Record: 1 Title: Authors: Source: MEASURING WHAT MATTERS. GRACE, CATHERINE O'NEILL1 Independent School; Summer2011, Vol.

70 Issue 4, p64-68, 5p NAICS/Industry Codes611430 Professional and Management Development Training 624310 Vocational Rehabilitation Services 611310 Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools Abstract: The article presents the views of psychologist Robert J. Sternberg on the U.S. schools approach to admission testing. Sternberg in his book "College Admissions for the 21st Century" discusses about his elementary school and college education pattern. It highlights the academic qualifications and professional life of Sternberg. It investigates an alternative form of admission test called Kaleidoscope System introduced by Sternberg and his colleagues at Tufts University to assess creative skills. Author Affiliations: Database:
1Director

of communications at Noble and Greenough School (Massachusetts)

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MEASURING WHAT MATTERS

professional culture in school ROBERT STERNBERG'S Enlightened Approach TO ADMISSIONS TESTING Psychologist Robert J. Sternberg's conviction that American standardized testing does not accurately reflect a child's intelligence or potential is far from theoretical. As an elementary school student in the 1950s, he scored poorly on the ubiquitous IQ test of the time, freezing up when the school psychologist entered the room. In his book College Admissions for the 21st Century (Harvard University Press), published in October 2010, Sternberg writes, "The elementary school I attended gave group IQ tests every couple of years. As a result of my low scores, my teachers thought I was stupid, and I did, too. They never came out and told us our IQ scores, but one could tell from the way teachers acted. In first grade, I was a mediocre student, which made my teachers happy because they got what they expected. I, in turn, was happy that they were happy, and in the end, everyone was quite happy. By second grade, I was slightly worse as a student, and in third grade, still worse." Thankfully for Sternberg -- and for the field of psychology -- an insightful fourth-grade teacher saw past the numbers and recognized his potential. He began earning A's, and eventually matriculated at Yale University. Sternberg would go on to become a summa cum laude Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale. But before that summa, he ran into assessment struggles again when he took a psychology course, hoping to understand why he had not done well on IQ tests as a youngster. "When I took Intro Psych as a college freshman I got a C," he recalls. "I like to think the low grade was because it was a straight memorize-

the-book course and I am not a memory learner." Sternberg has studied human intelligence for more than three decades now and is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles on the relationship between intelligence and creativity, coining the term "successful intelligence" to convey the idea that achievement comes not necessarily from IQ scores and education, but from what he calls the "WISC" model of leadership -- wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. "Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity are sine qua nons for the citizens and professionals of the future, and really, for anyone who wishes to achieve meaningful success in his or her life," Sternberg says. "It's important to use intelligence, creativity, and knowledge in combination for a common good -- integrating your own interests with the interests of other people." Enlarging the College Admissions Model Beginning with the 2006 admission season at Tufts University, Sternberg and his colleagues began to administer an alternative form of admissions test they termed the Kaleidoscope System, designed to assess creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills. The system is based on methods for testing creativity that Sternberg and colleagues tested earlier through The Rainbow Project at Yale. In the world of "No Child Left Behind," many educators are concerned about the tendency to teach only what kids will be tested on. Sternberg says, "It's fine to teach to a test if the test measures what you want to measure. Traditional tests are not bad; they're narrow. We're not in the testing-is-bad camp; we're in the current-testing-is-narrow camp." He adds that new approaches that incorporate attention to wisdom, practicality, and creativity widen the frame and provide a way for a school to look beyond traditional measures. Used in addition to traditional admissions measures, Kaleidoscope is a take-home test that assesses applicants' abilities through a set of writing, drawing, or media exercises. Students might be asked to write a story with the title "The End of MTV," draw a plan for a house or a new product, or submit a creative video via YouTube. The question, "What is your favorite book and why?' addresses analytical thinking. Explaining how an applicant convinced someone of an idea he or she did not initially accept reveals practical skills. A wisdom-based question might involve explaining how to take a current passion and transform it when older to serve the common good. To avoid the potential problem of applicants recycling responses, different questions are used each year. "For each of the characteristics, we have a rubric that's rated on a quantitative scale," Sternberg explains. "For creativity, we're looking for how novel, how good, and how appropriate it is. For practicality, we look for the feasibility of the idea with respect to time, place, and material resources, as well as your persuasiveness. For analytical skills, we look for the extent to which your essay is logical, coherent, and balanced. For wisdom, we look for the extent to which you can demonstrate how you might use your abilities for the common good by balancing your own interests with other people's interpersonal interests over the long and short term through the infusion of positive ethical values." At Tufts University, where Sternberg was dean of Arts and Sciences until 2010, the slogan is: "Citizenship for a changing world," and he says that idea captures what the admissions program is

