The Assessment Gap: 21st Century Writing and Standardized Testing

The snow from winter storms is melting, and the persuasive writing lesson on ReadWriteThink.org is holding steady as the number one “most e-mailed” lesson. These are sure signs that it’s almost standardized testing season, and students across the country are getting ready to write for thirty minutes or so (and/or take a multiple-choice grammar and editing test) to demonstrate their level of proficiency as writers.

I’m part of the teaching generation that experienced standardized writing tests not only as an educator, but as a public school student as well. I vividly recall the day, and it must have been around this time of year, that my eighth grade language arts teacher announced that we would be participating in a brand new test: the state writing assessment.

I’m sure we wrote for other audiences and purposes in that class, but I confess that I don’t remember those assignments. I do, however, recall spending weeks learning how to budget time, read a prompt, focus an opening paragraph with a preview statement, elaborate on three points of support with plenty of detail, and end with a conclusion that restated that opening paragraph. (I can even recall the topic I wrote on: Why people should move to Kansas City). I dutifully mastered that mode of writing and, as the years went on, I found myself able to rely on it, relatively unchallenged, throughout high school.

We’re at a complicated point in literacy education right now, as the influence of testing (and the testing industry) is as strong as ever. For the foreseeable future, we’ll measure (“officially,” anyway) our students’ ability as writers with assessments that have no authentic audience and no rhetorical purpose other than to invite efficient evaluation by a nameless, faceless reader.

This phenomenon continues even as we see a staggering proliferation of authentic, self-sponsored writing made possible through user-friendly, Web-based publication technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. It’s exciting to be part of an era that affords teachers and students the opportunity to write and publish in a medium such a blog to a real audience with relatively little technical know-how or effort. It’s also exciting to think that we’re part of the teaching generation that has the opportunity (and, I think, the responsibility) to figure out how use these new technologies to help students become more effective writers and to write ourselves (and, not insignificantly, to learn more about how and why people write).

I wonder about the implications of the growing disconnect between standardized writing assessments and the kinds of writing students see and participate in online themselves. Are teachers finding ways to use these new technologies to energize students and promote more effective writing, even on writing tasks that are so drastically different in form and function? Or are a blog and a timed writing test so different that the result can be only further disengagement as students see an even greater divide between the kinds of writing they do and the kinds of writing they see as being officially valued?

Perhaps more simply put: Is it enough to change our instruction to incorporate online writing technologies, or does this revolution in writing make even more urgent the need to rethink how we assess our students?

To Read Aloud or Not to Read Aloud

Scientists referenced in the news article “Infants Learn Earlier than Thought” (The Seattle Times, February 04, 2009) suggest that parents begin reading to their children in utero and continue to read to them ever after. Sounds like a good idea to me—one I certainly tried to follow with my own daughter.

I read to Sara until she was old enough to read to me and then we’d take turns reading to one another. One day when Sara was home from school sick, we spent time finishing up Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows. I was reading as we got to the ending when Old Dan and Little Ann defend Billy against the mountain lion (this is the place I need to tell you that I’m an animal lover supreme and a big-dog owner). I think I started crying when Old Dan got hurt and by the time he was home and dying I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t see the words on the page to read and I couldn’t have gotten the words out of my mouth between the sobs anyhow. Sara kept saying, “It’s okay, Mom, I’ll read.” I kept saying (you know, being the strong mom), “No, I’ll read.” And I couldn’t, and by then she was crying, too. We decided on a 15-minute break when we cried together and then washed our faces with cold wash cloths. We came back and finished the novel.

It wasn’t long after Where the Red Fern Grows that Sara’s class in school began reading chapter books together and before long she and I no longer read them to one another. We did engage in the “higher level conversations” about books that Franki Sibberson mentions in her February 9 post to her blog, A Year of Reading and there were books aplenty around the house, but I missed our read alouds. Now as adults we pass books back and forth to one another, enjoying many of the same writers, and I share reading conversations with my granddaughter—what reading fun!

But there are kids all over who aren’t ever read aloud to by their parents and who aren’t sharing tears or fun over books. What about them?

So, would I advocate a national campaign to encourage parents to read aloud to their kids, like Jen Robinson has suggested on her blog ? Yes, I think so. Would you?

