Post 46: Truths.

Post 45: Creative Forces.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I dragged you into the wartime consequences that I didn't know were coming, the minefield that nobody thought was real, and the conversation that never got to end with a celebration of our victories.

It's not like they were trying to harm me. Not at all. It's more like they wanted to destroy anything and everything that I ever loved and turn it into purposeless white ash, scrap metal, a continent overflowing with nothing. In that nothing space they would watch, and see what love looks like from afar; and then they would try to render it asunder, capture it, keep it under siege, and destroy hope, as though that would give them power unto themselves that mutually assured destruction and nuclear domination did not.

Most of all, they wanted it to be my fault.

Their guilt is their prison.

I felt too deeply, I was too American, I cared about the children, I wanted to end the violence. I wanted it to stop, I wanted them to stop. They wanted it to be my responsibility, so they would be free of the countless tragedies they created in the name of oil, to earn blood money in a land with no law.

I put on my hat, strapped in my gear, locked my cylinders, and Tribunal was the name of the series. My boots wore the miles well.

You, were my desert rose, you shone light in all of my dark places and gave me the power to grow from the most hazardous substances, and a little faith. They owe you much, my dear.

This is what there is to speak:

Mostly I'm sorry if they hurt you,

I'm sorry if you told them you loved me,

I'm sorry that a war wasn't exactly what I had planned for us;

it turns out loving is a dangerous thing to do, in an unjust world as this.

...I'm not sorry that I still do, every day."

-S. Corey Hixson, 2015

Post 44: An Image

(Grey Jedi - 12.20.2015)      Image Credit: V.F. Harris http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/9328891/1/

Post 43: The Book

I've been working on a nonfiction work representing my lessons in education. That resource can be found on my website at http://www.dxed.org/the-book I'd like to thank everyone from around the world who is reading and prepared to develop an education community that inspires and empowers our youth together.

Post 42. Spectres.

"Spring Snow" Rendered as an image.

Post 41. An Image

I have an artistic side as well. This was one of my first digital decoupage images. I have many of these which come from printed materials, this one was gathered from online sources. I'm sure clicking the image will load it in original size.

Post 40: What it's all really like.

For post forty I figured I would share just exactly what it is I do as a student, what my material looks like, and allow some peer-review. Correspondence courses tend to demand more deliverable materials and independent study, but as a research community we're working on ways to include social presence and epistemic engagement. Presented here is a paper.

Hixson, S. (2015, October 11). Critical thinking application II: Standardized test report card       [Course deliverable for a course on evaluation and assessment OTL-541K].      School of Education, Colorado State University Global Campus.

Critical Thinking Application II: Standardized Test Report Card           In order to establish the background perceptions related to this report, and in the case of any cultural or situational bias, I am of the opinion that the current standardized assessment system in Colorado for secondary students has not successfully demonstrated statistical validity or reliability. As the opinion of the author may result in confirmation bias it is my responsibility to mention that I noticed a peculiarity in the data represented as scale means, which were sets of assessment scores that were processed and averaged on a base score, because I have a background in psychology; and not because I am active in the political situation surrounding standardized testing in Jefferson County, Colorado. Part I: Statewide Assessment Data and Report           Bennett (2015), provides a stratification to describe the development of standardized assessment according to three tiers; a tier in which the assessments attempt to reproduce conventional paper assessments and rely on the validity of the reproduced measures, a tier in which the testing systems infrastructure is developed and expanded for accountability and efficiency reasons, and a testing system which includes rich data and student performance activities that are immersive and cognitively engaging multi-step processes. In the State of Colorado I can say that we have a second-tier testing system. Though there are grave concerns about the construct validity and reliability of the instruments themselves, the assessment scores and processed data are easily available and reports can be generated automatically by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE, n.d.). The infrastructure exists which can provide access to many different measures of key variables in the statewide assessment data, generate and export electronic report of the thousands of scores in the population, and demonstrate well thought out data storage and technology utilization. However the tests themselves cannot be shown to demonstrate construct validity as there are confounding variables which cause the data to have extreme and unrelated variation in overall mean scores statewide. In terms of cognitive psychology reading comprehension and writing are thought to be strongly related, people who are skilled at reading and vocabulary comprehension are overall also skilled in writing and communication; while poorly demonstrated writing skills may not necessarily be related to intelligence or achievement, writing depends on reading related cognitive abilities and tests of writing and reading tend to show strong correlations in a wide range of studies (Bruning, Schraw & Ronning, 1999). Bruning, Schraw & Ronning generalize in a second print textbook, “These relationships are not surprising when we consider that frequent reading exposes students to many more samples of writing” (p. 303). The data presented in figure 1 are from the statewide population mean scale scores of secondary public education students on the reading and writing tests created by the Colorado Department of Education, and demonstrate a Pearson correlation coefficient of r=0.0016 where df=9 r-crit=0.602 using a probability of error p=0.05 failing to reject the null hypothesis that reading and writing are not related. Figure 1. Colorado statewide mean scale scores on reading and writing 2004-2014. (CDE, n.d.)                 These data raise critical concerns about construct validity and questions about which of the assessments is in error among either of the three major subjects reading, writing, and math; and also demonstrate no relationship in variability of scores within scores generated in a given year. Figure 2 demonstrates that these data are reproduced on the school, district, and state level which make it appear that either statewide reading scores are inflated, or likewise the assessments for math and writing are not accurately measuring performance. Figure 2. Comparisons between large and small schools, district and state averages. (CDE, n.d.)          These data warrant further investigation into the causes of outlying and variable data which seems otherwise unrelated between measures and within groups. One confounding variable with these data is that Lakewood High School is a very large school while Jeffco Open School is a very small democratic school, N=2,000 and N=200 students estimated, respectively. Part II: Reflections.           Goodwin & Hubbell (2013), include only self-report measures of knowledge based on multiple-choice or open ended sentence questions in their survey of assessments of skill. In a related assignment and available for viewing online I had created a formative assessment based on a Likert scale and continued to investigate the possibility that other measures of performance may be more accurate and statistically valid (Hixson, 2015). A previously cited work states that scores correlating a subjects content knowledge after a standard video presentation and scores generated by an automated essay scoring system were stating that the average Pearson r=0.85 in the study of the automated scoring of writing (Kersting, Sherin & Stigler, 2014). Kersting, Sherin & Stigler fail to report the number of human grades performed in the analysis, so no value of r-crit could be found, during human versus computer scoring and move forward with their research claiming, “We reasoned that if the average correlations between rater and computer-generated scores exceed .80, an argument can be made for the convergent validity of machine scores with human scores” (p. 965). In statistical terms this literally says, that the researchers are unaware of whether the correlations they had found were significant, and were choosing to publish data which clearly demonstrates a confirmation bias for automated testing systems in order to show that automated essay readers may work.           What I am seeing in terms of the quest for statistical validity among outcomes measures for secondary students; is extensive confirmation bias in the ability of the system to accurately represent and aggregate student knowledge with grandiose technological infrastructure and little construct validity, measures of variance, or confidence intervals related to the reliability of mean scores or scoring systems. The system appears to be financially driven and the data that the system has generated over a decade is not supported by research or best practices in psychology.

