Philadelphia steps in the right direction …

Calling upon the School District of Philadelphia and the School Reform Commission to analyze the financial and human impact of standardized testing, to identify strategies to minimize its use, and to request a waiver of the Keystone Exams from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to adopt assessments that better serve local needs and priorities.

Read the resolution on the City of Philadelphia City Council website.

When is a Teacher NOT a Teacher?

When she is a counselor, or a speech therapist, or a librarian, or a coach, or on the child study team … you get the point.

There are many education professionals that work in our schools to support students but don’t “teach” in the traditional sense, interacting with classrooms filled with students. In most districts they are considered “teachers” as part of their employment contract. However, their jobs are not really the same. Most of them don’t interact with large group of students in a classroom setting.

However, their jobs are critically important. And according to teacher evaluation regulations, their job performance must be evaluated using the district’s selected evaluation tool. For many, this is the epitome of trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

Some of the evaluation models in use across the state have job-specific rubrics to accommodate the accountability requirement. For example, the Danielson Framework for Teaching also provides Frameworks for Instructional Specialists, Library/Media Specialists, School Nurses, School Counselors, School Psychologists, and Therapeutic Specialists. These can be found in the 2007 publication of Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching (chapter 5). They are also available from districts using Teachscape as a data collection tool. One final suggestion is to contact the Danielson Group and request job-specific rubrics.

The Stronge Teacher Performance Evaluation System will also provide a separate performance system for Educational Specialists (e.g. counselor, instructional coach, librarian, school nurse, school psychologist, school social worker, and selected other positions). Districts using the Stronge model can request those systems by contacting www.strongeandassociates.com

Marzano districts can contact Learning Sciences International for the Non-Classroom Instructional Support Member Evaluation Form. These are standard issue for any district purchasing materials and software from Learning Sciences.

McREL users are not so fortunate; there are no rubrics for educational services teaching staff. At this point, they typically use their existing instruments. However, individual districts in NJ have created their own rubrics to use in the McREL format. Teachers in McREL districts should contact EIRC and request examples that have been created.

For those in Marshall districts, Kim Marshall suggests contacting a Massachusetts school district that has developed “tweaked” Marshall rubrics 11 other job descriptions. Email Lisa Freedman (LFreedman@Westwood.k12.ma.us) who will share those rubrics that have been created.

No matter the model, it’s important to consider that these important jobs: nurses, counselors, coaches, librarians, therapists, child-study teams, etc., etc. … look very different from district-to-district. The job descriptions may vary, even within one district (consider the difference between high school and elementary library/media specialists). Therefore, all criteria and rubrics must be considered contextually; those educational professionals in “not-a-teacher” jobs must take a careful look at the evaluative criteria to see if it actually reflects their work. If not, teachers should recommend the rubrics be revised to more accurately describe their responsibilities—and clearly indicate the difference between effective and highly effective practice.

This work is simply too important to keep pushing a square peg into a round hole.

Note: This post originally appeared in the December issue of the NJEA Review.

Testing: Too much, too far, too fast

In the NY Times:

“This is the proverbial perfect storm of testing that has hit not only Florida but all the states,” said Alberto M. Carvalho, the influential superintendent of Miami-Dade County Schools, the fourth-largest district in the country, who was named the 2014 national superintendent of the year. “This is too much, too far, too fast, and it threatens the fabric of real accountability.”

Read States Listen as Parents Give Rampant Testing an F

How much Testing is Enough?

NPR Ed:

…the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools, announced the initial results of an attempt to quantify the current state of testing in America.

Their survey of large districts showed students taking an average of 113 standardized tests between pre-K and grade 12, with 11th grade the most tested.

Another recent study by the Center for American Progress looked at 14 school districts. It found that students in grades 3-8 take an average of 10, up to a high of 20, standardized assessments per year. That doesn’t count tests required of smaller groups of students, like English-language learners.

What may be a little trickier is defining just which tests qualify as “unnecessary.” The CCSSO survey describes testing requirements that have seemingly multiplied on their own without human intervention, like hangers piling up in a closet.

They found at least 23 distinct purposes for tests, including: state and federal accountability, grade promotions, English proficiency, program evaluation, teacher evaluation, diagnostics, end-of-year predictions, or to fulfill the requirements of specific grants.

They also found a lot of overlap, with some of these tests collecting nearly the same information.

Read the entire post here.

Value-added modeling is very, very tricky

From NPR Ed, A Botched Study Raises Bigger Questions:

Both student growth measures and value-added models are being adopted in most states. Education secretary Arne Duncan is a fan. He wrote on his blog in September, “No school or teacher should look bad because they took on kids with greater challenges. Growth is what matters.” Joanne Weiss, Duncan’s former chief of staff, told me last month, “If you focus on growth you can see which schools are improving rapidly and shouldn’t be categorized as failures.”