Bringing School Learning Home

Adam Watson has found a way to extend the literature discussions from his classroom to the web. His students’ podcast book commercials put the students of 2009 into books of this century and earlier as they promote their books to an audience outside their classroom.

"It's kind of weird because people all over the school know about it and they can listen to us talking about our books," said sophomore Abigail Houchens, 16. "Our parents can listen to it. It's weird but cool, I guess, because people can listen to what we think and it's not just a class thing."

“It's hands-on," Alexa, 15, said. "You're not just reading to read. You get through the reading because you want to be able to know what to say and do when you do your recording. That's pretty cool even for people who don't like reading." ("South Oldham High Uses Podcasts for Literary Chats," The Courier-Journal, January 21, 2009)

Through their podcast projects these students enjoy the benefits of two worlds—print and electronic—and they’re using critical thinking, collaboration , and authentic communication to meld the two. Could we ask for anything better?

One way to get started, of course, is with good texts—the texts kids want to read and those that have the depth to be “podcast worthy.” As NCTE member Kim Ford, chair of the committee that selected Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator as the winner of the 2009 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, says "If we want kids to read for pleasure and for information, then we've got to give them the very best books we can find."

Then, it seems, how we help students promote those texts is up to us. Take the DC Area Literary Map an ongoing project produced by NCTE member Vivian Vasquez and graduate students and teachers from different schools in the area. This map features book podcasts centered around sites in the Washington, DC, area, and is yet another way that teachers and students can extend their “book-learning” beyond the classroom.

Wordle and the Inauguration

Remember Wordle? Extremely popular last July, the site makes word clouds from text passages. As the introduction on the site's homepage explains:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Don’t dismiss it though. For English teachers, Wordle is far more than just a simple “toy.” It’s a great analysis tool, as I reported last year.

A post last week on the ReadWriteWeb blog reminded me how wonderful the tool is at providing a snapshot of the key ideas behind a message. Author Marshall Kirkpatrick shares word clouds for President Obama’s inaugural address alongside clouds for George W. Bush’s, Bill Clinton’s, Ronald Reagan’s, and Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural addresses.

Take a look at the largest words in the images, and the issues that each president focuses on are obvious:

President & Speech	Most Frequent Word
Obama 2009	nation
Bush 2005	freedom
Clinton 1997	century
Reagan 1981	government
Lincoln 1861	Constitution
Lincoln 1865	war

The words alone are only part of the story, but they can point student readers toward the speeches with more information. The Wordle clouds are a remarkable prereading tool. First look at the map with students and discuss the words that stand out. Why would the speaker focus on those words? How do they predict the speaker will use them? What senses of the words will the speaker avoid? As they begin reading the addresses, students can look for the key terms and see whether their predictions were accurate and make note of how key words are used in different contexts within the text.

If you have already discussed Obama’s address with the class, why not try the Wordle clouds for inaugural poems? There have been four poems written for U.S. presidential inaugurations, and there are a number of resources available for teaching these poems, including an Education World lesson, a Teacher Vision lesson, and a BITs post.

Begin your exploration of the poems with Wordle images like this one of Alexander’s poem, or one of the other images linked below:

• Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem (2009)
• Miller Williams's inaugural poem (1997)
• Maya Angelou's inaugural poem (1993)
• Robert Frost's inaugural poem (1961) and the poem he recited

Ask students to explore how the words that stand out in the clouds for the poems might predict the themes and symbols that will be developed in the poems. As students analyze the poems more deeply, connect the poets’ use of repetition and word choice affects the message of the poems.

No matter how you use Wordle images, they're a great tool for exploring the ways that writers use words—and if the analysis engages students in a bit of fun, that’s okay. Go ahead and call Wordle a toy. That won’t stop students from engaging in a good bit of critical thinking!

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

I was attending an NCTE conference and when it happened I was in the elevator with an NCTE colleague and several other hotel guests. We hadn’t gone two floors when one of the guests asked us if we were there for the English conference, and we confessed that we were. The guests began some talk about how English was a difficult subject and so they’d better watch their grammar.

After we got to our floor and off the elevator, the colleague and I looked at each other and asked, “How did they know?” But, of course, we knew. We weren’t wearing our name badges. We just looked like English teachers (whatever that look is). We emitted some sort of English-teacher vibe that the guests picked up. What they didn’t notice or acknowledge, though, were our “hero stripes.”

