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November 2013
 
 

Progress Advancing in STEM Education but Mandated Student Assessments Continue to Hamstring Teachers
From Reen Gibb

GibbsWe’ve made some wonderful steps forward in STEM education at my high school, a highly rated suburban school system. Two of the most important advances are: a new technology-coach position was added to the HS and all students and teachers were issued a chrome book last June. In the library we have a ‘technology help center’ staffed by computer students and computer instructors. The help desk is often used by students having trouble with their chrome book. Besides giving tech support, the desk also lends out chrome books.

The full time ‘technology coach’ position is shared between a physics teacher and an English teacher. Both are highly successful, respected teachers who are also tech savy. The ‘tech’ coaches help us individually in our classrooms as well as conducting some technology training sessions on a variety of topics. Some specific technologies that, Greg Schwanbeck, the science technology coach has encouraged science and math teachers to use are:

  1. Socrative, a free, web-based service that students can access from any web-based devices. This service allows one to avoid the purchase and hassles of ‘clickers’. Much research reports the value of using peer instruction to support student learning and Socrative is great to use for formative assessments.

  2. YouTube videos. For example, instead of the classic textbook problem of ‘how deep is the well’, the teacher shows a YouTube video of an actual rock falling down a deep well and hearing the splash. Then have students decide what measurements they need to make to determine the depth of the well. YoutTube videos are great to use for experiments too dangerous or too costly to do in class. Greg’s website Schwanbeck.org is a rich trove of engaging videos, lesson plans and other resources on a wide variety of topics.

  3. Khan Academy is another treasure trove of information for students to access.

In my opinion, the many new state mandated assessment requirements for students, teachers and administrators detract from the advances we are making in STEM education. The time and energy it takes to fulfill these requirements detracts from the essential tasks of a teacher: working with students, preparing for classes and continued professional growth. The very time consuming, one-size fits all state initiatives -- which in part involve collecting data and more data (student testing) with no analysis model in mind-- will not further the goal of better student learning outcomes. Somehow quantifying expected student improvement and then tying it to teacher evaluations… very uninspiring, and I see no way that this is an authentic way to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness. Much depends on a student’s readiness to learn. The administrators are also required to do a Herculean number of supervision tasks involving many meetings, classroom visits and write-ups. I don’t believe the current model is sustainable, and STEM teachers who do have other career options even in a stressed economy will leave the profession in even higher numbers.

Reen Gibb is a Chemistry Teacher at Westwood High School in Westwood, Massachusetts. She also works at MIT to train students who will become high school science teachers.

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