TEACH-NOW M8U10A1: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice Documentation and Reflection

InTasc Standard #9 mandates that I be a reflective practitioner, and that I continually evaluate the effects of my choices and actions on others in my learning community (this can mean parents, students, fellow teachers, administrators, and the community at large). It also mandates that I seek out professional development opportunities.

Meeting this standard has been of particular importance to me as I have prepared to receive my credential. I knew from my experience as a business owner, publicist, and professional writer how valuable it is to make connections at conferences, and to learn as much as possible from the seminars held at those conferences.

Therefore, I set out to attend every possible event and conference, as well as visit schools and teachers I admire in other states, substitute teach in local schools, and generally gather information from every corner available to me. I did not have a full-time teaching position at the time, so I had the time to travel, explore, and seek out different opinions about education.

Some of the events I have attended in the last four months include: 

• Discovery Education's Symposium for administrators (Silver Spring, MD);
• PCTELA, the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts in Greensburg, PA;
• PAGE, The annual gathering of the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education in Wilkes-Barre, PA;
• And the Western Pennsylvania Mathematics Teaching and Learning Conference in Indiana, PA.

I did not just attend these events in order to sit quietly in sessions, but I made a point to introduce myself to everyone seated near me, as well as the presenters. I also took copious notes and was careful to find sessions that included data-driven information, rather than simple lesson plan advice.

Use of Data to Inform Teaching
I attended a session at PCTELA, a gathering of Pennsylvania English Teachers, that was held by a doctoral candidate who measured the effectiveness of unconventional teaching of Shakespeare to ninth grade students. The teacher tried a multimodal approach when teaching Romeo and Juliet, and she had the data to show that her students who initially felt trepidation about learning anything about Shakespeare after the teacher's unconventional approach to teaching the subject. She asked students to make an A-Z gallery related to Romeo and Juliet's story, and this relatively simple lesson plan was remarkably effective at increasing students' engagement with the literature, and understanding of some of the many nuances of Shakespeare's writing.

Engage in Ongoing Learning
Through my travels, at the various gatherings and conferences, I made many connections on Facebook and Twitter, specifically, with informal groups of teachers who post problems and solutions, ethical concerns, and case studies for group discussion. This has been an invaluable part of my teacher training, and I have grown more comfortable with the "tough cases" and having to make difficult calls.

I have also found like-minded teachers with whom I have connected and created an extended professional learning network. Through these in-person connections, I have made extended connections, as I see the tweets from some of my friends in education, and those who have responded to the tweets, and I've followed them as well.

I've also made a point of expanding my local network -- getting in touch with local teachers and praising them for projects I admire, and connecting with them. I hope to bring my class together with other classes who are studying similar projects, and allow my students to network as I have!

What I noticed about my personal biases and cultural understanding
Having moved to Pennsylvania from California two years ago, the thing that struck me most strongly about the conferences I attended in Pennsylvania was 99% of the attendees were white. At the English Teacher conference they were 95% female, and perhaps one person of color in the room. At the Math Teacher conference, it was 100% white, with about 1/3 of the teachers being male. I wondered: how is that for black students in Pennsylvania, being taught by all these white faces? And I wondered what we might do as a community of teachers to include black teachers in these events, and encourage more people of color, in general to teach. 

Apparently, this is also a priority for the Pennsylvania Department of Education as well, according to this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Learning at Deeper Levels
It was the Discovery Education Symposium that most impressed me in my quest to provide learning at deeper levels for my students. What I enjoyed about this symposium (other than the fact it was free, and allowed me to visit two members of my Teach-Now cohort in Maryland) was that every seminar was conducted as though it were a class in a classroom, and they used technology to wonderful effect. I learned what has worked (and not worked) in classrooms throughout the Eastern Seaboard. I experienced (rather than just heard about), gallery walks, online feedback programs, and ways to incorporate students' cell phones in a productive way in the classroom sometimes. I also heard about how some educators had broken through their districts' initial hesitance about new programs, and how they were eventually able to pull off positive change.

