Should high school students have to 'defend' their diploma like a Ph.D?
LOS ANGELES — Looking smart in a blue button-down shirt, Jorge Magana, 18, zipped through a PowerPoint presentation with the confidence of a Fortune 500 CEO.
Seated in front of Magana in a classroom at Los Angeles High Schoolhouse of the Arts was a console of three judges: the schoolhouse's assistant principal, a school coordinator, and a former pupil. The occasion was his senior defense. Magana was trying to convince the panel that he was set to graduate.
He had 45 minutes to present a portfolio of three "artifacts," one academic, ane artistic, and one of his ain choosing. The panel grilled him: Can yous describe your research procedure? Which obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? How volition the skills you learned help with your future plans?
Portfolio assessments like this 1, which look a lot like doctoral dissertation defenses, are on the rise in California. The practice, touted by educators nationwide every bit a proven path to college success, has largely been squeezed out by standardized tests, the quicker, less-costly measure of student operation. Simply the state's reliance on exam scores to rank school performance is about to modify, and educators see an opportunity.
Since 1999, California has primarily tied school rankings to test scores, using the Academic Performance Index (API). Since its repeal in July 2013, the three-digit ranking has been undergoing revision. On the new API, which volition debut in the 2015-2016 schoolhouse year, examination scores will account for only 60 percent of a school's ranking. The other 40 per centum will factor in graduation information and "proof of readiness for college and career." Portfolio cess can supply this data. The tricky part is disarming skeptics that these assessments are reliable.
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Magana's presentation seemed to come off smoothly. He started with the personal statement he wrote for AP English about his male parent'due south alcoholism and its issue on his family. Then he presented a model of a set up for the play "Electricidad" that he built for Avant-garde Breathtaking Pattern form. He finished with a policy memo he wrote for AP Government on the high toll of rehab.
Merely when the panel asked him specific questions, Magana stalled.
"What policies already exist to help those who can't beget rehab?" asked Cathy Kwan, the high school coordinator who is developing the portfolio model. She schedules the defenses, recruits panel members, and trains teachers.
Magana fell silent and looked off to the side. He had just argued in the memo that the price tag for alcohol rehab is prohibitive for minimum wage earners and that there should be policies in place to ensure alcoholics can go the assistance they need gratis of charge.
"I did research that," he said. "Only I tin can't recall."
40 — the pct of a California school's ranking that will be based on data other than examination scores in the 2015-2016 schoolhouse year.
Magana stepped outside the classroom while the panel evaluated his performance. The judges agreed his presentation skills were solid: he made eye contact, he knew how to agree the audience's attention, and he was organized. Only he failed to demonstrate content knowledge and sound research skills. Assistant principal Matthew Hein pointed out a "classic bad research move," Magana's admission that he "dismissed enquiry that didn't fit his opinion."
The verdict: Magana would have to rewrite the policy memo and defend his piece of work again.
This is simply the second year Los Angeles Loftier School of the Arts has required its seniors to practice portfolio defenses. The seriousness of the process and the amount of work it takes hasn't yet sunk in. "Students didn't actually take the defenses seriously plenty," says Kwan reflecting on this year's presentations. "They idea nosotros were simply going to permit them pass. They'd say to me, 'I got this.' And I'd tell them, 'No, you don't. Yous have to practice.'"
Making Portfolio Assessments Reliable
Kwan is struggling with the difficulty facing whatsoever educator hoping to utilize the portfolio model: defining a standard approach to evaluation. Harvard educational activity professor Daniel Koretz knows this difficulty firsthand. He studied the portfolio models of Kentucky and Vermont in the 1990s, when those states were trying to replace standardized tests with portfolio assessments. The criteria for what makes a skilful portfolio, Koretz found, tin vary widely from schoolhouse to schoolhouse, making comparisons difficult.
"The standardized assessment is standardized precisely then that there is nothing extraneous that differs between kids or between schools," he says.
This problem has sent educators in California searching for an objectivity non usually associated with portfolio assessment.
A recent report from Stanford University professors Soung Bae and Linda Darling-Hammond promotes graduation portfolios every bit one measure of how well schools prepare students for higher. The authors recommend that the land allow schools to utilise "well-designed" portfolios, comprised of piece of work from each of 5 different subject areas to include inquiry essays, fine art piece of work and other sophisticated projects that tin can't be captured on a examination in place of traditional go out exams.
"There's an openness in the legislature [to consider] what would be more than indicative of college and career readiness than sitting down and filling in a multiple-selection Scantron," says Darling-Hammond. "Some say U.Due south. kids are the most tested and the least examined in the world. We have a lot of tests, only we don't have high-quality examinations of thinking and performance."
Aiming to examination the digital portfolio as a way of producing reliable data, Stanford'southward Centre for Assessment, Learning, and Disinterestedness (Scale) has teamed upwardly with Connected, a Berkeley-based organisation that promotes a mix of academic and career-centered school programs called "linked learning."
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The resulting online tool, Continued Studios, tries to take the subjectivity out of evaluating portfolios. Students tin earn digital badges for completing performance tasks. A student writing an belligerent essay, for case, tin upload the essay to the site, where his teacher can evaluate the writing according to a scoring rubric with criteria for grading. A serial of dots represents the progress of the essay: red dot (ungraded), purple dot (non skillful), and green dot (expert). When the essay is accounted proficient, the pupil earns a badge.
"We run into these badges as data nuggets," says Dave Yanofsky, director of media and youth development* for Continued. "If done right, digital badges requite you both the qualitative and quantitative component. It's not merely that the pupil turned in the work and got a pat on the back. These badges show that students turned in work that is up to the level of quality we established."
