Data and the Arts, part 2 - If I Had a TARDIS...

If I had a TARDIS, I'd go back in time to make better data decisions.

Before becoming a school administrator, I was a music educator for 18 years.  I remember the exact moment I decided to stop asking students to play scales for grades.  My students had to play 12 major scales from memory in under three minutes for their final exam.  I happened to see a flute player's practice notes for the G-flat major scale:

...F-sharp, A-flat, B-flat, B, C-sharp, E-flat, F, F-sharp...

For readers who aren't familiar with major scales, these scales need to be spelled in alphabetical order, with no letters skipped or repeated.  The series of notes above is the equivalent of a nonsense sentence.

I could be sure that this student had no understanding of what it meant to play in the key of G-flat major.  She was just memorizing finger patterns, and she was using the most familiar spelling of the note to remind her which buttons to push down.  I wondered if this was what everybody was doing.

So, I stopped giving scale tests.

Big mistake.

The PLC process has taught me the need for balanced assessments that provide evidence for knowledge, skills, and dispositions.  This student lacked fundamental knowledge.  I concluded that scale tests didn't teach this fundamental knowledge.  Why didn't I just teach that knowledge better and use a different assessment to get my evidence?

If I had a TARDIS, I would teach students about whole steps and half steps.  I would ask students to write scales as well as play them.  I would ask them to write scales with and without key signatures.  I would use well-designed multiple choice tests to assess knowledge efficiently and effectively.  And yes, I would ask students to play the scales.  I'd even do some ear-training to teach the aural component of major scales.

Do we have time to do this?  Well, apparently we have time to tell the trombones 1,001 times to play A-flat in third position instead of second.  Why not do this instead?

Data isn't the enemy.  It is simply evidence about whether or not our students have learned what we taught.  If this isn't what goes into the grade book, I don't know what does.