Adapting Practice to Meet Student Needs
This category was the most pronounced as I engaged in this tour of professional development. I discovered at the PAGE conference, for educators of gifted students, how the laws are interpreted to assist gifted students in the classroom. I also learned how poorly those programs are often executed. It was valuable to hear, directly from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, what is mandated for gifted students, and how they recommend those goals be achieved. This has redoubled my own commitment to focus on that population of students, and ensure they receive the education they deserve.

TEACH-NOW M7U2A2 Reflection on Lesson Planning

The lesson I created will review turtlehead multiplication for fifth grade students. I made several decisions regarding 21st century strategies, schema for learners, and the use of technology.

Specifically, I decided to incorporate problem-solving aspects to this lesson that go beyond the intended topic of the lesson. The students will be invited to, at first, solve large multiplication questions using any method they would like. They can then collaborate creatively with their classmates and share their own problem-solving methods.

Furthermore, I have individualized their education in this topic as needed. Specifically, those learners who can demonstrate mastery of the concept will be asked to move on an begin mastery of the next topic rather than waiting for their classmates to catch up. 

I have also prioritized communication in this lesson, as I will ask students to explain their methodology to their classmates after collaborating with them.

In terms of the schema I used in this lesson, it is intended for a subset of the class: those who have not understood the concept despite several lessons focused on this technique. I am reviewing this concept with them, as they cannot yet demonstrate mastery. For this reason, I believe it is important to shift this subset's thinking. Many of them have told me, "I'm not good at math" and "I just don't get this." I will be asking them to reframe these statement with a "yet," for example.

Although I relish the use of technology in the classroom in general, I will not be using technology in the main part of this lesson. We will be using the "old fashioned" whiteboards, and returning to work on the computers once they have demonstrated mastery of the concept.

As this is the first lesson plan I am attempting with this class, I am not yet certain what I may have overlooked. I'm certain that I will discover this shortly, as the students will likely be happy to help me figure it out! Sometimes I do try to pack in too many activities, but I don't want to have any "dead space" in my lessons, so I overplan as a rule. Problems could arise with this technique, though, if I don't allow enough time for the formative and summative assessments that will help me gauge the effectiveness of the lesson.

I also look forward to learning what works for classroom management with this particular group of students. They use Class Dojo, and I look forward to working with the points as deftly as my mentors do with this system.

Image retrieved from https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JwF6kfGZUeU/maxresdefault.jpg

TEACH NOW M6U4A3: Teacher evaluation methods

There are many ways that teacher performance is evaluated by administration. This can look quite different between what happens at a private school versus what public schools require, but the end results are the same: a metric by which educators' effectiveness are evaluated.

In one school where I taught, fellow teachers and administrators floated through for observations on a drop-in basis. The results of the observation would be recorded, and the teachers agreed on the metrics by which they would be evaluated, but it lacked the formality that it seems many public schools use to evaluate teachers.

For example, in Ohio, teachers have two different potential metrics by which they can choose to be evaluated. One is a pure 50/50 split of "Teacher Performance to Standards" and "Student Growth Measures," and the other is a 50/35/15 split of those first two measurements, then an "Alternative Components" measurement for the last 15%.

The alternative components are quite interesting to me: they can include student surveys, teacher self-evaluations, peer review evaluations, student portfolios, and/or a district-determined component.


How I would like to be evaluated
In my first years teaching in a public school classroom, I would prefer to be evaluated by peer or administrator observation, and have a close relationship with a mentor who can help advise me as I seek to improve as a teacher.

