State Assessment Season

It's state assessment time in my district. Children around the state are taking the the state's proficiency test for the entire month of March. I don't think that Lent and the state test occurring in the same month is a mere coincidence. Everyone is on edge and the kids are reaching their breaking points. Not to mention that Daylight Savings Time hasn't helped at all, either. I proctor the tests for three English Language Learner (ELL) students, and I have seen the pitfalls of testing this population firsthand. Since my students are ELL, they could have all parts of the math test read to them. So I was able to sit down and read aloud the directions, sentences and word problems in the math test. It is supposed to be the way to determine if a child has true math skills, by removing the language component. It does require the student to be able to understand English when it is spoken to them, which is a big assumption. While I was able to read to them for the math test, I wasn't able to read more than the test directions for the reading and writing tests. It has to be really frustrating for a student to sit there and struggle through a test that's not in your native language, a language that you've been exposed to for only a year or two. In fact, I know it's frustrating because I had a student have a complete meltdown in my room. He was inconsolable and I didn't know how to make him feel better. I wasn't sure what I could say that would make him feel better, or could comprehend. I felt trapped because he wouldn't leave my office and I had to dismiss the other students and take his test back to the secure location.

My other gripe is that the test is designed to fool students into thinking that they are doing well. The math test is especially guilty of this. It's a multiple-choice test, and without a doubt, each question has one answer choice that is possible by trying to solve the problem in a simplistic yet incorrect way. It drove me crazy because as I read the questions to my students I watched them use horrible tactics to solve them. I wanted to yell at them, but of course I had to keep everything to myself. I'm starting to think that we may need to go the Princeton Review route and talk about answers that are there to trip you. I would settle for kids trying to solve a problem, and if they do it incorrectly there answer isn't a choice. I remember that happening a few times on the SAT and GRE.

BBC

IQ and Older Fathers

Today's New York Times had an article about the IQs of children of older fathers. Older fathers have children with lower IQs when tested in different cognitive areas, including fluid reasoning, memory, and motor skills. When I see studies like that I often wonder who did the testing and what test did they use. According to the news article, the information was gathered from 50,000 mothers who attended 12 clinics from the years 1959 to 1965. Whatever test was used, it must have been the earliest edition. Interestingly, an older father's detriment to IQ seems to be biological, while an older mother's asset to IQ seems to be environmental. Older mothers are more nurturing and have the economic means to provide more enrichment. The article mentioned the age range of the the fathers and mothers in the story. They had participants as young as 12 and 14! A teenage birth in the 60's had to be controversial.

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School Psychologists and Pop Culture

I don't have HBO, I can't afford it. So there are many shows that have entered the pop culture Zeitgeist that I never got to experience the first time around: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Wire, etc. Nonetheless, I just started watching The Sopranos on DVD. Season 1, Episode 7 titled "Down Under"featured a school psychologist. Anthony Jr. stole communion wine and showed up at school drunk. He was suspended from school and the principal decided that he should be evaluated by the school psychologist for ADD. The first thing I noticed was that this Catholic school had its own school psychologist. Impressive, but likely, I don't know. There were a lot of things in the episode that wouldn't be legal now. I'm not sure if it's a reflection of the time since it was 10 years ago (1999), a depiction of special education identification in private/parochial schools, or poetic license. First, the principal and the school psychologist strong-armed Tony and Carmela into the evaluation. I don't remember seeing them sign a consent for the evaluation. The second thing was the lack of a PPT. The only person doing the eval was the school psychologist, but I can personally attest to being the only person doing an eval, this happens when I do outside evals for my district. But this has only happened with re-evaluations. An initial would require a lot more evaluators, including school nurse, social worker (if available) and speech and language.

There was a part of the episode where they showed the evaluation. In the scene, Anthony was completing a projectives exercise. He was looking at pictures and had to describe what he thought about them. My first reaction was, "What test is that?" then I remembered that for test security they wouldn't be able to show an actual test. I thought the school psychologist's demeanor was dead-on. Even his noncommital speech about the "possibility" of having ADD was classic. I think it was interesting how the different Soprano family members kept mistaking the school psychologist for a psychiatrist. He was introduced with the title of doctor, but somehow everyone turned him into a psychiatrist. All in all, it was a decent depiction of what we do.

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