Do we really know if students are learning?

“After all these years of common schooling, we still have no real way of knowing if students are learning.”  How do we know if our students are learning?

In this day of standardized state tests and teaching to the test, this is a difficult question.  One could consider NCLB and the reports of all the failing schools and say that ‘we know our students are not learning, otherwise we wouldn’t have schools failing’.  But we have to consider the standardized tests that are being used to measure student’s learning.  Tests measure the ‘measurable’.  For some learners, it is what is considered the immeasurable that is key to their learning, is it successful, how they came up with “it” that should count.  They connect the dots a bit differently, but they have a method and a reason that should be acknowledged and counted as learning.  I think we do have a way of knowing if students are learning, but I don’t think it should be the standardized tests that show us this.  Teachers spend their time teaching to the test, students pack in the information in order to pass the test  They do not learn the information in a way in which they will retain things after the test. 

“Creativity is as important in education as literacy” according to Ken Robinson.  Robinson also states that we are educating people right out of creativity.  It is a child’s creativity that can tell us if they are learning.  As teachers, we need to question our students, begin discussions between them, listen to them, play games with them, then we will know they are learning.  In a perfect world that we would all like to be teaching in, we could take into consideration the students that have stress anxiety, they know the information, but when a test is placed in front of them with a time constraint placed on it, they lose the ability to recall the information.  Just as the student in Luna’s article, when she was given the extended time for exams, her confidence in her ability to recall what she knew returned.  If we are able to take the time constraints and testing pressures away from students, if we took the time to see their creativity and to see how they arrive at an answer, we could see that they are learning.  We need to realize that the same assessments are not suitable for all learners. If we are using the same assessment for all students, the results will show that some students are not learning, when it is really the wrong type of assessment is being used.  Teachers need to have more control over assessing students in order to see if their students are learning.  In chapter 17 of Adolescent Literacy, the author talks about “assessment on a daily basis” (pg. 263).  As a good educator, we need to look at our students work, their response, their critical thinking, keep anecdotal notes on students, know their interests and challenge them with open ended questions.  Through these things, we can know if our students are learning.