The following is how I would like to be evaluated:

• I would like to meet with the examiner before my observation to discuss my lesson plan and the current classroom dynamics. I'd also like to point out some elements of my teaching that I would like to improve, such as summarizing lessons and classroom management.
• Furthermore, before the observation, I want to know from the examiner what they will be looking for in my classroom: what are the categories of teaching behaviors they are watching for.
• I would like to prepare my class for the observation but letting them know ahead of time why the teacher is in the back of the room.
• Ideally, I would like to schedule two classes to be observed. This will give the person evaluating my teaching to see a wider range of lesson plans, and allows for the events that throw off our learning (hello, fire drills) and generally gives a better idea of what happens in my classroom.
• I would like for the observer to elicit feedback from students after the class as well, to ensure that what he or she has observed is the same thing that students have observed. If there is a problem, for example, the students might be able to help the examiner know if this is a chronic or occasional problem with my teaching.
• I look forward to the meeting, discussing what the examiner has observed, and in what ways I can improve my teaching.
• Three weeks, and then six weeks following the observation and subsequent feedback, I would like for an examiner to come and re-evaluate my work. Have I changed the weaker parts of my teaching, and how else might I continue to improve?
• Furthermore, I would like to know how my students' performances stack up versus similar students within our school and at other schools. Are they showing their learning on par with their peers, or are there things I can improve about my teaching that would bring those scores up? 

Resources

"Teacher Evaluations" (2015) Ohio Department of Education. Retrieved from http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Teaching/Educator-Evaluation-System/Ohio-s-Teacher-Evaluation-System

"New Teacher Survival Guide: The Formal Observation" (u.d.) TeachingChannel. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/preparing-for-formal-observations

TEACH-NOW M6U3A3: Parent Teacher Conference Strategies

Parent Teacher Conferences: Three Scenarios


Scenario I

Jessie is a fifth grade student whose parents have just received her fourth grade PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) scores, and her parents are worried about the results. In third grade, Jessie scored in the "Advanced" range for both math and language arts, but Jessie has scored "Basic" in math with the latest round of testing, and "Advanced" again in language arts.

To prepare for this conference, I have obtained Jessie's PSSA scores for the last two years along with graphs that put the scores in context, and collected her math quizzes in the school year so far. (It is early October.) I have also printed out the state standards for fifth grade math, in order to provide the family with a road map for her math success this year.

This meeting will be conducted after school, and I will invite the parents to sit on the same side of the table as I am sitting.

The narrative of my presentation could be as follows:

I understand your concern about Jessie's test scores -- the PSSA is usually a pretty good indicator of how a student is learning, and seeing her move from "Advanced" to "Basic" is a concern for all of us. We'd like to see Jessie succeed in math, and I'm glad we have this indicator that there is an issue before we get deeper into the 5th grade year. 

I reviewed her PSSA scores, and what I noticed is that her ability to decode word problems seems to be the major stopping point. Her calculations are correct when she's asked for arithmetic solutions, but when she has to construct her own arithmetic equation in order to solve a more complicated problem, she is confused as to what to do. Based on this, I gave her a fourth grade test with word problems, and I see that this is a consistent issue.

How do you guys feel about this situation? Do you have any ideas why this is more difficult for Jessie, or things you've seen at home that help explain this? 

The next steps that I would like to take with Jessie are to (a) meet with her after school, in a small group of students with a similar issue, and have a kind of a "story problem club." And (b) I'd like her, at home, to review these types of problems on Khan Academy, and I've linked to her Khan Academy account so I can follow her progress. Also, before this year's PSSA, she and I will do some "warm-ups" to make sure all of the concepts stick with her when she goes in for the testing.



Scenario II

Dillon has not been performing to the level of his capacity, and this meeting is taking place in the context of regular fall parent/teacher conferences.

Dillon is a sixth grade student who generally gets B's and C's, but is capable of higher grades. He "coasted" through elementary school, passing his tests without trying, but he will to better demonstrate his understanding as he advances through middle school.

In this case, I will show Dillon's work recently in science, where the whole class was asked to create Google Slides presentations about mammal fossils. I will redact the names of two of Dillon's classmates, and show his parents what other students have created, as the different is marked.

