VAM now also has a LinkedIn Group. Join us!
Also, as publications coordinator, I'd like to post a question. In your opinion, what is more useful in promoting your museum: LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? What about in promoting yourself as a professional? I can't wait to hear your answers!
Thanks,
Heather
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
To Test 3rd Grade Social Sciences' SOL's, or Not?
FROM: Rich Gillespie
TO: History organizations and colleagues inclined to be fearful of the rumored drop of SOL-testing at the end of 3rd grade history class
SUBJECT: Why the Virginia Department of Education has good reason to question Grade 3 History SOL Testing
The Virginia Department of Education is considering ending the annual 44-question multiple choice SOL test at the end of Grade 3. They are not considering ending having Standards of Learning (SOLs) as guidelines for teaching, nor are they considering the dropping of the teaching of history. They are merely facing the fact that testing what has been “learned” at the end of Grades 1, 2, and 3 in social studies with a 44-question multiple choice test is inadequately informative, penalizes 3rd grade teachers not responsible for Grades 1 and 2 learning, and promotes inevitably some form of “teaching to the test.”
Making the rounds currently are circulars like this one making people fearful—drop 3rd grade SOL testing, and it will mean the beginning of a de-emphasis on history education, they say. “Pass it on to those who may have an interest in supporting history education.” I beg to disagree, suggesting that passing that idea along will continue to weaken the history classroom in Virginia, as has been going on since Governor George Allen’s Education Department instituted the program in the 1990s.
As a 30-year classroom veteran, Agnes-Meyer Teacher of the Year for Loudoun County, Virginia Historical Society Brenton S. Halsey Teacher of the Year, and as a museum educator for working with four school districts the past five years, I would strongly recommend the effort to drop multiple choice testing of the History SOLs at the end of Grade 3 go forward. Based on my experience both as a department chairman/teacher and as a museum educator working with our current crop of history educators, I would even more strongly recommend that we drop currently configured standardized SOL testing in all history classes. This is not because I am lazy, or because I do not believe that teachers need to have some form of oversight. [All of my students passed the SOL test in 11th grade U.S. History my last year of teaching when I had “learned the game.”] It is not because I want history dropped from the curriculum (it won’t be) or that there should be no Standards of Learning to guide history teachers.
Here is why this form of standardized testing should be heavily re-evaluated or dropped:
1. The huge number of tested items forces teachers to go for "coverage" rather than thinking, discussion, and depth--in short, critical thinking and learning are replaced by memorization. Rote learning impresses some, evidently—particularly those who came of age before 1900.
2. Weaker schools have to "teach to the test"; stronger schools find that good teaching has to be replaced by teaching memorizable factoids (i.e., “teach to the test.”).
3. The tests use multiple choice questions that test the simplest form of knowing. Writing is not involved, problem-solving, analysis or synthesis, application, and other higher order thinking skills are largely dodged. If you do not know this, multiple choice tests test better your reading ability than what you have learned. I found them highly unreliable unless coupled with other modes of evaluation as well. [I am lucky to be one who does very well on these types of multiple choice tests. Some of my most brilliant, learned students, however, struggled with them, while "acing" higher order essay-based testing.]
The Commonwealth has neither the grading time nor the extra funds that takes to change the current mode of evaluation.
4. Projects involving the community, field experiences, speakers in class, and other aspects that promote "best practice" historical learning take a back seat to constant factoid teaching. Administrators hate this. Teachers hate this. Parents hate this. Students hate this. If doing this kind of rote learning is so good, why do so few people ever positively remember that aspect of their history class learning? Ask any museum or historic site educator if they think this sort of emphasis through multiple choice testing has increased school interest in extending students’ learning into the community or to history beyond the classroom. You will see that, despite historic site adaptation to SOLs (programs are largely SOL-centric to allow subversive teachers to continue to really teach history), overall, students are being exposed to less real history due to the testing program, not more.
5. Dropping SOL testing of History does not marginalize history, it just refocuses our objective and our mode of teaching back to what we had learned during the educational reform movements of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. We were on the verge of the best teaching I ever witnessed when Governor Allen introduced this kind of testing. SOLs will not be dropped, a multiple choice test as the way to evaluate what students learn will. Schools will ascertain for themselves how to evaluate whether students have learned along the SOL guidelines.
