accountability in education

Accountability in education has many stake holders. I am particularly concerned with how accountable teachers are to their students. The expectations seem to be different depending on which age group is being focused on. For me being in a high school students often just want to know whether an assessment is worth credits or not. So is it my responsibility to deliver to them what they want, only assessments worth credits or deliver to them what I think they need???? The new science curriculum has a new section in it on carbon cycling - and I can not just teach this as a chemical reaction I have to, morally, include how pollution has caused a build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so tipped this normally balanced environment and so causing global warming. There is then the political ramifications - what is being done to curb this and who is trying the hardest to do this??? All relevant BUT do I add what I think is right or wrong and how accountable will I be if I avoid the truth because it is not popular or part of the curriculum???

What is summative assessment?

When considering the definition of summative assessment in moodle a comment that really stuck a chord with me is there such a thing as summative assessment? If every assessment adds in some shape or form to the next assessment then can it said to be really a summative assessment. Does that make all assessment then formative? I am really interested in this new found view

Assessment and the Draft New Zealand Curriculum

Planning for Purposeful Assessment
This is the intention of the new - New Zealand Curriculum document - it classifies assessment as being ongoing; that benefits students; that involves students; that supports teaching and learning; that is planned; well suited; valid and fair. - Great - but there is also mention of the need to gather and analyse school - wide assessment - and perhaps not surprisingly that this information should then be compared both internally amoung groups of students and nationally with other schools! This is a very ambiguous situation for many reasons but most importantly is that there is an attempt to create a level playing field on which to compare schools, using assessment, when clearly there is no level playing field or we would not need schools to be classed according to their decile rating. So why is this included in our curriculum???

Problems with assessment

I am currently teaching at a secondary school. I am in 2 departments - Science & Technology. It has become very apparent to me the vast differences in ways of assessment in these 2 departments - 1, Technology, being completely internally assessed - based on observations, resits offered, conferencing entered into, quality of workmanship - the other a combination of both - internally assessed with 1 resit offered & end of year exams. My issue is how can a school formulate an assessment policy that covers these very vast differences in assessment?
What do you think?

Marie :)

Welcome

Hi to all
This is my very first attempt at blogging soooooooo please bear with me. I am currently studying towards my Masters in Education and part of the requirements of this course is to start and maintain a blog site about assessment in education.
I look forward to 'blogging' with you all
Marie :)