I will also show his quizzes, and several sections where he decided halfway through the quiz to stop answering in complete sentences.

I will conduct this meeting in the classroom, in a relatively informal setting, sitting on the same side of the table. I will also invite Dillon's math teacher, who will join us and bring a few of his recent homework assignments.

The narrative of my presentation could be as follows:

Dillon is a delightful student in general, and he participates well in class discussion. He shows an excellent understanding of the subjects we are covering, but when it's time for him to demonstrate his understanding, he tends to zone out and do the minimal work required. He doesn't like to explain his work.

In math, Dillon is doing the same thing. He shows a good understanding in class, but seems determined to do the minimal amount possible to pass the test. He really doesn't like to explain his work, but he's going to need to, in order to perform to his capability.

Where do you think this is coming for Dillon? Are there things you've seen at home like this, in which he doesn't take things to fruition? Do you have any ideas how we can help him with this? 

The next steps for Dillon can be to require him to complete tests before he leaves the classroom, and allow him extra time during study hall if necessary. Also, for his parents to require him to complete pre-tests that have more extensive answers written in them. Dillon needs to practice bringing his expression of knowledge to completion, even if it doesn't feel "necessary" to him.

We will plan to meet again in three months to check on Dillon's progress, to be sure he's ready to take on seventh grade. In the meantime, his parents can use Schoology on a weekly basis to review Dillon's work together with him.

Scenario III

Cara is a fourth grader who is new in school, and she has been lashing out at her classmates, sometimes physically.

I will be prepared with a list of the incidents -- only the ones that was witnessed and documented by an adult, as well as transcripts of the conversations I have had with her about the incidents. I will also include her own explanations of how the incidents came to pass.

We will meet in neutral ground, in the empty playground, on the same side of a picnic table, while a substitute teacher manages the class. 

The narrative of my presentation could be as follows:

I'm concerned about Cara's ability to connect with her classmates. I've noticed several times that she gets into a conflict with her classmates, when there doesn't seem to be a precipitating event. She seems pretty upset since she arrived, and she isn't sure how to connect with her classmates in a productive way.

For example, she hit one of her classmates when he was passing her a recorder for music class. Her first impulse was that he was trying to hit her with the recorder when he was calmly passing it to her. She apologized for the incident, but she was pretty sure that he was trying to hurt her first. 

Is there anything she has told you at home about her transition to this new school that could help me make her feel more comfortable here? I would like to help her form positive relationships with her peers, and I would love to know what usually helps her make good connections, socially. 

The next steps for the meeting are for her parents to open up a dialogue with Cara about what has been happening at school and to email me with their thoughts after talking with her. Furthermore, Cara will need to have a behavior plan at school, since she has been physically lashing out. I will work with the vice principal on creating a behavior plan and discussing it with Cara in as gentle a way as possible. Since the aim is to help Cara feel more comfortable at school, the last thing we want is for her to feel "punished" or unwelcome, but the physical lashing out is unacceptable, and a safety issue for her and other students.

Furthermore, Cara's parents will ask her about students at the school that she would like to get to know, and I will work to figure out a few likely kids for her to meet. Once some good potential friends have been identified, Cara's parents will invite them over for playdates, and the school counselor will host weekly, informal lunches with Cara and the other students.

Cara's parents and I will re-connect about her progress in three weeks, once these programs have been instituted.

(All of these scenarios were based on fictional students.)

Parent teacher conference image retrieved from https://flstudentsachieve.s3.amazonaws.com/CMS/18217/parent-teacher-conference__listing.jpg

A warning about pre-assessment: you may know better than the numbers

When I was teaching sixth grade in California, I had two students who were attached at the hip. For the purposes of this story, I'll call them Betty and Veronica.

Betty and Veronica did everything together -- they often wore matching outfits -- and they felt lucky to be in the same math class, although they fretted that they weren't in the same math group.

