The Santa Claus Predicament

Should we feel sorry for Santa Claus the student?

Think of him in assessment terms. Here is someone judged on a single performance each year with the results completely disconnected from those guiding his preparation throughout that year or the next. His coaches and teachers might as well be at, well, the North Pole. At test time, if I like the new books and CDs, he receives an "A"; a lousy shirt and pair of itchy socks, a "D-." And given the repeat appearance of the same cologne I never use, he obviously receives precious little feedback by which to improve his next performance!

Unfortunately, too often our assessments resemble poor Santa Claus predicament--detached from a teacher's work and input and weakly guiding future student improvement. Avoiding coal in your school district's stocking requires adherence to two assessment principles:

* balancing the goals of identifying talent and developing it, and

* nurturing the associational networks and building the consensus upon which the integrity of assessment and the vitality of professional development depend.

Take the SAT. Here is a highly reliable, recently enhanced, sophisticated instrument that identifies developed abilities critical to success in college and work. Yet it is through the counseling and study plans beforehand, ideally based on earlier PSAT results, along with rigorous academic work in regular, honors, and Advanced Placement courses, that such competencies are developed. The instrument identifying developed abilities must be used in an integrated way with prior instruments, coursework results, and counseling efforts to build the 364 days before Santa arrives.

Another example can be seen in the new Pacesetter program, an effort by the College Board to integrate performance assessments, professional development, and curricular enhancement in challenging courses for all high school students. Now being piloted in Spanish, English, and mathematics, more than 36,000 students and more than 400 teachers continue to develop this integrated package that rigorously diagnoses and develops the multiple talents we expect of students.

The Advanced Placement program provides another example. The exams successfully challenge so many students to high, levels of achievement only because of their linkage with demanding course frameworks and teacher training institutes. In addition, intensive teacher workshop programs such as Building Success focus on strategies to prepare students, from middle school onward, to take challenging courses.

Yet even with a balanced approach to identify and develop talents, the integrity of the standards must be constantly sustained. Assessments must continue to reflect the best judgments of the academic disciplines and be linked intimately to those teachers who daily develop and teach the field. Assessments sustain their integrity upon the vibrancy of the professional network behind them.

The College Board learned that lesson in its founding as a non-profit membership association 96 years ago. The schools and colleges that founded the organization sought to resolve the "educational anarchy" caused by the fact that each college had its own admission standards at a time when public high school graduates had more than quadrupled over the previous two decades. They agreed upon updated standards and built a common examination.

While often it is the exam and the scores that people associate with the College Board, in fact it is the flesh and bones network of talented faculty members across the country, hashing and rehashing their rubrics and standards, that makes a program like AP a living source for professional development. Together they produce consensus around rigorous standards of student achievement.

So in keeping with the spirit of the season and of good assessment, let's sustain assesment integrity all year long, balancing talent identification and talent development along the way. Maybe we can even coach Santa Claus along to greater performances.

COPYRIGHT 1996 American Association of School Administrators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group