Assessment and leaky huts

Splat...again right down my nose. The fattest of Thailand monsoon raindrops, straight through the roof of our bamboo hut. Proof that these reed roofs were as makeshift as they looked. All my travel companions at the table were dry but me... Yet.. glancing up to curse I saw the roof above me was actually corrugated iron. Everyone else… the dry ones, were sitting under hand made reed roofing. Funny that.

It’s such a modern age thing, the desire to create a one layer solution to problems. To make such perfection that it needs no built in redundancy. I think of how we try to do this with any number of things. Buildings, ‘four minute abs’ videos, school assessment.. all seeking the perfect one layer solution. And don’t we all line up to buy.

Sheet iron starts out perfect, till you nail it. Special rubberised nails take on the anxious role of sealing as they go but it’s not redundancy. Its perfection is a one use wonder. The panel above me had been used before, and now the drips came thick and fast through the nail holes. The reeds on the other hand have overlapping layers. A drop not caught by the first.. second or even the third gets caught by the layer below and funneled out across the roof.

Why do we seek these one layer solutions?

-We confidently build new schools with hi-tech impermeable walls, only to find that the same perfection that blocks moisture also keeps it in the wall cavity and rots the timber, yet no backup system was used to manage that. In discovering that we find there’s no redundancy in the human process either. Each player: designer, contractor, inspector works to keep their roles watertight from inquiry but never united in overlaying responsibility. They leave gaps between them through which a rotting school can fall. So we rebuild again.. but with flexibility, redundancy, accountability and humility.

-We buy exercise machines that guarantee results in minutes from marketers that know it takes more than a one layer solution but hide that fact in the fine print. ( Results may vary. The Ab-inator should be combined with regular exercise, a low calorie diet and an addiction to race horse supplements. If you’re watching this ad on daytime television, you may prefer our video coaching series: “Letting the Dream Go”. )

-We look for a perfect cover-all assessment tool for our children. The grail that will send information down to class and child as easily as it sends it up to the board and government database to be compared in future against the new National Standards. The one hit wonder that lets us all know we’ve spent our time, money and personal resources in the best way possible and has the graphs to help us prove it. It helps us sleep at night.
But knowing children is messy business. Some kids just don’t get ‘caught’ the first time around, or the second. Even with all we now know about assessment our innate desire for neatly tabled data can compromise how deeply we understand our children.

Assessment systems are a great chance to up-skill teachers to gather and use data but when we discourage real dialogue about the validity of a single layer of data, we cripple the best learning we could do. That dialogue is key. When we do our job well we know our children. We notice when they take to new ideas, or struggle, or triumph. We know their next steps and the things they still need to review before moving on. Every conversation we have to compare different sources of data informs the way we look at our children and empowers us to challenge or contribute to the conclusions made.

Have the guts to get messy, ask questions, challenge data that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t triangulate well. Even better… DO the tests. See what kids are expected to do and what conclusions are being drawn on the answers they provide. We are such marvelously complex creatures. Any single assessment will likely never summarise us so for now let’s let go the idea that it ever could. We need to make sure we have redundancy in the system, layers of ways to catch children and all they have to offer so that we never let them fall through the gaps. You are one of those layers. Speak up. Then everyone learns.