to VBS, which means four nights of not cooking supper (which I usually do) and of following a completely different routine from what we do every other week of the year. Back in June there was the five-day retreat I took at a Benedictine Monastery, which would have totally skewered my numbers.
But looking over the post from last year, I can already see some areas where I'm going to fall down. Mindless computer time leads that list. I'm spending way too much time playing stupid Facebook games. In preparation for my next attempt at better time management, I've gone ahead and disabled the applications platform on Facebook, which means not only can I not play the games, I can't even see the posts about my friends' game activity. Sorry, friends, but something's gotta give. I lost Bejeweled Blitz to the need to wear two wrist braces continuously, and I just don't have time for Bubble Safari or Hidden Chronicles anymore. I'm also completely failing at exercise, so I'm going to try to pick that up again before I start logging my time. Please believe me that I'm doing these things not to make my time logs look better, but because I'm genuinely trying to manage my time better, and I don't need a detailed log to know that these things have to change if I'm going to live my priorities.
So what are my priorities?
Taking care of my family still ranks first. This means spending quality time with my husband and kids, individually and as a family. It means preparing healthy meals for them. It means having regular homeschooling sessions with my kids (I've been pretty haphazard about it so far).
Professional development as a writer ranks second. Last time I did this I was talking about wanting to be a writer, but I wasn't really writing anything except this blog, plus editing some old sermons to send off to DesperatePreacher.com. Now in addition to those two things, I'm writing daily devotions at Quiet Publications, plus entering several writing contests. I'm also trying to reformat some bible studies I've written so I can make them available for sale at Quiet Publications, and I've got a couple of short nonfiction book ideas I want to develop for that site. And then there's the novel. And the memoir. Realistically I know I can't possibly do all that, and I'm going to have to pick one or two things to focus on and put the rest on hold, but for now I'm trying to do it all so I can see which of these projects really inspires my passion.
Self care? I feel obligated to put this one in my top three, but I don't have very high hopes for it. Don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't want self care to be a priority, it's just that it seems like a luxury I can't really afford right now. I realize that's short-term thinking, and if I want to achieve my long-term goals (or, more specifically, live to have long-term goals) I'd better make it a priority. So there it is, and I'll do what I can. For the purposes of this project, self care will include exercise, time with friends, and down-time (reading for pleasure or watching TV that I choose, opposed to what my kids choose).
The wild card is going to be my continuing education. I've been accepted into a year-long unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, which is going to take up twelve hours a week from September through April, plus commuting time (about an hour each way). It's part of my effort to become a certified chaplain, which is a long-term goal. It very easily could push its way into my top three (most likely squeezing out self care), and I may eventually have to choose between it and writing. I hope not, but it's a possibility I have to consider. As much as I hate to admit it, chaplain is kind of my back-up plan in case writing doesn't start bringing in some money. I want to be a writer. I'm willing to be a chaplain. If I have to start helping out with the bills (a real possibility in this economy) what I want to do may have to take a backseat to what I have to do. I'm nothing if not pragmatic. But it's also part of the reason why I'm putting such a push on writing now; I'd really like it to start paying some bills. But in the meantime, I'm trying to pick up three more unites of CPE, one unit at a time.
These are my priorities. When I log, I'm going to pay attention to mindlessness (mindless games, mindless websurfing, etc) because I don't really get a benefit from those things. That's not to say that all my self care has to be intellectually challenging; rereading the entire Harry Potter series is on my short-list of things to do, and I certainly don't consider that to be challenging. But it's not mindless, either. Escapist fiction that I intentionally sit down to read is a lot different from random websites that distract me from whatever it is I should be doing.
It will be interesting to see if I'm living according to my stated priorities. It will also be interesting to see where my time is going; I really don't feel like I'm accomplishing much most days.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Education, Standardized Tests, and Idiocy
In principle, I'm no fan of standardized tests as the be-all and end-all of measuring academic achievement and predicting future success. I think they have their place, but at best they can only be one tool among many to gauge whether a student is progressing acceptably in school. I believe that the current trend of schools 'teaching to the test' in order to 'prove' that they're good schools and thus receive necessary funding is a horrible disservice to students, teachers, and the future of this nation.
