Standards-Based Testing, Practice Testing

This exercise resembles items on standardized assessments, while serving as a lesson guide and practice test to improve teaching and learning in language, arts, math and statistics, social studies and civics, and problem solving.

This exercise also offers the sort of information typical of what KAT students will gather when they research their local issue. Although in this particular example, the issue may be community participation in elections or diverse representation in local political parties, similar exercises arise from any news accounts or data that students discover in research relevant to their public policy study. It's easy to find data and develop such questions on topics that might interest KAT students—public health, school resources, library and recreational site expenses and utilization, etc. Newspapers and magazines are loaded with the ingredients.

This exercise is quite challenging and is not as straightforward as its form suggests. Embedded in the lesson are serious, sophisticated vocabulary and syntax, social studies content, and statistical inference. To maximize the value of this exercise, you may wish to go over it together with the class, concentrating on the meaning of unfamiliar concepts, identifying and using evidence to support viewpoints, and clarifying legitimate inferences from the data.

Vocabulary and Concepts

Turnout: Turnout here refers to the portion of eligible, registered voters who actually come out to vote. Thus. 89% of the registered Democrats did NOT vote in this election and 84% of the registered Republicans did not vote. In considering the questions, remember that there may be more Democrats than Republics--we don't know from the data presented! Show your students that 11% of 1000 is 110, but 16% of 700 is 112. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to infer from such percentages provided whether more Democrat or Republican voters actually turned out; all we can tell for sure is that comparing each respective group, Republicans participated at a greater rate than Democrats. Also, urge your students to consider: if turnout is a percentage of registered voters, and turn-out is low, what does this suggest about the turnout as a percentage of all eligible—as opposed to registered—voters?

Primary Elections: Primary elections are ways that political parties can nominate their candidates to run in a General election where they compete against candidates from other political parties. Primary elections are contests internal to the party's decision-making processes, whereas General elections are contests between candidates of different parties. In many states, including Pennsylvania, a person must be officially registered in a particular political party in order to vote in its Primary election

Gubernatorial Election: Although this term doesn't appear directly in the data presented, students will probably hear or read the term if they attend to the news. The actions of state governors do impact on the lives of all state residents. Once students connect a new word to a real context. they're very likely to notice it again and use it.

What's Missing? When students research or analyze material, they need to be taught to think about what is not there as well as what is there. The data provided doesn't tell is whole story. Totally omitted, for instance, is the data on the Democratic nomination for governor. Also, teachers may want to nudge students to notice that information for only 3 Districts out of the total 314 is shown (what percentage is that?). Other races—for local offices and for state representatives—are also missing lions this sample.

Evidence: In the effort to prompt student participation and solicit student expressions, we often rush to hear their opinions and vote, without emphasizing the importance of grounding these voices in solid evidence. It is our responsibility to insist that students support their statements with reliable data and inform their opinions with careful research.

Rubrics

Highly Proficient: Student observes that the outcome of the Republican gubernatorial primary election was determined by 44 votes out of over 27.000-a very small margin. Such a close election means that any single district might have made the entire difference in the election. Student also notes that had more than 16% of the Republicans turned out, the results might have been quite different. Answer suggests to candidates that they should therefore work harder to get their supporters out to actually cast their votes, and impress upon them how important each vote can be. Perhaps an especially savvy student will even suggest a thorough examination of the results of the rest of the Districts not shown here, and urge the candidates to target specific Districts in their campaign efforts.

Basic Proficiency: Student is not very specific about the data above, and may misinterpret some of it, but does conclude that the race was close and that candidates should work harder to get more voters to turn our on election day.

Below Proficient: Response doesn't indicate understanding of the data or its applicability to electoral campaigns or democratic participation.

Preparing for Standard-Based Testing
Centerfold Lesson 1

More Lesson Plans

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