The development of reliable portfolio assessments could have huge implications for how we approximate school effectiveness, non just in California but nationwide. Yanofsky estimates that xx schoolhouse districts, including Houston and Philadelphia, have expressed interest in working with ConnectEd to build their portfolio programs.
The expectation is that an online platform similar Connected Studios would create a secure identify for students to share videos, audio files, photos, writing samples, digital badges, resumes, and letters of recommendation, showcasing their qualifications for universities and potential employers.
"Students can sell themselves curt," says Nadia Schafer, a digital specialist with Philadelphia Academies, a nonprofit that works with area high schools to provide students with career grooming and college grooming. "But the portfolio shows them all that they've accomplished. A portfolio tells their stories so much meliorate than simply a resume ever could."
Related: Can we really set up kids for both higher and career?
For now, the goal at the Los Angeles Unified school commune is to make the portfolio defense force a graduation requirement. Ten high schools are piloting the initiative, and in that location are plans to get more than schools on board next school year.
"Students have improved immensely since we showtime started," says Kwan. "Simply it still wouldn't be fair to concur them back based on the defence. We oasis't however learned how to gear up kids adequately to do this."
Half of the Los Angeles Unified schools testing portfolio defenses have partnered with Envision Schools, a network of 3 small charter loftier schools in the San Francisco area that has systematized the portfolio model over the past 13 years and can provide stride-past-stride instructions on how to build a portfolio program. Fifty.A. teachers traveled to San Francisco to sentry the Envision students defend their portfolios and to get grooming on how to critique them. Envision has shared videos of model defenses and scoring rubrics that L.A. teachers can revise to suit their schools' specific needs.
Tin can Portfolios Make the Class?
At first, many teachers at Los Angeles Loftier School of the Arts thought the defense was an unnecessary torture. And so, they actually witnessed a defense.
"When you run across your students reflect on what they've learned, and see how that learning has affected them, it's difficult to say this isn't a good idea," says Isabel Morales, a 12th form social studies teacher. "Watching the defenses taught me how much my lessons count, how crucial it is for me to provide a transformative learning experience for my students."
"Some say U.S. kids are the about tested and the to the lowest degree examined in the world. We accept a lot of tests, just we don't accept high quality examinations of thinking and functioning."
Morales says students tin can simply "go through the motions" in grade, taking in information without actually retaining information technology. But portfolio defenses force them to explain what they've learned, and to employ it in different ways; for instance, Magana tackled the issue of alcoholism as a statement on policy and in a personal statement. Since the portfolio plan started, Morales has discovered that the all-time preparation for a portfolio defence force is for students to share their work and reflections on what they learned in the procedure, something she didn't ever brand fourth dimension to practice.
Realizations like this 1 are the most of import outcomes of the defenses, according to Tom Skjervheim, an associate director at ConnectEd. In fact, when Skjervheim views a defense, he finds himself evaluating the teacher more than the pupil. "The portfolio defenses shed a lite for teachers on what they should be doing in professional development," he says. "They permit teachers to call up almost how they might tighten upwardly their practices and go the results they want from students."
According to a survey of students at Los Angeles Loftier School of the Arts, 90 percent of students who passed and 68 per centum of students who failed said the portfolio defence force was a "worthwhile experience." Magana, who passed his second defense a week later, says he's learned from his mistakes and won't repeat them at the University of California Riverside, where he'll major in computer scientific discipline this fall.
"I'one thousand worried that in college I won't take anyone at that place to push me," Magana says. "But I have this feel to refer back to. I will remember this. I won't allow myself to fail over again."
Kwan is already planning means to make the experience more worthwhile next year, including training teachers to revamp their lessons. She thinks teachers need to tell kids upward front end what they're going to learn and why they're learning information technology. "This isn't equally mutual as you might think," says Kwan. "Kids frequently don't know why they practice assignments."
Students will likewise get more opportunities to practice their presentations earlier the big twenty-four hour period. Groups of 4 will exist assigned a mentor teacher who volition critique their portfolios and presentations. Eleventh graders will assist during senior defenses, by switching slides or serving as panelists, gaining a sense of what volition be expected of them the side by side yr. Tenth graders will participate in mini-defenses in front of their classes.
While Kwan is intent on perfecting the process, she worries that portfolio assessment could become rote in pursuit of data. The Envision Schools take the defenses "down to a science," she says. Students commencement to sound robotic when they're all saying the same things, she adds.
Success, for Kwan, depends on a continuous evaluation of the process, not on routine. What counts as a existent demonstration of learning?
"Many visitors are impressed that students are speaking in front of an audition," Kwan says. "They don't observe that the presentation is disorganized or that the students are having trouble answering the judges' questions. It'due south not proficient plenty that students face a difficult task. They accept to get up there and accept substance. But because you lot show up to an interview doesn't mean you get the job."
Of the 92 seniors who dedicated their portfolios this year, 33 failed. Like Magana, they were scheduled to redo their presentations.
Merely, in the finish, all students passed and nabbed diplomas.
"They worked their tushes off," says Kwan. "Not i of them gave up."
This story was written past The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, contained news arrangement focused on inequality and innovation in instruction. Read more than about California schools .
*Correction: Dave Yanofsky's title has been corrected to reflect his position equally the director of media and youth development at ConnectEd.
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Source: https://hechingerreport.org/should-high-school-students-have-to-defend-their-diploma-like-a-ph-d/
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