[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Choice review
tsticht at znet.com
tsticht at znet.com
Tue Aug 19 00:39:41 BST 2014
Judith, Ken, and All: Following is a note I wrote earlier this year about
the dangers of thinking critically about literacy assessment in adult
education. Might be relevant to Ken et al re whose knowledge counts in
education policy and practice.
Tom Sticht
7/9/2014
On the Danger of Thinking Critically in Adult Education
Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education
Definition: pariah (pəˈraiə) noun; a person driven out of a
group or
community; an outcast. Example: Because of his political beliefs
he became a pariah in the
district.
Because of my beliefs about the shortcomings of standardized tests and their
interpretations used in the national and international adult literacy
assessments since the mid-1990s, I became a pariah in the field of adult
literacy education. I was left out of professional consultant groups by the
federal government and its contractors because I did not agree with what was
being done with standardized tests both for assessing the skills of adults
and as accountability measures for the Adult Education and Literacy System
(AELS).
When the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) first report came out in 1993
I was struck by the arbitrary nature of the scale development which required
that someone have an 80 percent probability of being able to perform a
certain task to be considered competent at that level of task difficulty. I
wrote a number of Research Notes drawing attention to the problems of the
NALS scaling and interpretation. However, my criticisms of the 80 percent
response probability were soundly criticized by the test developers and
ignored by others who were using the data for advocating for more money for
adult literacy education.
Another aspect of the NALS (and the International Adult Literacy Survey
(IALS) and its spinoffs that I criticized was the repeated pronouncement
that of the set of literacy levels ranging from a low of 1 to a high of 5
adults needed to be at level 3 to be able to successfully compete in our
contemporary high-skill economy. I argued that there were no data to
support this claim. Still, I was criticized by the test developers and
ignored by government policymakers.
However, things changed based on a Research Note that I posted on the NLA
listserv July 10, 2001. I sent a copy to Jay Mathews, education columnist
for the Washington Post and the Post published his article Tuesday, July
17, 2001 entitled "Adult Illiteracy, Rewritten" in which the former
director of the National Adult Literacy Survey reported that the NALS used
"the wrong "response probability" even after other federal researchers had
concluded that that would greatly exaggerate the severity of [adult
literacy] problems."
Following the Washington Post article, the adult literacy discussion lists
were filled with test developers from ETS, Statistics Canada, and adult
advocacy groups denouncing the Washington Post article and, at times,
directly criticizing me for exposing the problems the NALS to the general
public. However, several years later, a National Academies of Science,
National Research Council report on assessing adult literacy was published
which argued that, as I had very early pointed out, the 80 percent
probability was too stringent and the report called for the use of a 67
percent response probability. And as I had also argued, the NRC report also
made the point that the use of the level 3 as a criterion level of adult
literacy in order for adults to be able to succeed in our knowledge
economies was not warranted. Following this, the 2013 Programme for the
International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) adopted the .67
response probability for its literacy scales and announced that no level
for competency would be designated as the criterion for being successful
because there was no basis for making such a criterion designation.
Though I feel somewhat vindicated by the changes made to the national and
international adult literacy surveys based to a large degree on what I
thought early on about the assessments, I have become a pariah in adult
literacy education in federal government circles and in testing contractor
circles. To deepen my status as a pariah, I have also consistently thought
critically about and wrote about the National Reporting System (NRS) and
its misuse of standardized tests! Today, you will not see my name in any of
the lists of distinguished scholars contributing to government funded
reports.
But to me, the real disappointment is that none of the various adult
literacy assessments nor the NRS seem to have benefited adult learners very
much, if at all. In 1993, the AELS had over 3.8 million enrollments and now,
20 years later, after a series of national and international adult literacy
assessments, and the implementation of the NRS, enrollments have dropped to
a little over 1.7 million. For the last decade, federal state grant funding
for the AELS has remained stagnant in the vicinity of $575 million, or about
$300 per enrollment.
Take it from the pariah, critical thinking can be dangerous!
tsticht at aznet.net
Quoting Judith Green <judithlgreen at me.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I thought that this conceptual argument is one that might be a good
> dialogues here.
>
> J
> On Aug 18, 2014, at 2:37 PM, Ken Goodman <kgoodman at u.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
> > For your information
> > Ken Goodman
> > Ken Goodman
> > 7814 South Galileo Lane
> > Tucson, Az 85747
> > 520-745-6895
> > Learning is not a Response to Instruction
> > Effective Iinstruction is a Response to Learning
> > As Don Graves said "Orthodoxies make us tell old stories about
> children at the expense of the new stories that children are telling us."
> >
> > Use Google to see :
> > Ken Goodman's Morning post
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Silverman, Naomi <Naomi.Silverman at taylorandfrancis.com>
> > Date: Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 12:43 PM
> > Subject: Choice review
> > To: "Goodman, Yetta M - (ygoodman) (ygoodman at email.arizona.edu)"
> <ygoodman at email.arizona.edu>, "Goodman, Kenneth S - (kgoodman)
> (kgoodman at email.arizona.edu)" <kgoodman at email.arizona.edu>, "Bob Calfee
> (robert.calfee at ucr.edu)" <robert.calfee at ucr.edu>
> >
> >
> > Hi Yetta, Ken, and Bob,
> >
> >
> >
> > A good recommendation in CHOICE!
> >
> >
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Naomi
> >
> >
> >
> > The following review appeared in the August 2014 issue of CHOICE:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 51-6878 LC149
> 2013-9875 CIP
> > Whose knowledge counts in government literacy policies?: why expertise
> matters, ed. by Kenneth S. Goodman, Robert
> >
> > C. Calfee, and Yetta M. Goodman. Routledge, 2014. 217p bibl index ISBN
> 9780415858007, $140.00; ISBN 9780415858014 pbk, $41.95; ISBN
> 9780203796849 e-book, contact publisher for price
> >
> >
> > Curriculum and policy are informed by assumptions about what counts as
> knowledge, grounded in notions of human nature, and affected by
> determinations about whose knowledge counts in the construction and
> delivery of knowledge in formal educational settings. Whose Knowledge
> Counts in Government Literacy Policies? is an edited volume consisting of
> essays on literacy policies, current research in literacy development and
> practice, and the impact of policy on practice. The book is organized in
> two sections. The first section examines the larger question of "whose
> knowledge counts?" This question is contemplated through six essays that
> examine literacy policies throughout the US and Europe. The second
> section of the book contains essays that focus on a variety of topics,
> such as the role of literary texts within standardized tests, diversity
> in children's literature, writing instruction, the common core state
> standards in literacy instruction, and literature and literary reasoning.
> The diversity of ideas offered within the book affords the reader a rich
> opportunity to consider foundational issues of policy and practice.
> Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. -- J A. Helfer, Illinois
> State Board of Education
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> > Il,
> >
> > f
> >
> > I
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> > _______________________________________________
> > Reading-hall-of-fame mailing list
> > Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> > http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/reading-hall-of-fame
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