6. As an 11th grade teacher (both A.P. and Academic), the sheer number of SOLs and parts of SOLs meant total control of every day of your teaching, and even then, it was hard to get them all in with any thoughtful depth.
It does seem odd that I have yet to meet a good social studies teacher (the ones I currently work with) who enthusiastically supports SOL testing in the current format. They will do what they are ordered to, but they usually feel that the current SOL-testing-based program largely forces them to go against the best practice they were trained to do by our universities. For a few marginally competent people it provides escape, cook-book like guidelines, and an escape from the more difficult question of how to make history useful, challenging, thought-provoking, and of value to our country, our economy, and our community. The most common excuse for failure to take field trips, bring community resources into the classroom, teach children better writing and thinking skills, and pursue topics in any depth is, "I can't; I don't have time due to the SOL tests we must prepare for." Overwhelmingly, the schools under the most pressure to do well on the SOLs have the most problem extending learning in depth beyond them. NOTE: The best teachers in Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier, and Clarke counties are still trying—that’s the good news!
DON'T LET PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THAT SOL TESTING CORRELATES TO STATE EMPHASIS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. The point was for state control of what every child would learn. In its original incarnation, this meant a sharp shift to the right in the content and away from critical thinking. [Admittedly, the SOL content has been more centered with subsequent revisions to the SOLs).
You may wish to continue support for the SOLs, though they will need both regular updating/review and culling reduce the number to the most crucial content. However, I recommend you support efforts to end multiple-choice based testing at the end of 3rd grade Our current testing does not promote the community's education (unless memorization=education) or social science education goals. It promotes “coverage” and “memorization of factoids.” Please continue to promote quality history teaching in our schools and in our communities! Be a part of the solution!
TO: History organizations and colleagues inclined to be fearful of the rumored drop of SOL-testing at the end of 3rd grade history class
SUBJECT: Why the Virginia Department of Education has good reason to question Grade 3 History SOL Testing
The Virginia Department of Education is considering ending the annual 44-question multiple choice SOL test at the end of Grade 3. They are not considering ending having Standards of Learning (SOLs) as guidelines for teaching, nor are they considering the dropping of the teaching of history. They are merely facing the fact that testing what has been “learned” at the end of Grades 1, 2, and 3 in social studies with a 44-question multiple choice test is inadequately informative, penalizes 3rd grade teachers not responsible for Grades 1 and 2 learning, and promotes inevitably some form of “teaching to the test.”
Making the rounds currently are circulars like this one making people fearful—drop 3rd grade SOL testing, and it will mean the beginning of a de-emphasis on history education, they say. “Pass it on to those who may have an interest in supporting history education.” I beg to disagree, suggesting that passing that idea along will continue to weaken the history classroom in Virginia, as has been going on since Governor George Allen’s Education Department instituted the program in the 1990s.
As a 30-year classroom veteran, Agnes-Meyer Teacher of the Year for Loudoun County, Virginia Historical Society Brenton S. Halsey Teacher of the Year, and as a museum educator for working with four school districts the past five years, I would strongly recommend the effort to drop multiple choice testing of the History SOLs at the end of Grade 3 go forward. Based on my experience both as a department chairman/teacher and as a museum educator working with our current crop of history educators, I would even more strongly recommend that we drop currently configured standardized SOL testing in all history classes. This is not because I am lazy, or because I do not believe that teachers need to have some form of oversight. [All of my students passed the SOL test in 11th grade U.S. History my last year of teaching when I had “learned the game.”] It is not because I want history dropped from the curriculum (it won’t be) or that there should be no Standards of Learning to guide history teachers.
Here is why this form of standardized testing should be heavily re-evaluated or dropped:
1. The huge number of tested items forces teachers to go for "coverage" rather than thinking, discussion, and depth--in short, critical thinking and learning are replaced by memorization. Rote learning impresses some, evidently—particularly those who came of age before 1900.
2. Weaker schools have to "teach to the test"; stronger schools find that good teaching has to be replaced by teaching memorizable factoids (i.e., “teach to the test.”).
3. The tests use multiple choice questions that test the simplest form of knowing. Writing is not involved, problem-solving, analysis or synthesis, application, and other higher order thinking skills are largely dodged. If you do not know this, multiple choice tests test better your reading ability than what you have learned. I found them highly unreliable unless coupled with other modes of evaluation as well. [I am lucky to be one who does very well on these types of multiple choice tests. Some of my most brilliant, learned students, however, struggled with them, while "acing" higher order essay-based testing.]
