Speakout Elementary End Of Course Test

[Christain Cobb]

Afew months ago I published the first part of this series where parents of current or former Success Academy students can share their stories. As I hoped would happen, another frustrated parent found that post and contacted me with his own disturbing story to tell.

In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.

But she was still suffering the effects of the 18 months of remote learning. She was having mental health issues and was seeing a therapist about them. At school she was failing several classes. Carla is a very hard working student and someone who really tries her best and her parents work very hard to support her needs and to keep on top of what assignments Carla was missing. Everyone knows that Success Academy has one trick in their playbook which is to make students repeat grades for failing courses. So Carla managed to improve most of her grades but she still failed two subjects, writing and science and was told that she would have to pass those two courses in summer school or she would have to repeat the entire seventh grade.

Making a student repeat seventh grade for failing one class by one point is cruel and possibly illegal. The father told me that he believes that the 69 grade is in error anyway because he has screen shots of all the work she submitted. Either way, any grading system produces a grade that is really just an approximation for the work the student did and what they learned. There is certainly a margin of error in the calculation so usually if a student fails a course by one point, you give the student the benefit of the doubt.

This is a student that Success Academy had been teaching for eight years. They saw her thrive for five of those years. They saw her start to struggle and then saw her suffer through remote learning and trying to rebound from the remote year. But Success Academy cares about their systems and their standardized test scores (Carla did get 4s on her state tests still) and about pressuring students and parents to fix mental health issues that the school has no idea, nor any desire to learn how, to help with.

So while this is just the second installment of Success Academy Parents speak out, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of parents with similar experiences and feelings of frustration when they get on the bad side of this heartless organization.

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As many students return to in-person learning for the first time in almost a year, states and school districts are also beginning to gear up for statewide standardized testing, as required by the US Department of Education (ED).

Educators across the country criticized the decision, saying the idea that students should be forced to take any sort of standardized test this year is incomprehensible. The priority right now should be on strengthening instruction and support for students and families in communities most traumatized by the impact of the coronavirus.

Many of these same communities have suffered the most from high-stakes testing. Since their inception almost a century ago, the tests have been instruments of racism and a biased system. Decades of research demonstrate that Black, Latin(o/a/x), and Native students, as well as students from some Asian groups, experience bias from standardized tests administered from early childhood through college.

The SAT debuted in 1926, joined by the ACT (American College Testing) in the 1950s. By the 21st century, the SAT and ACT were just part of a barrage of tests students may face before reaching college. The College Board also offers SAT II tests, designed for individual subjects ranging from biology to geography.

During World War I, standardized tests helped place 1.5 million soldiers in units segregated by race and by test scores. The tests were scientific yet they remained deeply biased, according to researchers and media reports.

In 1917, Terman and a group of colleagues were recruited by the American Psychological Association to help the Army develop group intelligence tests and a group intelligence scale. Army testing during World War I ignited the most rapid expansion of the school testing movement.

By 1918, there were more than 100 standardized tests, developed by different researchers to measure achievement in the principal elementary and secondary school subjects. The U.S. Bureau of Education reported in 1925 that intelligence and achievement tests were increasingly used to classify students at all levels.

By 1930, multiple-choice tests were firmly entrenched in U.S. schools. The rapid spread of the SAT sparked debate along two lines. Some critics viewed the multiple-choice format as encouraging memorization and guessing. Others examined the content of the questions and reached the conclusion that the tests were racist.

Eventually, Brigham adapted the Army test for use in college admissions, and his work began to interest interested administrators at Harvard University. Starting in 1934, Harvard adopted the SAT to select scholarship recipients at the school. Many institutions of higher learning soon followed suit.

High-stakes testing also causes additional damage to some students who are categorized as English language learners (ELLs). The tests are often inaccurate for ELLs, according to FairTest, leading to misplacement or retention. ELLs are, alongside students with disabilities, those least likely to pass graduation tests.

African-Americans, especially males, are disproportionately placed or misplaced in special education, frequently based on test results. In effect, the use of high-stakes testing perpetuates racial inequality through the emotional and psychological power of the tests over the test takers.:

Popular private school ratings systems such as GreatSchools.org (40 million unique visitors every year) may be accelerating existing patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation. Their rankings are based largely on standardized test scores and are fed into national real estate web sites. According to a 2019 study of GreatSchools ratings, areas with highly-rated schools usually see increases in home prices.

"Affluent and more educated families were better positioned to leverage this new information to capture educational opportunities in communities with the best schools," the authors wrote. "An unintended consequence of better information was less, rather than more, equity in education."

A Chalkbeat analysis found that GreatSchools ratings effectively penalize schools that serve low-income and Black and Hispanic students, generally giving them significantly lower ratings than schools serving more affluent and more white and Asian students."

This was a conversation that drove many of the educator-led victories in the years before the pandemic. Joining forces with families and other allies, educators worked diligently to reduce the over-reliance and misuse of testing and shift the focus to fairer, more effective assessment systems that actually support the academic, social and emotional needs of their students.

Lectures with the whole group will be mainly devoted to thepresentation of grammatical, lexical, functional and phonologicalconcepts in the five units on the part of the teacher. Students areencouraged to critically read the set readings, as well as to takeactive part in class by asking questions and by making criticalappreciations regarding the theoretical lessons.

It is essential that students prepare those exercises at home inadvance and participate actively in class by givingthe answers and proposing alternative possibilities. Sometime will also be devoted to oral presentations and debatesconcerning the issues dealt with in the different units.

- Mastering of thetheoretical and operative concepts in the course by means of awritten test and an oral examination (50%: 40% in the case of thewritten exam; 10% for the listening comprehension paper):

a) In the written test students will beassessed on their writing and reading and it will consist ofquestions regarding lexical and conceptual contents in exercises ofreading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, functions, and writing.This is a qualifying exam.

- Homework assignments [2compulsory compositions are worth 15% of the final mark, that is tosay, each is 7,5%] and oral presentations in class [these are donein groups and are worth 15% of the final mark] (30%).

Continuous assessment (20% for active participation[including, among others, 2 optional compositions] and 30% forassignments and presentations) will be taken into account and addedto the remaining 50% only if the students pass the examinations (byobtaining at least 5 out of 10).

Speakout bridges the gap between classroom and the real worldAuthentic video material from the BBC with DVD spreads in every unit motivate and engage studentsVideo Podcasts created by the BBC show English as it is really spokenPersonalised learning delivered online with MySpeakoutLabComprehensive, multi-strand approach to language development with a strong focus on real-life communication skillsMySpeakoutLab - online homework & assessment. Instant feedback and an automatic gradebookAssign extra activities from a bank of resources for more practiceUpload audio and video files and an integrated video playerUnit, progress, mid and end of course tests at the touch of a buttonActiveTeach contains everything a teacher will need for the course in the classroom. It can be used with a computer and a projector or with an interactive whiteboard. It includes:All the audio and video from the bookAll the pages with a 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' featureFully functional IWB toolsThe ability to save all your notes alongside the relevant page of the Student's BookExtra resources including review games and activitiesActiveBook is a digital coursebook with a wealth of extra resources for students.Easy navigation of Student's Book pages with 'zoom in' facility and Audio available at the touch of a buttonStudents are able to store their notes with the Active Book note taking facilityExtra video podcasts with accompanying worksheets.

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