The problem? Math came more easily to Betty, and Veronica often struggled with the subject -- therefore, after each pre-assessment, they would be visibly distraught each time they were placed in separate math groups.

"What could this score mean?"

I knew that Betty was quite capable in math, so imagine my surprise when -- halfway through the year -- the computer sorted her into the "lowest" math group as we entered our unit on Integers. I had seen some of her work on this subject, and I looked at that score like the RCA dog.

After some hours of denial, I finally admitted it to myself: Betty had purposely done poorly on the pre-assessment. She and Veronica had planned Betty's "flunking" of the test, so that they wouldn't be separated into different math groups again.

My suspicion was confirmed when I announced the math groups -- when I placed Veronica in that lowest math group, but sent Betty to the higher ability group, they looked at each other in shock. Their plan hadn't worked.

I learned my lesson that day: pre-assessments can be "gamed." Sometimes I need to look up from the numbers and instead use my "spider sense" to determine where the students really need to be.


Image retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/OriginalNipper.jpg

TEACH-NOW M6U2A3: Pre-Assessment in a Sixth Grade English Language Arts Classroom

Pre-assessment is an essential tool I plan to implement in a middle school ELA setting.


I will start with a summary of what students in Pennsylvania should be able to do by the end of their sixth grade year:

• Summarize texts
• Determine authors' points of view and examine their claims
• Understand structure, inferences, story arcs
• Learn how to acquire new vocabulary
• Understand informational texts
• Compare literary experiences (written stories vs. performed dramas vs. spoken word) 
• Read independently at grade level
• Write informative texts and reporting on research projects
• Write with an awareness of stylistic aspects of composition and conventions of language
• Write to state and support an opinion in a formal style
• Write narrative texts using a variety of narrative techniques
• Edit work for additional clarity and higher quality texts
• Use technology to collaborate and communicate without using plagiarism 
• Present and listen appropriately in formal speaking situations 

In order to teach every student at his or her level, I plan to pre-assess students throughout the first few weeks of sixth grade. 

If I know where the students are, I can better understand how to bring them to the "finish line" with these standards, and, furthermore, I will have a better understanding of which students will require differentiation throughout our program.

There are several existing pre-assessments that I could use to ascertain students' general grammatical and vocabulary abilities. For example, School on Wheels developed a sixth grade pre- and post-assessment that covers the basics quite well.

Excerpts from their pre-assessment include questions based on textual evidence such as:

8. What is Elijah’s main problem in the story? {Be Able to Read and Comprehend Grade Appropriate Texts | CCSS RL.5.10, RL.5.2, RL.5.4} a. The key his mother needs is old and rusty. b. He is angry because his mother made him leave the city. c. His mother no longer talks to him. d. He does not want to come home when his mother calls him.

Other examples are questions that test a student's ability to infer unit from contextual clues, such as:

14. What does the word "elaborate" mean in the sentence below? {Determine Meaning of a Word Meaning through Sentence Context | CCSS L.6.4.A & R.I.6.4} The teacher asked Russel to elaborate on his reasoning because she thinks it’s vague and unclear. a. Expand b. Complicated c. Fancy d. Simple

In addition to this type of basic pre-assessment, I would want to perform deeper tests to ascertain my students' current ability to work toward these standards. 

Rather than bombarding students with multiple hour-long tests at the beginning of the year, I would plan to execute these pre-assessments as a series of entrance tickets, and small assignments in the first few weeks of school. I would pluck through the standards listed above and give small bites of a larger pre-assessment as the students enter the classroom throughout September.

