re: question of the day

 Vickie Decker on the Topic: Student Learning and accountability
writes:

An interesting point has been made on accountability. Students should be assessed before they enter and exit an academic subject. I teach math and have found the UCLA algebra readiness a wonderful tool to assess my students ability in math. At the beginning and the end of the year, I test my students for prior knowledge in the beginning of the year and growth at the end of the year. I am pleased to say that my students show an increase 
in content knowledge and conceptual learning which validates me.

My comment: Since learning can be empirically measured by the difference pre/post by student, class, and school, why can't we set a similar system at each school teaching a sequential subject like math throughout the entire math school curriculum. Then by examination of student learning individually via homework, quizzes and other  class work,  we would  have a useful tool to determine why students are learning or not.  

In addition, if these tests were diagnoistic-prescriptive, we could examins student learning not only by the overall test  scores but by individual competencies. When a student has a low competency in a specific area, the student could go to a learning lab and using Computer Aicded Software, work on his deficient areas until mastered.  I know this works in math, becasue we have been doing this process successfully for 23 years working with a 90% ethnic minority,  75% women, and 55% black student population. Our average learning rate is approximately 7.1 times the K-12 CTBS, Stanford normed result of 9.1% /year.

Finally, once baseline data is established for a few years at each course level, one determines prerequiste skills cut scores. Students scoring below this level are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED  to change into a lower level course to build up skills and then re-enter that next semester. This process inproves student retention, as students no longer drop out of class or school, as now they are successful. Since math is the "rate determining step" for many students, this improves significantly all class enrollemnt throughoput the school. Obviously this method will work at any school level, K-U, and in any sequential discipline.