Weighing the Hogs

You may remember from my College Go Week story (on the intercom last week) that I got my bachelor's and master's degrees from Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Iowa State is known for veterinary science, engineering, agriculture, and education... just like Purdue is in the state of Indiana.

I fondly recall a statistics class in my masters program. The professor shared tons of examples that related to agriculture and there is one that makes me smile. Weighing the hogs doesn't make them fatter.

Well, hogs, it's time to weigh you again. Acuity starts this week.  

I certainly don't mean to offend. You aren't hogs (although I've heard that some of you snort when you eat!) The comment is an analogy regarding our standardized testing program and my personal frustrations with it.

Let's take Language Arts. In LA class, you take three Star Reading Tests. You take three Acuity Predictive Tests. You take three sessions of the ISTEP+ test. You also do four local quarterly writing assessments.  In 180 days, you take 13 tests. You are weighed 13 times.  We give up 7% of your class periods to take tests to determine your general progress. This doesn't include any class periods to take tests over your actual class content. Whew. 

Math comes right behind with 9 tests. Science and Social Studies have standardized tests, too. Yes, hogs, we are weighing and weighing and weighing.

I would bet that our agriculture community would agree. It's not weighing that makes a hog fatter. It's what you do with the hog between weighings. It's not testing you that makes you a better learner. It's what we do together between tests.

So, now that I've bashed the excessiveness of our state testing system... here is what I need from you. I need you to do your absolute BEST effort every time on every test. That may sound backward but here is why I ask this from you.  The testing data helps us make decisions on instruction. Accurate decisions need accurate data. Overtesting is not good. But overtesting and getting lazy/inaccurate data is worse!

SMS, good luck on your tests. Go 'hog wild' with your effort. Let's show them that we're fatter... I mean smarter!