Learning from Experience

From Minnow to Overachiever

Loren McGrail
Editor
SABES Central Resource Center / World Education

(The following is an account of my personal experiences with being evaluated and assessed as a learner. My road to participatory assessment is due in part to these early painful experiences. These visceral experiences have contributed substantially to my opposition and resistance to any kind of standardized testing. In addition reflecting back on these experiences has made me very empathetic to other learners who have experienced evaluation as a less than positive experience.)

There are four events in my life that have led me to learner-centered approaches to assessment. The first event occurred while I was in 2nd grade. I was a “minnow”. While all my girlfriends were swimming through the blue, green, yellow, and red versions of the endless and exciting tales of Sally, Dick, and Jane, I was stuck on “See Spot Run”. I was stuck in the back of the room with the rowdy boys (my friends on the baseball diamond) and the other “slow girls”. The only thing that motivated me to “grow up” and become a “goldfish” and eventually a “shark” was the glimmer of hope that one day I would be able to read a chapter book, a hard cover book that maybe had a story worth knowing. This was event #1. You can tell from my tone that I’ve been scarred for life— an adult child of tracking and basal readers.

My second event happened the summer of 5th grade. Somehow I had learned to read by the time I got to 5th grade but math was still a problem for me. My parents had tried everything from summer school intensives to the “teaching machine”. Knowing math concepts or understanding how math could be used in one’s daily life hadn’t happened yet.

So my parents, in a desperate attempt to do their jobs as good parents, bought me a “teaching machine”, a small blue box that you put paper into then scrolled up endless math problems to solve over and over again until you got it right. It was the precursor to doing drills on the computer.

I was supposed to do a certain number of “units” a day before going out to play or swim. After about the third day sitting inside a hot stuffy room by myself trying to solve algebra problems that I more often than not got wrong, I discovered that when I put the paper into the machine I could see all the answers. The solution to my dilemma was simple; I would simply copy the correct answers (but not all the answers because then I would get caught). I figured out a certain percent I should get right and then I would increase it gradually so no one would suspect. The system worked great. I did my assigned summer work in less than half the time it normally would have taken me and indirectly learned something about percents.

I also learned something about math and learning too. I learned I could beat the system if I really set my mind to it and that getting the right answer didn’t feel like learning whether I cheated or worked on the problem. This second revelation came about when I decided I would not just copy the answer but figure out why it was the right answer and then work myself backwards into figuring out how this could be. As a result math became interesting and challenging and I think I actually learned something in the process.

My third event happened in 10th grade in my English class. We were assigned an essay to do over the weekend. I wrote about death and dying a la Barry McQuire’s “The Eve of Destruction”, George Harrison and John Donne. An odd combination of influences I agree, but this was the 1960s and I was an anti-war protester and life was like that back then. I wrote this essay and, what can I say, I was divinely inspired when I wrote it. The words just poured out of me and I trusted them. I turned my paper in with a feeling of having done a great job for once. I got it back a few days later with a big red letter F on it and a “See me” scrawled next to it. I was in a state of shock. How could I have been so wrong about my accomplishments?

The teacher (also our football coach) said my essay was “unbelievably well written and mature and hence obviously not mine; I must have plagiarized and plagiarism was cause for expulsion. I didn’t know what to say. I was now being punished for going beyond my assigned level of skill and experience as well. I was condemned and furthermore I could be thrown out of school for poetic inspiration. This was worse than just being labeled “slow”. I was being stigmatized as an “overachiever”— a person who achieved more than they were supposed to.

My final event happened during my senior year of high school. I had applied to a college which will remain nameless, though I will never forget that bitter autumn day in the admission officer’s book-cluttered office. I had just finished a tour of the campus and was now chatting with the admissions officer about Thomas Aquinas and how I wanted to continue my education in philosophy. Yes, I had read already most of the Great Books. In the middle of our conversation he said he hadn’t received my board scores yet but as soon as they came in he would let me know about the college’s decision. He called his assistant who came in with them in her hand. I watched his face go from concerned to sad as he shook his head. Finally he said that though I had “wisdom,” I didn’t have the academic qualifications to go to this school. Wisdom but low test scores. This was my final run in with the system and its need to evaluate me not according to what I knew but how I measured against the “norm”.

tion which allowed practitioners interested in learning about participatory assessment to become partners with other practitioners who have been developing and using participatory procedures and tools. As you work your way through the first section of this volume, you’ll follow the route of 12 practitioners who chose mentoring as a research vehicle to explore the landscape of alternative assessment. As a reader you can become involved by looking at the articles as a panorama of experiences that you can add to or subtract from, given your experiences and your program needs.

