Education Policy Proposal
Benchmarks: Not Leaving Any Child Behind
Benchmarks
In APA style, complete the following... 1. Cover page 2. Introduction - introduce your policy project, provide a setting, rationale and historical perspective 3. Then, write an Annotated Bibliography of each of the articles in support of your policy. See the example pages for more information. 4. Then, write an Annotated Bibliography of each of the articles against your policy. See the example pages for more information 5. Summary - write an overall summary of what you learned and how you will use this information to persuade your stakeholders.
Introduction to the Policy
Maricopa High School’s English and math departments are in need of organizing its reading, writing, and math benchmarks. The district needs to have a strong data collecting assessment they can rely on to sample what the students are capable of in each of the three skills. Today, the tests are not organized well enough to the teacher’s preferences, e.g., the reading test tends to have a page-long reading with only two questions below to answer. The students struggle to buy-in with all the reading while there are few questions to back the reading, and it is issues like these that are creating insufficient data that could be driving instruction to the needs of the students.
Factors to Consider
Some of the important factors that need to be considered would be who would write the test? The district would ultimately have to write the test in order to keep the bias away from the data, but there would need to be a committee of teachers from the subjects that would create templates for the district to use. The best thing the district could have is an ex-teacher of the subject that had become a curriculum coach or administrator that could really bridge the gap in subject knowledge and administration authority.
Policy Questions
Another question would be how often would the students take the benchmarks? A strong
Benchmarks
In APA style, complete the following... 1. Cover page 2. Introduction - introduce your policy project, provide a setting, rationale and historical perspective 3. Then, write an Annotated Bibliography of each of the articles in support of your policy. See the example pages for more information. 4. Then, write an Annotated Bibliography of each of the articles against your policy. See the example pages for more information 5. Summary - write an overall summary of what you learned and how you will use this information to persuade your stakeholders.
Introduction to the Policy
Maricopa High School’s English and math departments are in need of organizing its reading, writing, and math benchmarks. The district needs to have a strong data collecting assessment they can rely on to sample what the students are capable of in each of the three skills. Today, the tests are not organized well enough to the teacher’s preferences, e.g., the reading test tends to have a page-long reading with only two questions below to answer. The students struggle to buy-in with all the reading while there are few questions to back the reading, and it is issues like these that are creating insufficient data that could be driving instruction to the needs of the students.
Factors to Consider
Some of the important factors that need to be considered would be who would write the test? The district would ultimately have to write the test in order to keep the bias away from the data, but there would need to be a committee of teachers from the subjects that would create templates for the district to use. The best thing the district could have is an ex-teacher of the subject that had become a curriculum coach or administrator that could really bridge the gap in subject knowledge and administration authority.
Policy Questions
Another question would be how often would the students take the benchmarks? A strong
References: Arizona.gov (2012). Education Budget Statistics. Retrieved from http://arizona.gov. Bushweller, K (1997). Teaching to the Test. The American School Board Journal. http://www.pittsburghfuture.org/downloads/TeachingtotheTest.pdf Celaya, June (2012). Maricopa High School’s 2011-12 AIMS Results Report. Maricopa, Arizona. Jones, K., Vermette, & Jones, J (2009). An Integration of Backwards Planning Unit Design with the Two-Step Lesson Planning Framework. Education; Winter209, Vol. 130 Issue 2, p357-360, 4p. Kyro, P (2007). Revising the Concept and Form of Benchmark Testing. Research Centre for Vocational Education, University of Tampere, Kirkkotie, Finland http://210.212.115.113:81/AK.Dey/Management%20Tools/Benchmarking_Final/kyro.pdf Wiggins, G. A Case for Authentic Assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation: A peer-reviewed electronic journal. ISSN 1531-7714. http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2