The tasks within this pre-assessment will map to the above-listed standards. These are my suggested pre-assessments for this purpose:

• Students will read a news story from that morning's newspaper, and summarize it in three to five sentences
• Students will read two opposing editorials regarding a high-interest topic (such as later start times in schools) then summarize each author's point of view.
• Students will create a story "map" of a well-known fairy tale.
• Students will make a Venn diagram of written stories, performed dramas, and spoken word presentations.
• Students will list the last two books they read "for fun" and then explain how much they enjoy reading in general. (They will be presented with a rainbow, and they can choose how they currently feel about reading for fun. Red means "I can't live without reading," and Purple means "I only read when I absolutely have to.")
• Students will write a quick "how to" about a topic of their choice, such as "how to get ready for a hockey game" or "how to take the bus to my Grandma's house." 
• Students will read a passage and highlight the parts that are grammatically incorrect and/or poorly supported by evidence
• After reading several letters to the editor in the local newspaper, students will spend 10-15 minutes sharing their opinion on a topic that is important to them. 
• Students will be asked to edit a tragically terrible paragraph, such as this paragraph provided by K12 Reader. 
• Students will be asked to collaborate with one classmate on a silly, short limerick, and share it with the class. (This is in order to test their ability to connect with classmates on an application such as Google Docs, and to collaborate in the most basic way.)
• Students will write and perform a brief opinion-based speech about their favorite animal. They will have just five minutes to silently research the animal before giving a two-minute presentation. This is a miniature test of their ability to perform in a speaking situation.

For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus in on the "tragically terrible paragraph" pre-assessment, and how the results of that pre-assessment will guide my teaching throughout our unit focused on the revision and editing process.

Assuming I have a class of 22 students, I will prepare for 5 students who have already mastered the sixth grade standard for editing, and are ready for a bigger challenge. I will prepare for 12 students who are approaching the standard, and are ready for sixth-grade level teaching on the subject, and I will furthermore prepare for 5 students who are well below the standard, and may have limited knowledge of the topic.

As a group, we will discuss revision as the process of making a written work better, and editing, the process of making a written work right. We will review what we problems we look for when we revise, and what results we look for when we edit.

We will then break into three groups, with different assignment, all working toward meeting the same standard.

Plan for Advanced Students

These students have caught every error and correctly edited it in the pre-assessment. Some of these students have even found additional errors or suggested unexpected revisions. These students will be challenged to revise and edit on an entirely new, unexpected level. Specifically, they will be challenged to take the first chapter of a book they know well, such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and revise it. What could have been done to improve this famous work of fiction?

These students will be able to understand that revision and editing is a process that can continue, even when a piece seems "perfect." There are multiple ways to present information, and they can dig straight into this tough piece -- at first by printing out the words and cutting the paragraphs into pieces, then by re-placing them in the text.

Plan for At-Grade-Level Students

These students will approach a few additional "tragically terrible texts" provided by the teacher, and use highlighters to identify additional edits and revisions that the author could make in order to improve the piece. They will be broken into "jigsaw" groups, and asked to look for very specific problem areas in small groups, such as lack of details, repetition, unnecessary verbiage, misspellings, grammatical issues, and finally, the order of the paragraphs. Could they find ways to rearrange the paragraphs themselves for better effect? They will, like the advanced group, eventually use scissors and glue to rearrange a fictional work for best effect.

Plan for Below-Grade-Level Students

These students will start with sentences at first -- they will compare two similar sentences, and choose which one is the best presentation of the text. They will be challenged to determine why one sentence is better than the other one. They will then compare paragraphs -- they will discuss which is the better constructed paragraph, and why?

Then this group will start with a tragically terrible short paragraph, and look for the same kind of errors they found in the inferior sentences. They will be tasked with finding a certain number of errors. After they have discovered all of the errors, they will each work individually to re-write the paragraph with the edits in place.

The larger revisions will be done as a group, from the same text that the At-Grade-Level. They will do popcorn reading and work together to manipulate the text, with the assistance of a teacher at a SmartBoard, to find the best fit for all the "puzzle pieces."

All 22 students should be able to meet or exceed the standard by the end of the lesson, which may stretch one or two class periods. This lesson will be done early in the school year, as the skills to revise and edit will come in handy throughout their sixth grade English Language Arts adventures. 

