This is an excerpt from a recent job application. I'm not sure it was
the proper forum for sharing my views about global assessment :) , but
maybe the letter will sneak past Human Resources and reach someone who
cares. Comments are welcome.

I’m one of the few people who has examined whether school based
management facilitates school improvement or improvement of student
achievement. I suspect I am the only person who has done this from
either a school perspective or using Alberta schools. The web version of
my study “School-based Management, Expectations and Outcomes: Edmonton
Public Schools 15 Years Down the Road” can be found at
http://www.clubwebcanada.ca/l-pphillips/thesisweb/index.html. I created
the following articles and presentations based on the study:

Locally Managed Schools: What Do They Do? at
http://www.clubwebcanada.ca/l-pphillips/edarticles/localschools.htm and

Students and Standards at
http://www.clubwebcanada.ca/l-pphillips/edarticles/studstand.htm

One of my concerns is that the information to do the study was only
available from Edmonton Public Schools and that Edmonton Public Schools
no longer collects this information. Since the study was done
comprehensive reporting has been reduced to reporting on a modified list
of provincial goals and expectations. Admittedly, comprehensive
reporting was onerous and killed a lot of trees, but it allowed schools
to include site specific goals.

One challenge in evaluating learning systems is to encourage student
centered objectives while evaluating system performance. When I was a
trustee at Edmonton Public Schools, I proposed a district goal of
students improving their level of knowledge by one grade each academic
year. At the time I was told it couldn’t be measured. Subsequently, EPS
implemented Highest Level of Achievement tests, which provide some of
the data, needed to measure individual student learning. In addition
some schools have used the Canadian Test of Basic Skills to measure
incoming and outgoing grade level of achievement. There are problems
using these instruments, but they do address the measurement of student
learning.

Another challenge is ensuring evaluation tools encourage innovation in
teaching and the development of relevant curriculum materials.
Personally, I am appalled that schools are using 10 to 20-year-old texts
to teach about other cultures. Further, I am appalled that Japan and
Brazil are the only societies considered suitable for the study of
Societies and Culture. This occurs because the flexibility built into
the curriculum is negated by the curriculum content covered by the
achievement test. To develop self directed learners, the evaluation
systems used must support the development of self directed learners.
Ultimately, this will require system measures that are aggregates of
measures of individual learning.

I have used a community perspective of education to develop a purpose of
education that is student and community centered – “One Child -- Many
Communities: Recasting the Purpose of Education” at
http://www.clubwebcanada.ca/l-pphillips/edarticles/onechild.htm . One my
goals as manager would be to develop measures that support the following
purpose of education:

"The purpose of education is to help students reconcile the
expectations, attitudes, and values of the communities to which they
belong and to help the students acquire the skills, knowledge, and
attitudes expected by those communities in which they will satisfy their
vocational and avocational needs."

Most educational mission/goal statements address one or more components
of this purpose of education. The difference is comprehensiveness and a
theoretical basis.

- posted by Larry @ 11:17 a.m.