But there’s a problem. The math behind value-added modeling is very, very tricky. The American Statistical Association, earlier this year, issued a public statement urging caution in the use of value-added models, especially in high-stakes conditions. Among the objections:

• Value-added models are complex. They require “high-level statistical expertise” to do correctly;
• They are based only on standardized test scores, which are a limited source of information about everything that happens in a school;
• They measure correlation, not causation. So they don’t necessarily tell you if a student’s improvement or decline is due to a school or teacher or to some other unknown factor;
• They are “unstable.” Small changes to the tests or the assumptions used in the models can produce widely varying rankings.

Read the entire article here.

Ensuring Equitable Access to Effective Educators

The US Department of Education recently released a guidance document in an attempt to influence educator effectiveness reform across the US:

In the NY Times article U.S. to Focus on Equity in Assigning of Teachers:

… states must develop plans by next June that make sure that public schools comply with existing federal law requiring that “poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified or out-of-field teachers.”

…In an increasingly rare show of agreement with the Obama administration, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers’ union, welcomed the guidance.

“We’re supporting this process because the rhetoric around this process has changed from ‘Just come up with the data and we will sanction you if the data doesn’t look right,’ ” Ms. Weingarten said in a telephone interview, “to ‘What’s the plan to attract and support and retain qualified and well-prepared teachers for the kids who need it most.’ ”

But other education advocates said they were concerned that the guidance could lack teeth. “The very real risk is that this just becomes a big compliance paperwork exercise,” said Daria Hall, K-12 policy director at the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for racial minority students and low-income children, “and nothing actually happens on behalf of kids.”

From Edweek‘s States Must Address Teaching Gaps:

 …Key takeaways:

  • At a minimum, state plans have to consider whether low-income and minority kids are being taught by inexperienced, ineffective, or unqualified teachers at a rate that’s higher than other students in the state. That’s not really a new or surprising requirement: It’s something that state were supposed to have been doing the past 12 years under NCLB, which was signed into law in 2002.
  • States aren’t required to use any specific strategies to fix their equity gaps. They can consider things like targeted professional development, giving educators more time for collaboration, revamping teacher preparation at post-secondary institutions, and coming up with new compensation systems.
  • States have to consult broadly with stakeholders to get a sense of the problem and what steps should be taken to address it.
  • States also have to figure out the “root causes” of teacher distribution gaps, and then figure out a way to work with districts to address them. For instance, if a state decides that the “root cause” of inequitable teacher distribution is lack of support and professional development for teachers, it would have to find a way to work with institutions of higher education and other potential partners to get educators the help they need, by hiring mentors or coaches, for example. States can consider the “geographical” context of districts when making these decisions. (In other words, states may want to try a different set of interventions on rural schools as opposed to urban and suburban schools.)

Huffington Post (in What the White House is Doing to Make Sure Low-Income Students Get Good Teachers) adds:

 “The guidance released here — it’s honestly pretty fluffy, it’s just a non-binding plan,” Chad Aldeman, associate partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners, told The Huffington Post.

And the Washington Post, in  Trying to Get Better Teachers into Nation’s Poor Classrooms, concludes:

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said the move by the Obama administration is well-intentioned but will have little impact.

“Effective teachers tend to be attracted to districts that pay higher salaries and have what might be referred to as better working conditions,” he said. “This just ignores the whole question of poverty. There seem to be blinders on the part of our policymakers in that they refuse to acknowledge the impact of poverty on our educational system.”

Educating Kids is harder than rocket science

Jack Schneider writes in the Washington Post:

“most of us—reformers, particularly—think we know what’s best for the public schools. But we would never presume to have answers about where to look for sources of Gamma-rays or about the importance of measuring Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Imagine Congress exerting control over NASA through a bill like No Child Left Behind, or coercing policy shifts through a program like Race to the Top. Or well-intended organizations like Teach For America jumping into the fray—recruiting talented college graduates and placing them on the job as rocket scientists. Or philanthropists deciding to apply lessons from their successes in domains like DVD rentals to “disrupt” the NASA “monopoly.”

How long would any of this be taken seriously? …

Schooling … is plagued by a number of challenges. Some are relatively straightforward; schools need adequate funding, for instance. But most of these issues are dilemmas rather than problems. The difference being that whereas problems can be solved, dilemmas can only be managed. What, for instance, do you do about student engagement? That’s a question not easily solved by introducing new gadgets or by paying students to stay focused.

Want to put a rocket into space? No problem. Just get enough brains working on the task.

Want to educate 50 million students in a powerful, relevant, and relatively equal way? Now that’s a challenge.