The assembly of these groups may vary from day-to-day, based on how they perform on pre-tests. For example, a student who was working with the Advanced Group in the above lesson may be Below-Grade in the opinion-based speech lesson. Therefore, these groups will remain fluid throughout the year, and it may be in some cases that members of the three groups will be deliberately mixed in group projects, so they can mentor and learn from one another throughout the year.

If I'm doing my job right, their sixth grade year in English Language Arts will be an ever-changing adventure!

References

6th Grade Pre- and Post-Assessment. (u.d.) Retrieved from https://www.schoolonwheels.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/6th-Grade-ELA.pdf

Alber, R. (2016, February 22) 4 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Revise. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/4-strategies-teaching-kids-how-revise-rebecca-alber

Editing and Proofing a Paragraph (u.d.) Retrieved from http://www.k12reader.com/worksheet/editing-and-proofing-a-paragraph/view/

Pennsylvania Department of Education. (2014 March 1) Academic Standards for English Language Arts: Grades 6-12. Retrieved from http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/PA%20Core%20Standards%20ELA%206-12%20March%202014.pdf

Image of students working in a group retrieved from http://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/group-work.jpg

Image of students reading a newspaper retrieved from http://www.startschoolnow.org/wp-content/uploads/campus-newspaper.jpg

Image of the "Revise vs. Edit" chart retrieved from https://i.pinimg.com/736x/95/85/09/958509ee4691642a7c0a80a3fc25f864--writing-tips-creative-writing.jpg

TEACH-NOW M6U1A3: High Stakes Assessment Comparison of College Entrance Exams in the United States and Germany

American students taking the SAT

In the United States, students are generally required to take at least one college entrance exam in order to apply to college. 

These include the SAT and ACT, and many colleges also ask to see students' AP test scores and SAT subject test scores as well. The preparation for these tests can be overwhelming, at best, and can drive students in the United States to withdraw socially and hyper-focus on attaining the highest score possible. (CBS Miami, 2013) 

Students in the United States will commonly take special test preparation courses, hire tutors, give up extracurricular activities, and spend all of their spare time drilling information in preparation for these many tests. 

All of this preparation can also be costly, and on top of that expense, there are the test fees themselves: about $60 for the ACT, $60 for the SAT, and $94 for every AP test a student takes.
The high stakes of these college entrance exams aren't just for the students, but teachers, schools, and districts can also be judged by the exam scores and similar state college readiness exams of their students. (Svab, 2013) Therefore, there can be an immense amount of pressure on not only each student, but also their families and schools, for that student to score well.

The German system
In Germany, there is one (free) final exam at the end of a university preparation student's high school career, and that is the Abitur. Although the Abitur is the most "high-stakes" that a high school exam can be, German students seem to experience less stress surrounding this exam, as it is simply the culmination of their years of concentrated study, and a long-term curriculum specifically designed to prepare German students to take this exam. 

As is shown in the below diagram, the Abitur is what all German Gymnasium students work towards in their academic careers: this one test needs to encompass all of their learning from the first through twelfth class. (Gymnasium schools are the university preparation schools in Germany, and German students are separated into Gymnasium schools anywhere from fifth to seventh grade.)

A diagram of Germany's education system

It's also worth noting that not every student in Germany takes the Abitur. Although the number of students taking the Abitur has increased since the 1970's, students who graduate from Realschule or Hauptschule are not expected to take the Abitur, but to attend a professional school or begin an apprenticeship. This means that unlike in the United States, most students in Germany are not spending their high school years preparing for a college entrance exam.

Specifically, as of the year 2000, only 11% of jobholders in the country of Germany had taken the Abitur. By contrast, in October 2016, almost 70% of high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities, almost all of whom require some form of college entrance exam. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016)

It's therefore possible to speculate that the extreme anxiety that American students (and their parents, as well as their teachers) experience surrounding college entrance exams may in some part be because those students are ill-prepared for the exams, having not been on a college preparatory track since fifth or sixth grade as German Gymnasium students are.

