I thought the presenters, Jodi and Mariya, did nice jobs this week. They were clear and concise.
I do have some thoughts about CASAS. I can tell Mariya truly enjoyed working with this system. It is well thought out, organized and easy to execute. However, the core tools of this program are against what I've been taught about teaching. This program seems to use testing. Standardized testing gets in the way of teaching. Every test given is time out of instruction. These students have the stress of testing every couple of months. They are going to feel the stress knowing the test is coming and not be as able to concentrate during instruction. The second aspect I have trouble with is that it encourages teaching to the test. When teachers focus on how to pass the test, other aspects disappear. They have to leave out culture or communication aspects. So is this the best way?
I know that these are adult learners and I haven't studied the strategies for adult learners. Perhaps incredible amounts of testing and teaching to the test are fine for adults. I just don't know, but listening to the concepts set off alarm bells in my head.
Finally, when Mariya mentioned some of the vocabulary I wondered why hasn't this been updated more recently. I know that updating tests is very costly, but if so many places are using the system (and adding the system) aren't they bringing in the money to do the update? I would think so. Then what is the company doing with the money, vacationing in Hawaii?
I guess I'm skeptical about this program because it seems too easy.
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I totally agree with what you say about CASAS, except for the part that I truly enjoyed working with it. :)
The problem is that CASAS was designed and is still used mainly by government-funded organizations. I will use the program I worked for as an example. We were state funded, and the state wanted to get reports on how the money was spent. The students paid only for the books ($50/level), the rest (extra resources, computer lab, equipment, rent, teachers' salary, support staff salary) was paid by the state, so I feel they had a right to wonder if we were doing a good job. If the students got gains on the tests, we got money. There were certain quotas we were supposed to meet, but sometimes the students don't get a gain, whatever you do, so we would just write a note explaining the circumstances. I am not a particular fan of standardized tests, but they are more or less objective. As for stress for students - it all depends on how you approach it. I always told my groups that, hey, the tests are looking at how well I taught them, so I should be worried, not they. And I made this presentation animated and funny, so we ended up laughing and most of the stress anxiety was gone. Besides, in CASAS the students don't see their test results, or at least they don't see interpretation. So, you can say "You know, you used to have a score of 202 and now you have 209, awesome job!", although for the state it would not qualify as gain. I always told everyone that they did very well on the test, and we always had something special after the test day, so they came to look forward to it.
Teaching to the test is another thing, and CASAS protocol strictly forbids it. I always felt that if they know how to do certain things, like read a map, or a chart, they will be able to do it test or no test. So I did teach the comptenecies, but not the test items. Actually, if you look at the competencies, they are very well though of. I mean, they really measure the ability to function in a language community. There is a debate in CASAS on what the boundaries of "teaching to the test" are.
Update-wise, CASAS is a bureacratic organization, so issuing new tests is a slow and painful process.
Also, I tried to focus on the positive aspects of CASAS for the presentation, so that people are not averted by it.
Sorry for the long comment.
Thank you for your comment. It helps put things in perspective. I didn't mean to imply you weren't an animated teacher (just your presentation alone would belie that thought) and I don't think you took me wrong either.
Updates are always painful...I'm glad I'm not the one who has to figure out when and how to do that for such a big program. :)
Last year I had to teach a scripted curriculum much like CASAS. I though it was a wonderful template, but it was definately lacking. My students were also tested monthly and quarterly (2 different tests) but the tests weren't related to the curriculum I was teaching. It was frustrating when all of my students would get a test question about alliteration wrong and some of them would ask why they hadn't learned about alliteration. I wouldn't know what the test was testing until after they took it and then I could teach them the skills they didn't have after. It was a little ridiculuos. I think they eventually got immune to the importance of taking tests. They weren't able to distinguish which ones were REALLY important.
In the light of above discussion I think tests should be informative that is testing should be considered as a part of teaching.
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