References Bennet, R. E. (2015), Chapter 10: The changing nature of educational assessment. 39, 370-407. Bruning, R., Schraw, G. & Ronning, R. (1999). Cognitive psychology and instruction (3rd ed).        Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. CDE (n.d.). SchoolView data lab report. Retrieved from: CDE Website Goodwin, B. & Hubbell, E. (2013). The 12 touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying       focused every day. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Hixson, S. (2015, May 31). Teaching portfolio [Course deliverable for a class on teaching and      learning methods OTL-502-1]. School of Education, Colorado State University Global Campus.      Retrieved from http://www.dxed.org/teaching-portfolio Kersting, N., Sherin, B. & Stigler, J. (2014). Automated scoring of teachers’ open-ended responses      to video prompts: Bringing the classroom-video-analysis assessment to scale. Educational and      Psychological Measurement, 74(6), 950-974.

Post 39. Inspirations.

Progress continues in terms of my own professional development to begin offering classes for current teachers who would like to be a part of democratic education and the understanding of the teaching role as an Advisor to students who are the body of decision makers in a self-directed and democratic learning environment. Available now on the www.dxed.org website is a "for teachers" developed specifically for educators who would like to adapt the standards-driven academic expectations from the powers that be into a democratic format and lesson plan structure. To me, standards are good, they establish what we are teaching and facilitate communication among educators and to students. The validity of academic testing and publishing technology is to be questioned heavily however, as I cannot see a publisher with an invested stake in the provision of software, having an interest in the personal, intellectual and social development of students as young people in a community of learners.

Clicking the image will redirect the reader to the new website resources.
http://www.dxed.org/for-teachers

For Teachers

Post 38: Images.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a picture of a document is at least worth mentioning. What follows are my letters of recommendation that served as a required part of my high school graduation in May of 2000. Also a link to my original Jefferson County Open School 2000 JCOS Transcripts Corey Hixson.

Post 37: The Problem, Revisited.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Problem", cited here with an inspired image from the poem (Emerson, 1950).

I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; and on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him alure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; the litanies of nations came, Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,-- The canticles of love and woe; The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew;-- The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know’st thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone; And Morning opes with hast her lids, To gaze upon the Pyramids; O’er england’s abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For, out of Thought’s interior sphere, These wonders rose to upper air; And nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat. These temples grew as grows the grass; Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive master lent his hand To the vast soul that o’er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine, Bestrode the stibes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspired. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise,-- The Book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be.

Emerson, R. W. (1950). The problem. In Atkins, B. (Ed.), The selected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (2nd ed.)(pp. 762-763). New York, NY: Modern Library.