But I have to admit that that opinion is largely uninformed.
You see, I went through a Massachusetts public school system before the MCAS was introduced. I vaguely recall taking something called the California Achievement Test (yes, in Massachusetts) every few years, but those scores were for informational purposes only. Along with most of my peers I took the SAT as part of my college entrance efforts, and I'm embarrassed to admit that my combined score didn't even break 1000. But that didn't matter because I was unmotivated, and ended up on the eight-year, work-my-way-through-night-school plan (see previous post), choosing schools more on affordability, geography, and convenience of schedule than prestige or quality.
So standardized tests have not been a significant part of my educational career.
But I read something yesterday that simply appalled me.
Earlier this week the Washington Post had a piece about a school board member in a major district who took the standardized tests for 10th grade math and reading. It was later revealed that the district was in Florida, and the test in question was the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). This board member self-describes as having a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credits toward a doctorate. He helps "oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities." He admits that of the 60 questions in the math section, he didn't know the answer to a single one of them, and was only able to guess correctly on 10 of them. On the reading section, he scored a mere 62%. He dismissed the argument that the information would have been fresher in his mind had he currently been in high school, pointing out instead that "A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took."
This seems to be a pretty compelling statement against the usefulness of the FCAT. But as much as I'm predisposed against standardized testing, I had trouble believing that the test could be that disconnected from reality. So I took it myself.
I can't say with certainty that I took exactly the same test this highly educated and highly successful school board member did. But I went to the Florida Department of Education website where I was able to download the test booklets for the 10th grade math and reading tests from 2006. The math section had 58 questions, and the reading had 45. I answered (or tried to answer) all 58 of the math, but I disregarded the essay questions on the reading section because I had no way to objectively score them. The test booklet failed to provide a couple of necessary readings (due to copyright permissions not being available for an electronic format), so I also disregarded the questions based on those. (I later discovered that the necessary readings were reproduced in the answer booklet--I left them out anyway because I didn't want to risk seeing the correct answers in the course of my reading.) So in the end I answered the 35 remaining multiple choice questions I could reasonably be expected to answer.
I have no idea how this school board member manages to enjoy the level of success he claims, because I think he must be an idiot.
I hated math in school. I barely passed Algebra I and II, and only passed Geometry after I had to revisit it in summer school. I took two accounting classes and one statistics class in college, back about 15 years ago. Yes, I did deal with numbers in my first career in finance, but that was mostly arithmetic, and I left that field over 12 years ago. Of the 58 questions in the test, I answered 43 of them correctly. Very few were wild-ass guesses. Most of them, if I didn't know the answer immediately, I was able to figure it out with the information provided.
Of the 35 reading questions, I answered 35 of them correctly.
With the exception of some of the geometry, most of the math problems could be solved through simple arithmetic and/or common sense. Basic observation and problem-solving skills. Someone like me, who doesn't remember a single formula from high school math and doesn't do unusual amounts of math in work life (I'm a stay-at-home mom of toddlers--we're still working on counting to 20!), was able to score 74%. The school board member with his $3 billion budget scored 17%. The skill I employed most frequently in solving these problems was determining what of the information provided was important to figuring out the solution, and what could be disregarded. I don't care what line of work you're in, that is a necessary skill for functioning as an adult in today's world.
As far as the multiple-choice questions on the reading test are concerned, all you have to do is read the short piece and answer the questions. There is no assumption that you are intimately familiar with obscure pieces of literature, or even that you know the technical jargon necessary to grammatically deconstruct a sentence. All you have to do is demonstrate that you understand what you just read, both the content and the intent. Why does intent matter? It matters if you want to be able to tell the difference between an opinion piece and an instruction manual. It matters if you expect to be able to understand the difference between the story of one person's success in entrepreneurship and a boiler-plate business plan.