Now, we’ve all read about teacher-heroes (maybe even known a few): the professor who took a bullet at Virginia Tech in order to save his students, the teachers in the what is now Ground Zero area of New York City who quietly led their students out of the building and got each and every one home safely, the NCTE/SLATE Intellectual Freedom Award winner who defended the importance of teaching of Brokeback Mountain even when the objecting parent decided to pull a $3 million grant from the school.

What no one hears enough about, though, are the heroic acts teachers do as they go about the regular business of teaching their classes. We teachers are everyday heroes who dry the tears of distressed kindergartners and those of distraught 9th graders, who ask the right questions to help a stuck middle school writer get unstuck, who listen to the personal sadnesses in our students’ lives and proceed to offer them through literature a look into the lives of others. We are calm when the fire alarm rings, patient when our lesson plans need to be laid aside to handle an unexpected situation such as the death of a student or teacher, and willing to return each day with fresh ideas and ears open to whatever our students might bring with them.

As the TETYC article "Bias and the Teachable Moment: Revisiting a Teacher Narrative" points out, we teachers go home and think about what has transpired in our classes and we change based on what we’ve discovered through this thinking.

We do all this without superhero costumes and usually without recognition, yet maybe our daily acts of heroism cause us to exude some sort of “hero-scent” and that’s what the hotel guests recognized when they pegged my colleague and me as English teachers!

How have you been a hero lately?

What Does It Mean to be Literate?

This week the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported the first rise in the number of adults reading literature since they began their survey in 1982. In fact, 16.6 million more adults reported reading literature (novels and short stories, plays, or poems) in 2008. And, the most rapid increase was in literature reading by young adults aged 18-24.

This same week the National Center for Educational Statistics finally released its 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, reporting that roughly 32 million U.S. adults (nearly one in seven) lack Basic Prose Literacy Skills and aren’t able to read at all or can read only the simplest of messages.

What does this mean? How can more people be reading literature while so many other people are “functionally illiterate”?

It seems to me—and it’s spelled out in the NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts and in NCTE’s Definition of 21st Century Literacies —that reading is just one part of literacy. In fact, to be literate today one must read and write; speak, listen, and view; think critically, act creatively and collaboratively; and manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information.

When I look at the criteria for the National Endowment for the Arts study, I’m delighted that adults are reading “literature,” but I can’t help but wonder how many more adults might be reading nonfiction, reading webpages, reading images, doing important reading that doesn’t fit under the NEA definition of literature.

Then I think about those many adults who can’t read in English or who can only “locate easily identifiable information in short, commonplace prose text.” What will become of them? How will they function in a fast-moving world that relies on printed and graphic texts?/p>

And adults aren’t our only concern. In "Training Focuses on Improving Literacy,” NCTE president Kylene Beers says, “Our kids just aren't as literate as they need to be." I have to agree. With all they see and hear around them, many kids still have difficulty digging below the surface—deeply “reading” what the world has to offer them.

One way we can help is by gearing what and how we teach in class toward helping our students develop high level literacy skills that will serve them now and in the future. NCTE’s 21st NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment serves as a good guideline for how we might do this.

Why I Love the African American Read-In

Literature holds a special place in my English teacher heart. Unfortunately, though, it’s something I have precious little time to enjoy. That’s one reason why I relish Black History Month in February. Every year for as long as I can remember, NCTE has held its own African American Read-In right here in our office. For an hour on the first Monday of February I get to spend time with African American literature, first reading on my own and then listening to the readings of others. It’s usually a quiet time, an emotional time—a time when NCTE staff members feel part of another world outside—and inside—the office.

For that hour, those of us who participate get the opportunity to stop to celebrate literature by African-Americans, to get acquainted with books we haven’t read, to share titles, to hear words—to connect with one another as colleagues of literature as well as work colleagues. It’s a once-a-year hour I don’t want to miss.

This year I encourage you to hold your own African American Read-In—to spend just an hour with colleagues or neighbors or friends reading and sharing African American Literature. Do this any time in February. No elaborate plans are necessary—there are book and planning suggestions on the African American Read-In website.

Maybe right now you'd like to share your plans.