The Commonwealth has neither the grading time nor the extra funds that takes to change the current mode of evaluation.
4. Projects involving the community, field experiences, speakers in class, and other aspects that promote "best practice" historical learning take a back seat to constant factoid teaching. Administrators hate this. Teachers hate this. Parents hate this. Students hate this. If doing this kind of rote learning is so good, why do so few people ever positively remember that aspect of their history class learning? Ask any museum or historic site educator if they think this sort of emphasis through multiple choice testing has increased school interest in extending students’ learning into the community or to history beyond the classroom. You will see that, despite historic site adaptation to SOLs (programs are largely SOL-centric to allow subversive teachers to continue to really teach history), overall, students are being exposed to less real history due to the testing program, not more.
5. Dropping SOL testing of History does not marginalize history, it just refocuses our objective and our mode of teaching back to what we had learned during the educational reform movements of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. We were on the verge of the best teaching I ever witnessed when Governor Allen introduced this kind of testing. SOLs will not be dropped, a multiple choice test as the way to evaluate what students learn will. Schools will ascertain for themselves how to evaluate whether students have learned along the SOL guidelines.
6. As an 11th grade teacher (both A.P. and Academic), the sheer number of SOLs and parts of SOLs meant total control of every day of your teaching, and even then, it was hard to get them all in with any thoughtful depth.
It does seem odd that I have yet to meet a good social studies teacher (the ones I currently work with) who enthusiastically supports SOL testing in the current format. They will do what they are ordered to, but they usually feel that the current SOL-testing-based program largely forces them to go against the best practice they were trained to do by our universities. For a few marginally competent people it provides escape, cook-book like guidelines, and an escape from the more difficult question of how to make history useful, challenging, thought-provoking, and of value to our country, our economy, and our community. The most common excuse for failure to take field trips, bring community resources into the classroom, teach children better writing and thinking skills, and pursue topics in any depth is, "I can't; I don't have time due to the SOL tests we must prepare for." Overwhelmingly, the schools under the most pressure to do well on the SOLs have the most problem extending learning in depth beyond them. NOTE: The best teachers in Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier, and Clarke counties are still trying—that’s the good news!
DON'T LET PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THAT SOL TESTING CORRELATES TO STATE EMPHASIS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. The point was for state control of what every child would learn. In its original incarnation, this meant a sharp shift to the right in the content and away from critical thinking. [Admittedly, the SOL content has been more centered with subsequent revisions to the SOLs).
You may wish to continue support for the SOLs, though they will need both regular updating/review and culling reduce the number to the most crucial content. However, I recommend you support efforts to end multiple-choice based testing at the end of 3rd grade Our current testing does not promote the community's education (unless memorization=education) or social science education goals. It promotes “coverage” and “memorization of factoids.” Please continue to promote quality history teaching in our schools and in our communities! Be a part of the solution!
Monday, June 1, 2009
Build it and They Will Come? Or Advertise, Advertise, Advertise?
I read an interesting Harvard Business Publishing blog by Don Pallotta, a leading expert in nonprofit innovation, focused around how so many not for profits do not invest in advertising. Besides the obvious lack of funding for such endeavors, I wonder why there is not more advertising in the nonprofit world? Do nonprofits eschew advertising as below their virtuous purposes? Do we think our intrinsic value is so great that we don't have a need for advertising? Is it simply a lack of money? Is it that people drawn to careers in the nonprofit world are not business-savvy enough to focus on marketing and advertising the same way an entrepreneur might? And, my final question, are we shooting ourselves in the collective 'foot' by not focusing more on spreading the word about all that we are and all that we offer????
- Heather
- Heather
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Top 10 Reasons to Love a VAM Council Meeting
10. The beautiful venues that are kind enough to host.
9. The lively discussion.
8. The lively debate.
7. The lunch (today's brownies were especially succulent)
6. The "tangents"
5. Discussions over how best to help our members.
4. Pig pens.
3. Innovative ideas that will bear fruit and help many in our field!
2. Tea and scones
and the #1 reason to love a VAM Council meeting? Knowing they'll blog about it afterward!
Thanks everyone for allowing me to join in today - I enjoyed talking with you!
