XAM Online: Higher Quality Study Guides Making Higher Quality Teachers

Score Interpretation by states

Internet websites vary in product strategies

Testing implications

How can a study guide help you to remember more?
 

Now all state standards for teacher certification tests are on one website! You probably are aware that Praxis is a general name for tests used for about 30 states. This number varies from year to year as ETS and Evaluation Systems via for state contracts. The benefit to you is lets say you are a Biology teacher and plan to teach in Massachusetts but someday you might want to teach in California. Now you can compare those two states, scrolling to the Biology book, then click on the table of contents. You can even look at the first twenty pages or so to get a better understanding .

Score Interpretation by states

To understand how teacher certification score reports are used it is important to know that the raw score given by the testing company such as ETS or Evaluation Systems is just that, a raw score. Then it is up to the states to interpret that score. In the Praxis test used in about 30 states a hypothetical score of 180 for a particular test might allow you to teach in 20 of the 30 states. For example, North Carolina may say you needed a score of 200 and Kansas may require 180. You can therefore teach in Kansas but not in North Carolina.

Internet websites vary in product strategies

Ask yourself how best to use your time. Do you want to become a professional at outsmarting test designers? The essential ingredient is content review. Tips and secretes are more offensive to a teacher that will be teaching students the value of content and study review and then not apply it to themselves. It is about proving you know your content to the public. They pay you via their taxes and they have a right to know. The public is not interested if you know how to beat a test.

Testing implications

Educational testing has serious consequences. The outcome has an enormous impact on the practice of teaching in America because of concerns about:

1. racial and ethnic inequalities
2. the impact on immigration
3. global competitiveness
4. the relative value of teaching one subject to the detriment of another subject
5. who should be teaching our children, the public school system or alternative solutions.
6. graduation rates
7. misunderstanding highly qualified teacher terminology and process.
8. the self esteem of a child
9. the lifelong implications a child makes early on such as career choices
10. creating a well-educated citizen who can evaluate the implications sampling data in elections and polling data

Misapprehension of tests
Public debates reflect concerns regarding:

1. Why are we using tests?
2. What use will be made of them?
3. What is the cost in terms of time to testing over the K-12 span of time.
4. How are high stakes tests reported to parents?
5. What does an A really mean?
6. How do teacher made tests compare to commercial tests?
7. How do teachers evaluate themselves as test makers?
8. How fair is it to scale a test?

Fluctuations in scores
Fluctuations can occur that require a sensitivity to:

1. bias because of difficulty level inconsistencies
2. quality of question with respect to literacy levels
3. bias against special populations such as English language learners or special education students.
4. test design
5. validity of the test
6. reliability of the test

How can a study guide help you to remember more?

An analogy might be to picture a messy desk. You might not be able to find things quickly. That might be the starting point of where your brain is now. You know to much! Well, not really, you just need to recall where everything is. Now, if you started to clean up your desk and made major piles of papers in one spot, coffee cups somewhere else on the desk, pens in a third location, and the phone on the far end of the desk your organization would have an initial effect on your ability to find things. Now do a second round sort where you look at all your pens and you start to see red pens, green flairs, pens that should be thrown away. You do a second round sort on papers and now you make little piles of bills, papers that should be thrown out, filed, or acted upon. Now if someone asked you what is on your desk you would not only know what you have on the desk you could find it faster. Same thing with studying for the test. XAMonline starts with a subject (say Biology), breaks it down to the major topics (microbiology, genetics, ecology, etc.), then each section is specifically identified within each topic. Those are the skills.