Granted, I didn't answer the essay questions. Let's assume I did, and let's assume I missed all four. That would have dropped my 100% down to 89%. The school board member, with all his advanced degrees, scored 62%. He reasons that the test is unfair because “On the FCAT, [the students] are reading material they didn’t choose. They are given four possible answers and three out of the four are pretty good. One is the best answer but kids don’t get points for only a pretty good answer. They get zero points, the same for the absolute wrong answer. And then they are given an arbitrary time limit. Those are a number of reasons that I think the test has to be suspect.”
First of all, I challenge his claim that three of the four answers are "pretty good," but let's put that aside for now. In real life, can we expect that we'll only ever have to read and understand things that we choose to read? (No, I don't feel like reading the Instruction Booklet for my 1040, so I just won't bother filing my taxes this year.) In real life, can we expect that 'partial credit' will be given for an answer that's 'pretty good' but not necessarily the 'best'? (Well, you've read the detailed job description and I've really enjoyed interviewing you. You missed the mark a little bit on what skills we're looking for, but you were pretty close, so we'll give you this other job, instead.) In real life, can we expect that we'll be given unlimited time to comprehend a set of instructions or absorb some basic information necessary for what we're doing? (You need three months to understand the policies laid out in our employee handbook before you start work? No problem; we'll keep you on full salary while you figure it out!)
I still don't think standardized tests should be given the level of importance they currently enjoy, but if the FCAT is indicative of what's being expected of 10th graders across the country, I think it's doing a pretty good job of measuring how well kids are learning how to learn. Based on the two tests I took, students aren't being expected to memorize a bunch of trivia that they'll never use in adulthood; they're being expected to filter information, determine its value, and be able to understand written communication. In adulthood you don't have to know everything, but you do need to know how to find whatever information you need. And you can't do that if you can't determine what is relevant and what isn't, discern the difference between opinion, bias, and fact, or understand what a paragraph is even saying.
I'm not worried about students taking the FCAT. I'm worried that we live in a world in which an adult who is unable to pass the FCAT is on the school board, and is able to function as a leader at a company with 22,000 employees and a capital and operating budget of $3 billion. Are the expectations of functioning--even successful--adulthood really so low?
No wonder this country's in trouble.
But I have to admit that that opinion is largely uninformed.
You see, I went through a Massachusetts public school system before the MCAS was introduced. I vaguely recall taking something called the California Achievement Test (yes, in Massachusetts) every few years, but those scores were for informational purposes only. Along with most of my peers I took the SAT as part of my college entrance efforts, and I'm embarrassed to admit that my combined score didn't even break 1000. But that didn't matter because I was unmotivated, and ended up on the eight-year, work-my-way-through-night-school plan (see previous post), choosing schools more on affordability, geography, and convenience of schedule than prestige or quality.
So standardized tests have not been a significant part of my educational career.
But I read something yesterday that simply appalled me.
Earlier this week the Washington Post had a piece about a school board member in a major district who took the standardized tests for 10th grade math and reading. It was later revealed that the district was in Florida, and the test in question was the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). This board member self-describes as having a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credits toward a doctorate. He helps "oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities." He admits that of the 60 questions in the math section, he didn't know the answer to a single one of them, and was only able to guess correctly on 10 of them. On the reading section, he scored a mere 62%. He dismissed the argument that the information would have been fresher in his mind had he currently been in high school, pointing out instead that "A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took."
This seems to be a pretty compelling statement against the usefulness of the FCAT. But as much as I'm predisposed against standardized testing, I had trouble believing that the test could be that disconnected from reality. So I took it myself.
I can't say with certainty that I took exactly the same test this highly educated and highly successful school board member did. But I went to the Florida Department of Education website where I was able to download the test booklets for the 10th grade math and reading tests from 2006. The math section had 58 questions, and the reading had 45. I answered (or tried to answer) all 58 of the math, but I disregarded the essay questions on the reading section because I had no way to objectively score them. The test booklet failed to provide a couple of necessary readings (due to copyright permissions not being available for an electronic format), so I also disregarded the questions based on those. (I later discovered that the necessary readings were reproduced in the answer booklet--I left them out anyway because I didn't want to risk seeing the correct answers in the course of my reading.) So in the end I answered the 35 remaining multiple choice questions I could reasonably be expected to answer.
