Microsoft Word - v23n11 fnl.doc Journal website: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/ Manuscript received: 09/01/2014 Facebook: /EPAAA Revisions received: 11/01/2014 Twitter: @epaa_aape Accepted: 01/05/2015 SPECIAL SERIES A New Paradigm for Educational Accountability: Accountability for Meaningful Learning education policy analysis archives A peer-reviewed, independent, open access, multilingual journal Arizona State University Volume 23 Number 11 February 2nd, 2015 ISSN 1068-2341 Accountability Is More Than a Test Score Stephan Turnipseed LEGO Education & Linda Darling-Hammond Stanford University United States Citation: Turnipseed, S., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Accountability is more than a test score. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(11). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1986. This article is part of EPAA/AAPE’s Special Series on A New Paradigm for Educational Accountability: Accountability for Meaningul Learning. Guest Series Edited by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. Abstract: The number one quality business leaders look for in employees is creativity and yet the U.S. education system undermines the development of the higher-order skills that promote creativity by its dogged focus on multiple-choice tests. Stephan Turnipseed and Linda Darling- Hammond discuss the kind of rich accountability system that will help students develop into the skilled adults that modern business and industry require. Keywords: accountability; business leaders; testing; creativity. La responsabilidad educativa es más que una calificación en los exámenes Resumen: La primera cualidad que los líderes de negocios de calidad buscan en sus empleados es la creatividad y sin embargo el sistema educativo de Estados Unidos socava el desarrollo de las habilidades de orden superior que promueven la creatividad por su enfoque prioritario en pruebas de selección múltiple. Stephan Turnipseed y Linda Darling-Hammond discuten un sistema de epaa aape E ducation P olicy A nalysis A rchives V ol. 23 N o. 11 2 responsabilidad educativa que ayudará a los estudiantes a desarrollar como adultos las capacitades que los negocios y las industrias modernas requieren. Palabras clave: responsabilidad educativa; lideres de negocio; exámenes; creatividad. A responsabilidade educativa é mais do que os resultados dos testes Resumo: A primeira qualidade que os líderes empresariais procuram em seus funcionários é a criatividade, embora o sistema de ensino dos EUA prejudique o desenvolvimento de habilidades de ordem superior que promovem a criatividade porque o seu objectivo prioritário é obter bons resultados em testes de múltipla escolha. Stephan Turnipseed e Linda Darling-Hammond discutem um sistema de responsabilidade educativa que irá ajudar aos alunos a desenvolver como adultos as capacidades que as empresas e indústrias modernas exigem. Palavras-chave: responsabilidade educativa; líderes empresariais; exames; criatividade.   Accountability Is More Than a Test Score   The Department of Labor estimates that nearly 65% of the jobs today’s elementary students will hold during their careers have not yet been invented. To be ready for this future, our young people will need analytic and creative abilities that enable them to constantly inquire, explore, and learn both on their own and with others. Yet our education system undermines the development of these higher-order skills by its dogged focus on multiple-choice tests, which discourage critical and creative thinking, as the ultimate measure of student achievement and teacher and school accountability. A study by George Land and Beth Jarman (which spun off from NASA’s efforts to find creative employees) found that 98 percent of children test as creative geniuses at age 5, but that number decreases to only 30 percent by age 10 and a mere 12 percent by age 15. Only 2 percent of adults still test as creative geniuses by age 25. These adults are the product of an education system that increasingly emphasizes students’ ability to identify the “right” pre-determined answer to narrowly defined questions over posing new questions, developing ways to investigate them, and designing new answers. This kind of test-taking ability, however, is not what modern industry needs. A 2010 IBM survey of global business leaders confirms this: The number one quality business leaders look for in employees is creativity. They also look for learning ability, problem solving skills, collaboration, communication, resourcefulness, and resilience, often called “grit.” Yet our education policies continue to put a premium on passive learning through rote memorization and the recognition of answers on tests that allow for only one right answer. Right now, millions of students across the country are beginning the school year knowing that their year will end, in effect, with standardized exams in the spring. Because state tests are increasingly attached to high-stakes decisions (student advancement, teacher and principal firings, school closures), test prep demands more and more classroom time. And because the tests emphasize lower-level skills, they drive instruction in that direction. There are few incentives in the system for teachers and students to explore subjects in deep, meaningful, and engaging ways that would develop critical thinking, communication, and creative abilities. This is a serious problem for industry in the United States. In our global economy, creativity is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives product creation. Product creation drives manufacturing and service delivery, which, in turn, drive job creation. And jobs drive the economy. If U.S. businesses can not find the creative people they need, they will go where those people are. A ssessm ent and A ccountability to Support M eaningful L earning C O M M E N T A R Y 3 For many years, developing creative individuals and entrepreneurs has been the American education system’s strong suit. However, this historic strength has been jeopardized since 2002, when the federal No Child Left Behind Act tripled the amount of required state testing, attached