The Partnership Writers
The writers involved in The Partnership Project highlight the importance of having the resources and support needed to come together as peers around a common theme. As a group these articles raise a lot of questions about assessment and mentoring as another vehicle for dissemination of alternative assessment. Most of the writers here focus their inquiry and development not only in assessing learners skills in a particular content area but they also recognize the importance of looking deeper into the other factors that make learners teachable. Rudee Atlas and Dan Wilson respond to the fears, anxieties, and needs of students at the very beginning of their learning who have little or no education in their own countries.

Deirdre McLaughlin, Marti Tassi-Richardson, Loretta Pardi and Estelle Williams raise questions about learners who come to class with barriers and issues that prevent them from par-ticipating in a traditional classroom setting as well as setting and achieving their goals. These practitioners developed tools that assess particular skill areas (i.e. GED content areas) but also in the process raise the self esteem of their learners. It is assumed that by raising the self esteem of the learners there will be an increase in motivation for learners to continue their education and see the attainment of their goals as a viable option.

With Lesly Desire and Henry Joseph we catch a glimpse of the struggle they faced when trying to sort through the assessment materials handed to them as part of The Partnership Project. In their vision of alternative assessment they wonder if there is an ending to this inquiry as Lesly states “It (assessment) is ever changing and never finished.” We hope to get an update on their findings in a future issue of Adventures.

Barbara Krol-Sinclair and Pauline O’Leary work on developing a tool that would encourage parents to plan and assess their literacy activities with their children.

As a partnership, Carolyn Gear, co-coordinator of the project, and Widi Sumaryano, mentee, discuss the impact this project has had on Widi’s learners as well as on his growth as a teacher. In another type of self reflection Caroline talks about the richness of being a mentor and the key factors that make a mentoring relationship work.

To give us an overview of the project and its goals Paul Trunnel, co-coordinator, talks about the process and the why of the Partnership Project. He also reflects on the process and its impact on dissemination of alternative assessment in Massachusetts.

With Don Robishaw’s article we walk away from The Partnership Project but not some of the ideas and questions that the group has raised. Don takes the questions of self esteem and goal setting a bit further by saying that some students need a unlearning process before they can actively participate in these activities in a meaningful way and become self-directed learners. He states that students may not be ready for the participatory processes that require students to define their goals and evaluate themselves towards attainment of these goals. In his article he looks at an intervention program that he has developed that addresses the question of self direction and student preparation for goal setting and the participatory classroom.

In her response to Judy Hofer and Pat Larson’s article (see Responding to the Dream Conference, AIA, Spring 1994), Janet Isserlis takes us on a questioning journey into literacy practices and community development by forcing us to look at how our roles as practitioners are defined in terms of community development. In the process of asking us to think critically about our roles, she describes the program she is working with in Vancouver and how she is defining her role.

Kenneth Tamarkin and Susan Barnard in “The Right Answer” look at open-ended questions as an alternative process for the ADP math assessment. They propose that testing for critical thinking skills in addition to computa-tional skills will give us an understanding of the learners’ thought processes involved in solving math problems. The article documents the process and results of their research and examples of the questions themselves.

Debbie Tuler discusses the revision of an assessment tool in a workplace education program in Newton, MA. The need for revising an existing tool was a common concern between all stake-holders (learners, managers, supervisors and teachers) that it was not giving them the information needed to make informed decisions about attending classes, informing teaching, and placing learners in the appropriate classes. Debbie also talks about the process of revising the initial assessment and the challenge of meeting the needs of all stakeholders.

In learning from experience, Elizabeth Santiago talks about her experience as a GED recipient and raises the question of equivalency and the stigma that goes along with the Alternative Diploma.

A poem about assessment is included in this volume from Diane Pecarora in Minnesota. It is a first in Adventures in Assessment and I hope it sets a precedent for those who would rather poetry, not prose. We will continue to encourage alternative forms of expression as long as it fits into the printed page.

Lenore Balliro reviews Dimensions of Change: An Authentic Assessment Guidebook by Melody Schneider and Mallory Clarke from Seattle, Washington. This guide book is the documentation of a special assessment project entitled “Integrated Assessment: Being Accountable to Teachers and Students” where the authors worked with teachers and learners around assessment in Washington State.

Adventures in Assessment has a new Editor: Alison Simmons from SABES Central Resource Center at World Education. Alison has a background in ESL and is a literacy specialist with SABES. Rick Schwartz will continue to be the Assistant Editor for the journal. For future Adventures in Assessment, we will maintain the scope of the journal, which is practitioner based, and see how we can include the voice of the learner in the dialogue. We will also be publishing Adventures in Assessment once a year each Fall to make way for a new journal through SABES on program and staff development.

This article was published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 6 (Spring 1994), SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1994.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.