Assessment project is aid to teachers

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By Kathy Jensen

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- I invite the author of your Jan. 12 editorial, "Teaching the test: Some schools gear to MAP," to talk with the educators who developed the Kansas City Area Assessment Project. The editorial is misleading and inaccurate. At a minimum, it contains three major fallacies.

First, the terms "testing" and "assessment, "Missouri Assessment Program" and "Kansas City Area Assessment Project" are misunderstood and used inaccurately.

"Assessment" is a broad term that includes any method for systematically gathering information about student learning and using that information to improve learning.

"Test" is a specific attempt to measure knowledge or skills, such as reading a list of words, solving a mathematical problem or writing a good essay.

The MAP, unlike the multiple-choice tests most of us recall, is a more authentic attempt to measure what students know (the content) and what they are able to do with the content (performance).

The congressional Office of Technology Assessment defines performance assessment as "testing that requires a student to create an answer or product that demonstrates his or her knowledge of skills."

Most teachers, parents and employers agree that it is important to assess the application of skills, not merely the regurgitation of facts. The MAP tests are based on this more rigorous standard. They are scarcely a "waste of time."

Second, the purpose of KCAAP is not to make available "a teacher's guide to getting students to pass MAP tests." The KCAAP Web site does not contain "teaching tips and sample tests" as the editorial claims. The Web site is a collection of assessment modules and links to other assessment resources.

We think it is only fair that all students have plenty of instruction and practice using performance assessments before the MAP. Because there are no commercially produced tests like MAP, administrators from several school districts came together two years ago with a common need: to help teachers -- in the grades not formally assessed using MAP -- prepare students for this mandatory state assessment.

Volunteer teachers took part in extensive professional development and then developed assessment modules in the core academic areas of mathematics, communication arts, social studies and science for particular grade levels. We agreed to share our work using the KCAAP Web site.

Perhaps most alarming is the editorial's claim that the Kauffman Foundation "is providing $100 stipends to teachers in some schools who take their classes through the sample tests."

We are very grateful that the Kauffman Foundation funded our work, but it did not pay teachers to "take their students through sample tests." There are no sample tests on the Web site.

Some grant funds provided by the foundation were used to pay 61 teachers from 13 school district who participated in the yearlong training and wrote a quality assessment module.

The editorial suggests that teachers are "cheating" by trying to prepare students to succeed on the demanding MAP tests. This is false and unfair. Instead, we are using the power of the Internet to share effective assessment techniques designed and tested by outstanding classroom teachers so that other teachers and students can benefit.

The KCAAP is economical, easy to use and open to any teacher who is looking for help in this area. So far, teachers' reactions to the KCAAP is clear: They love it.

Kathy Jensen is the director of the Kansas City Regional Professional Development Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's School of Education.