I have no idea how this school board member manages to enjoy the level of success he claims, because I think he must be an idiot.
I hated math in school. I barely passed Algebra I and II, and only passed Geometry after I had to revisit it in summer school. I took two accounting classes and one statistics class in college, back about 15 years ago. Yes, I did deal with numbers in my first career in finance, but that was mostly arithmetic, and I left that field over 12 years ago. Of the 58 questions in the test, I answered 43 of them correctly. Very few were wild-ass guesses. Most of them, if I didn't know the answer immediately, I was able to figure it out with the information provided.
Of the 35 reading questions, I answered 35 of them correctly.
With the exception of some of the geometry, most of the math problems could be solved through simple arithmetic and/or common sense. Basic observation and problem-solving skills. Someone like me, who doesn't remember a single formula from high school math and doesn't do unusual amounts of math in work life (I'm a stay-at-home mom of toddlers--we're still working on counting to 20!), was able to score 74%. The school board member with his $3 billion budget scored 17%. The skill I employed most frequently in solving these problems was determining what of the information provided was important to figuring out the solution, and what could be disregarded. I don't care what line of work you're in, that is a necessary skill for functioning as an adult in today's world.
As far as the multiple-choice questions on the reading test are concerned, all you have to do is read the short piece and answer the questions. There is no assumption that you are intimately familiar with obscure pieces of literature, or even that you know the technical jargon necessary to grammatically deconstruct a sentence. All you have to do is demonstrate that you understand what you just read, both the content and the intent. Why does intent matter? It matters if you want to be able to tell the difference between an opinion piece and an instruction manual. It matters if you expect to be able to understand the difference between the story of one person's success in entrepreneurship and a boiler-plate business plan.
Granted, I didn't answer the essay questions. Let's assume I did, and let's assume I missed all four. That would have dropped my 100% down to 89%. The school board member, with all his advanced degrees, scored 62%. He reasons that the test is unfair because “On the FCAT, [the students] are reading material they didn’t choose. They are given four possible answers and three out of the four are pretty good. One is the best answer but kids don’t get points for only a pretty good answer. They get zero points, the same for the absolute wrong answer. And then they are given an arbitrary time limit. Those are a number of reasons that I think the test has to be suspect.”
First of all, I challenge his claim that three of the four answers are "pretty good," but let's put that aside for now. In real life, can we expect that we'll only ever have to read and understand things that we choose to read? (No, I don't feel like reading the Instruction Booklet for my 1040, so I just won't bother filing my taxes this year.) In real life, can we expect that 'partial credit' will be given for an answer that's 'pretty good' but not necessarily the 'best'? (Well, you've read the detailed job description and I've really enjoyed interviewing you. You missed the mark a little bit on what skills we're looking for, but you were pretty close, so we'll give you this other job, instead.) In real life, can we expect that we'll be given unlimited time to comprehend a set of instructions or absorb some basic information necessary for what we're doing? (You need three months to understand the policies laid out in our employee handbook before you start work? No problem; we'll keep you on full salary while you figure it out!)
I still don't think standardized tests should be given the level of importance they currently enjoy, but if the FCAT is indicative of what's being expected of 10th graders across the country, I think it's doing a pretty good job of measuring how well kids are learning how to learn. Based on the two tests I took, students aren't being expected to memorize a bunch of trivia that they'll never use in adulthood; they're being expected to filter information, determine its value, and be able to understand written communication. In adulthood you don't have to know everything, but you do need to know how to find whatever information you need. And you can't do that if you can't determine what is relevant and what isn't, discern the difference between opinion, bias, and fact, or understand what a paragraph is even saying.
I'm not worried about students taking the FCAT. I'm worried that we live in a world in which an adult who is unable to pass the FCAT is on the school board, and is able to function as a leader at a company with 22,000 employees and a capital and operating budget of $3 billion. Are the expectations of functioning--even successful--adulthood really so low?
No wonder this country's in trouble.
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