- Heather
9. The lively discussion.
8. The lively debate.
7. The lunch (today's brownies were especially succulent)
6. The "tangents"
5. Discussions over how best to help our members.
4. Pig pens.
3. Innovative ideas that will bear fruit and help many in our field!
2. Tea and scones
and the #1 reason to love a VAM Council meeting? Knowing they'll blog about it afterward!
Thanks everyone for allowing me to join in today - I enjoyed talking with you!
- Heather
Friday, May 1, 2009
VAM is Extending May Day for the Whole Month!
In honor of May Day, VAM urges all museums to review their disaster plans in the month of May. We also encourage anyone who is a member of a MEST group (Museum Emergency Support Team), anyone who is interested in serving on VAM's Emergency Response Team, and anyone who just wants to learn more about emergency salvage and recovery, to come to one of our special workshops in May:
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Bleeding a Turnip
In the VAM office we tend to get the phone calls and emails early when news breaks about layoffs in the museum world. The news is always unwelcome, and sometimes heartbreaking, and we do what we can to help. But no words have affected me like the following from the recent press coverage of the loss of 5 positions at the Taubman Museum of Art:
“(Board President John) Williamson said the staff cuts and other adjustments would save about $370,000 annually. He said there is no plan to cut services or programs.”
In the rush to reassure the community that nothing will change, what other message does it send? How can you cut five positions out of 33 with absolutely no effect on programs and services? I do not have all of the details of the Taubman situation and perhaps this was an overstatement or misquote; but we all know that in general it is possible only if the remaining staff absorb the duties of the fired staff. This is what museums routinely do in this situation. It is not the fault of the museum director; as my mother used to say “you can’t get blood out of a turnip” and the work still needs to be done.
But what the general public reads into that statement is “they must have had a lot of extra people they didn’t really need.” This is a great disservice to all museum staff who work hard and are proud of what they do. It also exacerbates the stress of those staff who remain and must now find extra hours in the day to do someone else’s job in addition to their own. If the work doesn’t suffer, then surely one’s health and family life will. Something has got to give.
The Virginia Association of Museums has been asked by the American Association of Museums to participate in a multi-phase planning process for the reinvention of the Accreditation Program. The results will help determine how AAM can best go about comprehensively reinventing the accreditation program into something that is more effective, efficient, valuable, and relevant to the field. I would like to see some guidelines on human resource management addressed in the new accreditation standards. What would you like to see?
We want to hear from you what you feel are the issues before the museum industry and how they relate to accreditation. Please feel free to write me at mcarlock@vamuseums.org. VAM’s Council members will also be gathering input at the VAM booth during the annual conference in Virginia Beach March 22-24.
It is a remarkable step that AAM is taking to re-engineer the accreditation process and requirements based on input from the field. It is now our obligation to provide that input.
“(Board President John) Williamson said the staff cuts and other adjustments would save about $370,000 annually. He said there is no plan to cut services or programs.”
In the rush to reassure the community that nothing will change, what other message does it send? How can you cut five positions out of 33 with absolutely no effect on programs and services? I do not have all of the details of the Taubman situation and perhaps this was an overstatement or misquote; but we all know that in general it is possible only if the remaining staff absorb the duties of the fired staff. This is what museums routinely do in this situation. It is not the fault of the museum director; as my mother used to say “you can’t get blood out of a turnip” and the work still needs to be done.
But what the general public reads into that statement is “they must have had a lot of extra people they didn’t really need.” This is a great disservice to all museum staff who work hard and are proud of what they do. It also exacerbates the stress of those staff who remain and must now find extra hours in the day to do someone else’s job in addition to their own. If the work doesn’t suffer, then surely one’s health and family life will. Something has got to give.
The Virginia Association of Museums has been asked by the American Association of Museums to participate in a multi-phase planning process for the reinvention of the Accreditation Program. The results will help determine how AAM can best go about comprehensively reinventing the accreditation program into something that is more effective, efficient, valuable, and relevant to the field. I would like to see some guidelines on human resource management addressed in the new accreditation standards. What would you like to see?
We want to hear from you what you feel are the issues before the museum industry and how they relate to accreditation. Please feel free to write me at mcarlock@vamuseums.org. VAM’s Council members will also be gathering input at the VAM booth during the annual conference in Virginia Beach March 22-24.
It is a remarkable step that AAM is taking to re-engineer the accreditation process and requirements based on input from the field. It is now our obligation to provide that input.
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