It's kind of new to me, writing about where I work, so bear with me as I try not to divulge anything as I am, uh, divulging things. That is, there is likely information I should not share, and I'm not exactly clear on what that is yet. Erring on the side of caution is not my forte. However, the corollary to that is that I have a deep sense of integrity that guides my actions, especially pertaining to anything that is private or sensitive or has the potential to affect my or anyone's job situation. I try to stay in alignment with my principles, which is a good thing, and more important to me than external rules. The rules are not unimportant, but they are there to serve, not to be served, if you know what I mean.
So. This pilot project is about tutoring. There is a certain huge educational publishing company that runs the software, and we are trying it out this summer. The idea is a very good one: get incoming recent high school graduates up to the skills level they need to be in order to save time and money not taking remedial courses, which often derail the student and lower graduation rates. So far so good.
Some questions that have been brought up or are readily apparent to me: The same company that is trying to sell us this software runs the software we use for placement purposes throughout the district. This program is funneling students into testing software, and measuring how well they do on that is not necessarily relevant to how well they will do in actual classes. Do we as faculty have any say over that, in real terms? I'm guessing not. Do we simply do our best within a system that may or may not work? Or do we try to change something that I know took years and multiple levels of governance to create? Is that even possible? How is this system evaluated currently?
An issue that was raised: there are no calculators allowed on any of these tests. Our students have been using them throughout their school careers, and will most often be allowed to use them in their classes. How well are these tests measuring skill levels, and more importantly, how well are they placing students to be poised for success? Are they actually holding the students back? I feel like I need to find out more about this issue from students and faculty alike. You can bet I will ask my daughter about the test again, with this new information I have.
The English portion is less useful, as you can imagine. Because the classes these students will be taking are designed by teachers, to teach writing. The tests focus on sentence structure and reading comprehension. There is a disconnect. With this, too, I want to know how they are measuring the correlations between placement and student success.
I am oddly tangential to the whole situation, as I am really here to satisfy legal requirements for a faculty member to be present in the tutoring area, but I am not the usual faculty in this area and I'm kind of an interloper. Although my name is on the course, I'm not really the person in charge of the pilot program, the director of the assessment center is. And my ideas may or may not be seen as helpful. It's a fine line to walk, especially for someone who hopes to be hired full-time one day. I mustn't burn any bridges.
Stay tuned!
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