about. "You want to select leaders not in the traditional sense of 'I am going to boss you around; I am going to be a president or CEO.' Rather, you want people who want to make a difference in the world." Can such people be identified by a test? Sternberg is betting they can. He says the Kaleidoscope accurately predicts not only academic success, but also extracurricular leadership participation. Schools and colleges, Sternberg says, need to consider the broad characteristics of the students they'd like to see on their campuses. "At Tufts," he says, "we [were] trying to admit people who will make a positive, meaningful difference to the world, rather than people who just want to be good students. Being a good student is part of the profile, of course, but it's not the whole thing." Engaging Independent Schools Admission practices that incorporate Sternberg's ideas are already in use at some independent schools, including Choate Rosemary Hall (Connecticut) and Phillips Academy (Massachusetts). "We're very interested in this as a model for independent schools," says Sternberg. "If you have any selectivity at all, then the question you have to ask is: What are you selecting for? We think that most schools don't just want grade grubbers." Jane Foley Fried, dean of admission at Phillips Academy, says that her office began to consider new approaches to their process after a strategic plan in 2003 called for a wider range of recruitment. "Since our new strategic plan in 2003, we visit about 70 cities in the U.S. between September and January -- and that doesn't include international travel. We go to Asia and South America and Eastern Europe," Fried says. As Phillips 'Academy started ramping up recruitment, one of their biggest concerns was that, as numbers of applications increased, the admissions process would depend more on test scores. "I was nervous that numbers were going to play a much bigger role in our selection process and I didn't want that to happen," Fried says. "What Bob Sternberg's work has allowed us to do is to bring a more quantifiable assessment to more qualitative characteristics of the file. It's an effort to bring numbers to the 'gut' part of admissions. What this has really helped us to do is to differentiate among the top students -- and that was our goal." Through a pilot project that began three years ago, Sternberg has worked with Phillips Academy on the rubrics for their admissions test, and helped the admissions staff frame the school's admissions essay questions. "What you have to guard against is letting the numbers drive the process. You want to differentiate candidates based on the qualities of the people, the qualities of the mind, heart, and spirit. This process has brought more focused attention on these elements," Fried says. "In this pilot phase, we have had much richer conversations about candidates." At Choate Rosemary Hall, admissions representatives have been working with Sternberg since he was down the road in New Haven, says longtime Director of Admission Ray Diffley. (Sternberg was also a Choate parent.)

"When I first got into admissions, I began to have a problem when people would call me and say, 'I have a great kid.' What is a great kid?" Diffley says. Working with Sternberg, Choate developed its "Choate Self-Assessment" tool, using what Diffley calls "a terminology that brings to life what matters." Sternberg and his Yale colleagues studied what personal and creative qualities -- in addition to the basic ability to get the academic work done -- made for success at Choate. On the list were many of the things that the "WICS" model encompasses, among them: a good internal locus of control -- that is, the ability to shoulder the blame when things aren't working, and to take credit for one's own successes; sensible self-confidence; strong intrinsic motivation; and creative intelligence -- the latter measured by questions that ask students to tell stories or solve problems. The results of using new tools, reported in The Journal of Educational Psychology in fall 2009, showed that using the Choate Self-Study along with grade-point average and test scores, increased the admissions officers' ability to predict success by a factor of three. Like Fried at Phillips Academy, Diffley says Sternberg's work has helped provide, "the science behind the intuition" in the admissions process. Moreover, it makes conversations with prospective parents easier. "Unlike in the past -- when our best advice to kids and families was to take the SSAT, get a tutor, study harder, or drill for vocabulary -- now we can tell them the real-life attributes that will help them have academic success at rigorous schools like Choate." Learning for Real Life It's that real-life measure that Sternberg's work is trying to get at -- and he emphasizes that, in addition to testing for "wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized," schools must teach for it. "Kids learn in school in different ways, and by teaching in ways that support their strengths, they will learn better," he says. "If you teach kids in ways that don't fit them, they won't know that there's a mismatch between the way you teach and the way they learn. They may think that they are not cut out for that field. In high school, if you are teaching history as memorizing dates and facts, as some of my teachers did, that's nothing like what historians do. Psychologists don't sit around memorizing experiments; physicists don't solve problems that are from the textbook. In an ideal world, you would admit, teach, and assess in ways that better reflect the skills kids will need later on -- and that's essentially what we're trying to do." Sternberg believes independent schools should be leading this work. "We need to develop kids in a way that is special, in a way that shows what is unique about each of them. And this model is about what is unique about children, about how they capitalize on their strengths and how they compensate for weaknesses. To me, independent schools are places where educators have the freedom and the flexibility to do the things that will matter. If they're not going to do that, what do we need independent schools for? Catherine O'Neill Grace is director of communications at Noble and Greenough School (Massachusetts) and the co-author with Michael Thompson and Larry Cohen of Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children (Ballantine).

PHOTOGRAPHY MICHAEL NORTHRUP PSYCHOLOGISTS DON'T SIT AROUND MEMORIZING EXPERIMENTS; PHYSICISTS DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT ARE FROM THE TEXTBOOK. IN AN IDEAL WORLD, YOU WOULD ADMIT, TEACH, AND ASSESS IN WAYS THAT BETTER REFLECT THE SKILLS KIDS WILL NEED LATER ON ~~~~~~~~ By CATHERINE O'NEILL GRACE, Director of communications at Noble and Greenough School (Massachusetts) Copyright of Independent School is the property of National Association of Independent Schools and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.