Abitur schools vary from state to state
Some recent studies in Germany have revealed a large gap between the percentage of students scoring very high (1 is the "highest" score) in the different states of Germany. When students score well on the exam, it reflects directly on their teachers, and, in turn, their state schooling system. Therefore, it may benefit some German states to administer a slightly easier Abitur to their students, in order to bolster their image in the view of the country. ("Abitur lottery sparks tougher exam debate" 2015)

German students taking the Abitur

Test taking pressureIn the past, the Abitur was an even more "high stakes exam" for German students -- one that could cause real devastation as a result of not taking or passing the exam at the end of Gymnasium. The most exaggerated case is the young man who shot several people in Erfurt, Germany in 2002 because he was expelled from school before taking his Abitur, thus negating his career possibilities. ("How a school shooting" 2017) Since that time, Germany has changed their laws to allow students to apply for placements at vocational schools without an Abitur. 

How Gymnasium teachers benefit
With such a high-stakes exam looming for German students, it is surprising to see that teachers still enjoy a great deal of freedom as they teach subjects that will be included in the Abitur. German schools generally do not require teachers to adhere to as strict a curriculum as they do in the United States, so teachers who have taught in both countries find that they do far less "teaching to the test" in German than they do in the United States. ("Why you should teach" 2014) You see, for German teachers, their class is just part of the greater picture, equipping students to score well on the Abitur, rather than a "means to an end" in itself, with a district-wide high stakes test at the end of their specific class.

Shortened preparation time not a factor
Another "stressor" that had been cited by German students and their parents has been that in recent years, the time students spend in Gymnasium has recently been shortened by a year. (There used to be a 13th grade in most schools.) Students and their parents were afraid that their Abitur-related stress would be heightened by this change, but recent students have shown this not to be the case. (Minkley, Rest, Terstegen, Kirchner, Wolf, 2013)

The crux of the difference between the two systems These are just some of the differences between the high-stakes tests administered by the United States and German government to their college-bound students. Since fewer German students go to what Americans would consider a "traditional college," fewer of them take their one, large college readiness exam. And since the German Gymnasium students' preparation has taken place since fifth grade, there seems to be considerably less stress associated with taking this test.


References
Abitur lottery sparks tougher exam debate (2015, June 10) Retrieved from https://www.thelocal.de/20150610/abitur-germany-education-standards-quality

Minkley, N., Rest, M., Tergersten, S., Kirchner, W.H., Wolf, O.T. (2013) Mehr Stress durch G8? Akute und chronische Stressbelastung von Abiturienten mit regulärer und verkürzter Gymnasialzeit. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nina_Minkley/publication/283638318_Mehr_Stress_durch_G8_Akute_und_chronische_Stressbelastung_von_Abiturienten_mit_regularer_und_verkurzter_Gymnasialzeit/links/575e711408ae9a9c955c2472.pdf

Svab, P. (2013, November 22) State Education Chancellor Defends Teacher and School Evaluations. Retrieved from http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/367782-state-education-commissioner-defends-teacher-and-school-evaluations/

Students Go To Extreme Measures to Get Higher Test Scores. (2013, November 17) Retrieved from http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/17/students-go-to-extreme-measures-to-get-higher-test-scores/


Trines, S. (2016, November 8) Education in Germany. Retrieved from http://wenr.wes.org/2016/11/education-in-germany

Why you should teach English in Germany (2014, April 14) Retrieved from https://www.thelocal.de/20140414/why-you-should-become-an-english-teacher-in-germany

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016) College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2016 Graduates. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm

Diagram of the German education system retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/German_School_System.png

Photograph of students taking the Abitur retrieved from https://www.thelocal.de/userdata/images/1433933587_abitur%20exam.jpg

Photograph of students taking the SAT retrieved from http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55706c30eab8eac25fc67cd0-1190-625/the-best-piece-of-advice-for-taking-the-sat-is-shockingly-simple.jpg