punishments to scores, and encouraged states to abandon the performance assessments many of them had created to involve students in research, writing, and complex problem solving. Other countries have long looked to the U.S. for insights about how to educate for creativity, and many have re-focused their systems to consciously develop the abilities to think critically and design new products and ideas. In the late 1990s, for example, Singapore and Hong Kong launched reforms to prepare students for “21st century skills.” Both transformed their curriculum and examination systems to include long-term research projects that require students to define and investigate questions; find, develop, and analyze data; design solutions; and explain, test, revise and defend their ideas – strategies they learned from U.S. practices we have now substantially abandoned. Ironically, their students are learning to become creative scientists and engineers while most of ours are now learning merely to pick one answer out of five. To foster teaching that will develop highly skilled, creative, and innovative adults, we need a much more meaningful and rich accountability system. We can no longer rely on a year-end test – especially one that simplifies the measure of educational attainment to a single score that measures recall and recognition. When we reduce children to a single number, it negates all that they are and can do. And that’s simply not how modern industry works. We assess our workforce on knowledge, and skills, and dispositions. We test them on outcomes. We assess them on critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and their ability to solve problems. Some schools in the United States do this as well. Through portfolios and performance assessments, they engage students in designing and conducting their own investigations; finding and using resources in creative ways; presenting and defending their work in writing, orally, and using technology tools; seeking feedback and revising their efforts to improve the outcomes. When this kind of assessment is applied as a tool of learning, it is powerful. Students learn to use feedback, to constantly learn from mistakes, and improve their mastery of 21st century skills and dispositions. Teachers continuously assess students' understanding and progress and adapt instruction based on the rich information they get from the assessments. Not incidentally, students who graduate from these schools are far more likely to attend and succeed in college, because they have developed the skills they really need. These schools reflect the real world our students will step into, and they develop the creative and innovative minds that modern industry needs. We can keep asking our students, teachers, and school leaders to increase test scores that do not develop their talents, or we can make the policy changes that allow them to develop and strengthen the creative genius they were born with and our nation’s future demands. E ducation P olicy A nalysis A rchives V ol. 23 N o. 11 4 About the Author Stephan Turnipseed LEGO Education trisha.mcdonell@LEGO.com Stephan Turnipseed is President Emeritus of LEGO Education, North America. Before joining LEGO Education, Turnipseed served as president of the Tourette Syndrome Association, owned a leadership consulting practice, led business units in the oil exploration industry, and served in the U.S. Air Force. Linda Darling-Hammond Stanford University ldh@stanford.edu Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Her latest book is Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning (Wiley, 2014). About the Guest Series Editor Linda Darling-Hammond Guest Series Editor Stanford University ldh@stanford.edu Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Her latest book is Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning (Wiley, 2014). A ssessm ent and A ccountability to Support M eaningful L earning C O M M E N T A R Y 5 SPECIAL SERIES A New Paradigm for Educational Accountability: Accountability for Meaningful Learning education policy analysis archives Volume 23 Number 11 February 2nd, 2015 ISSN 1068-2341 Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Policy Analysis Archives, it is distributed for non- commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or EPAA. EPAA is published by the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at Arizona State University Articles are indexed in CIRC (Clasificación Integrada de Revistas Científicas, Spain), DIALNET (Spain), Directory of Open Access Journals, EBSCO Education Research Complete, ERIC, Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson), QUALIS A2 (Brazil), SCImago Journal Rank; SCOPUS, SOCOLAR (China). Please contribute commentaries at http://epaa.info/wordpress/ and send errata notes to Gustavo E. Fischman fischman@asu.edu Join EPAA’s Facebook community at https://www.facebook.com/EPAAAAPE and Twitter feed @epaa_aape. E ducation P olicy A nalysis A rchives V ol. 23 N o. 11 6 education policy analysis archives editorial board Editor Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University) Associate Editors: Audrey Amrein-Beardsley (Arizona State University), Kevin Kinser (University of Albany) Jeanne M. Powers (Arizona State University) Jessica Allen University of Colorado, Boulder Jaekyung Lee SUNY Buffalo Gary Anderson New York University Christopher Lubienski University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Michael W. Apple University of Wisconsin, Madison Sarah Lubienski University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign Angela Arzubiaga Arizona State University Samuel R. Lucas University of California, Berkeley David C. Berliner Arizona State University Maria Martinez-Coslo University of Texas, Arlington Robert Bickel Marshall University William Mathis University of Colorado, Boulder Henry Braun Boston College Tristan McCowan Institute of Education, London Eric Camburn University of Wisconsin, Madison Michele S. Moses University of Colorado, Boulder Wendy C. Chi Jefferson County Public Schools in Golden, Colorado Julianne Moss Deakin University Casey Cobb University of Connecticut Sharon Nichols University