DAMAGE+CONTROL+-+UNDOING+PAST+WRONGS

= = = = =DAMAGE CONTROL: PAST WRONGS AND MAKING IT RIGHT =

==“The evaluation of ability is often confounded by the means and medium used to conduct the evaluation” (Rose, 2002). This hit me both personally and as an educator. The personal component comes from familial experience--my brother, the “troubled, hyperactive” student who was written off as damaged academically. Even though he has become a successful (self-taught) contractor and business owner, he is still beset by self-doubt about his intellectual abilities. I cannot avoid believing the system exacerbated this condition. From the evidence at hand, my brother's academic failures had more to do with an incompatibility between learning style and teaching methods. Within the same article is another quote which reinforces my notion: “The learning brain is not one global learning capacity, but many multifaceted learning capacities, and that a disability or challenge in one area may be countered by extraordinary ability in another” (Chapter 1). My brother is not only erudite and self-taught, he is also a gifted teacher. ==

==As an educator, I am concerned that we have accepted as valid the traditional evaluation systems we have been using in the classroom. Validity in testing is “the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. It is vital for a test to be valid in order for the results to be accurately applied and interpreted” ([]). At the risk of indicting an entire institution, we have not only mis-diagnosed the abilities of thousands, perhaps millions, of students, but as a result of those assessments, we have thwarted their success. We have, through our blind reliance on such instruments, labeled, categorized and damned many students to a lifetime of self-doubt and unrealized successes. For this reason, I am more determined than ever to do what I can to reverse this trend and bring flexible, multiple means learning opportunities to the educational institutions I can affect. ==

==Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). //Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning.// Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Web site. Chapter 1. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from []. ==