of Texas, San Antonio Arnold Danzig California State University, San Jose Noga O'Connor University of Iowa Antonia Darder Loyola Marymount University João Paraskveva University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Linda Darling-Hammond Stanford University Laurence Parker University of Utah Chad d'Entremont Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy Susan L. Robertson Bristol University John Diamond Harvard University John Rogers University of California, Los Angeles Tara Donahue McREL International A. G. Rud Washington State University Sherman Dorn Arizona State University Felicia C. Sanders Institute of Education Sciences Christopher Joseph Frey Bowling Green State University Janelle Scott University of California, Berkeley Melissa Lynn Freeman Adams State College Kimberly Scott Arizona State University Amy Garrett Dikkers University of North Carolina Wilmington Dorothy Shipps Baruch College/CUNY Gene V Glass Arizona State University Maria Teresa Tatto Michigan State University Ronald Glass University of California, Santa Cruz Larisa Warhol Arizona State University Harvey Goldstein University of Bristol Cally Waite Social Science Research Council Jacob P. K. Gross University of Louisville John Weathers University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Eric M. Haas WestEd Kevin Welner University of Colorado, Boulder Kimberly Joy Howard University of Southern California Ed Wiley University of Colorado, Boulder Aimee Howley Ohio University Terrence G. Wiley Center for Applied Linguistics Craig Howley Ohio University John Willinsky Stanford University Steve Klees University of Maryland Kyo Yamashiro Los Angeles Education Research Institute A ssessm ent and A ccountability to Support M eaningful L earning C O M M E N T A R Y 7 archivos analíticos de políticas educativas consejo editorial Editores: Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University), Jason Beech (Universidad de San Andrés), Alejandro Canales (UNAM) y Jesús Romero Morante (Universidad de Cantabria) Armando Alcántara Santuario IISUE, UNAM México Fanni Muñoz Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú, Claudio Almonacid University of Santiago, Chile Imanol Ordorika Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas – UNAM, México Pilar Arnaiz Sánchez Universidad de Murcia, España Maria Cristina Parra Sandoval Universidad de Zulia, Venezuela Xavier Besalú Costa Universitat de Girona, España Miguel A. Pereyra Universidad de Granada, España Jose Joaquin Brunner Universidad Diego Portales, Chile Monica Pini Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina Damián Canales Sánchez Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación, México Paula Razquin Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina María Caridad García Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile Ignacio Rivas Flores Universidad de Málaga, España Raimundo Cuesta Fernández IES Fray Luis de León, España Daniel Schugurensky Arizona State University, Estados Unidos Marco Antonio Delgado Fuentes Universidad Iberoamericana, México Orlando Pulido Chaves Instituto para la Investigacion Educativa y el Desarrollo Pedagogico IDEP Inés Dussel DIE-CINVESTAV, Mexico José Gregorio Rodríguez Universidad Nacional de Colombia Rafael Feito Alonso Universidad Complutense de Madrid. España Miriam Rodríguez Vargas Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, México Pedro Flores Crespo Universidad Iberoamericana, México Mario Rueda Beltrán IISUE, UNAM México Verónica García Martínez Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, México José Luis San Fabián Maroto Universidad de Oviedo, España Francisco F. García Pérez Universidad de Sevilla, España Yengny Marisol Silva Laya Universidad Iberoamericana, México Edna Luna Serrano Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México Aida Terrón Bañuelos Universidad de Oviedo, España Alma Maldonado DIE-CINVESTAV México Jurjo Torres Santomé Universidad de la Coruña, España Alejandro Márquez Jiménez IISUE, UNAM México Antoni Verger Planells University of Barcelona, España Jaume Martínez Bonafé, Universitat de València, España José Felipe Martínez Fernández University of California Los Angeles, Estados Unidos Mario Yapu Universidad Para la Investigación Estratégica, Bolivia E ducation P olicy A nalysis A rchives V ol. 23 N o. 11 8 arquivos analíticos de políticas educativas conselho editorial Editor: Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University) Editores Associados: Rosa Maria Bueno Fisher e Luis A. Gandin (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) Dalila Andrade de Oliveira Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil Jefferson Mainardes Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa, Brasil Paulo Carrano Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brasil Luciano Mendes de Faria Filho Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil Alicia Maria Catalano de Bonamino Pontificia Universidade Católica-Rio, Brasil Lia Raquel Moreira Oliveira Universidade do Minho, Portugal Fabiana de Amorim Marcello Universidade Luterana do Brasil, Canoas, Brasil Belmira Oliveira Bueno Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil Alexandre Fernandez Vaz Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil António Teodoro Universidade Lusófona, Portugal Gaudêncio Frigotto Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Pia L. Wong California State University Sacramento, U.S.A Alfredo M Gomes Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brasil Sandra Regina Sales Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Petronilha Beatriz Gonçalves e Silva Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brasil Elba Siqueira Sá Barreto Fundação Carlos Chagas, Brasil Nadja Herman Pontificia Universidade Católica – Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil Manuela Terrasêca Universidade do Porto, Portugal José Machado Pais Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Robert Verhine Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brasil Wenceslao Machado de Oliveira Jr. Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brasil Antônio A. S. Zuin University of York