As it turns out, educating kids isn’t rocket science. It’s harder.”

Read the entire article here.

Student Success Starts with a FIT Culture

Cross-posted at ASCD In Service

Now that the school year is underway, you’re rockin’ and rollin’ and making great strides with your pacing guide and curriculum content. As you plan your lessons and consider activities and instructional strategies, take a moment to pause and reflect on the culture of learning that is being established, both in your classroom and in your school.

“Academic press is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to operationalize the mission of the school. . . . No school improvement effort will be effective, maintained, or enhanced unless school culture and academic press are both addressed and aligned” (Fisher, Frey, & Pumpian 2012, p. 5). Within the FIT Teaching™ model, school and classroom culture is a critical prerequisite to implementing effective instruction.

THE 5 PILLARS

In their book How to Create a Culture of Achievement, Fisher, Frey, and Pumpian. identify five pillars that are critical to student achievement. These pillars are useful when working to implement a strong school and classroom culture. They are also invaluable when examining the current state of affairs in your learning environment.

Pillar 1: Welcome

Imagine checking into a hotel and waiting a long, long time to be helped, only to then be treated brusquely at the front desk and shuffled off, unceremoniously, to your room. You would probably choose never to patronize that hotel again.

Similarly, many visitors to schools and classrooms often feel as though they are an unwelcome disruption rather than an honored guest. The same goes for students as well. This pillar suggests that educators need to make a conscious effort to establish a welcoming environment for all learners and visitors.

How do we know our school and classrooms are welcoming?

  • Try the secret shopper method and invite a stranger to visit and have them report back.
  • Send out a student and/or parent survey asking for anonymous feedback.
  • Hold student focus groups to allow free discussion about the nature of your welcoming environment.

Pillar 2: Do No Harm

Behavior issues—often referred to as disciplinary issues—are a sticky subject for many schools and classrooms. Discussions around behavior issues and how to respond to misbehavior monopolize time and can often be emotionally charged.

This pillar describes the importance of all adults agreeing to be the models of correct behavior. This begins with the adults discussing behavioral goals and expectations and making a concerted effort to work together to hold everyone (not just students) to the agreed upon standards. In such an environment, one teacher doesn’t permit gum chewing in class while another ignores it. With this approach, school rules have a purpose and are consistently monitored. Ultimately, however, the goal is for students to self-regulate so that “enforcement” becomes a moot point.

How do we know our school and classrooms subscribe to a policy of “do no harm”?

  • Survey the students about school rules. Don’t just ask if they know the rules, but ask if they know why the rules are important.
  • Audit your discipline referrals. What are the trends, patterns, and commonalities? Do certain issues warrant further action—perhaps a more concerted effort on the part of all staff?
  • Survey the teachers. What do they believe are the major behavioral issues? Do their answers match what your audit results suggest?

Pillar 3: Choice Words

In his book Choice Words, Peter Johnston writes, “Language . . . is not merely representational (though it is that); it is also constitutive” (2004, p. 9). He shares an example of a teacher asking students questions for which she already knows the answers. This reinforces the teacher’s role as the font of all knowledge and students as recipients. In another example, a teacher announces that the class will have free choice time, but only after finishing the reading task first. This subtly indicates that the reading is a necessary work chore to be completed before having “fun.”

According to this pillar, the language teachers choose to use has a great effect on how students come to view their lives at school, the tasks they are to complete, and their roles as learners. Consider the nuanced difference between these exchanges:

Student: I’m having trouble correcting the grammar in this sentence.

Teacher: What have I taught you about subject-verb agreement?

Or …

Student: I’m having trouble correcting the grammar in this sentence.

Teacher: As a writer, what have you learned about subject-verb agreement?

In the first example, the teacher is firmly in control of the knowledge and expects the student to recall what has been taught. In the second example, the teacher reinforces that the student is a writer who is learning the critical aspects of a writer’s craft.

How do we know our school’s educators choose words carefully?

  • Teachers can self-assess the language they use in the classroom. Are they phrasing things in a way that creates a sense of agency for their students?
  • Administrators can support teachers’ self-assessment by collecting observation data and sharing it with teachers so they can reflect on their language choices.

Pillar 4: It’s Never Too Late to Learn

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

This Chinese proverb suggests that there is value in working toward achieving goals no matter how late we are in getting started or how daunting the task may seem. This idea is particularly relevant for our students, who arrive at school with test scores labeling them a certain number of years “below grade level.”

This pillar suggests that all educators must believe that students can be successful and competent learners—not merely compliant students. In her book Mindset (2006), Carol Dweck describes the power of people’s beliefs. In the first mind-set she depicts, one believes abilities are etched in stone, permanent and immutable. Our intelligence is fixed and thus we hold a fixed mind-set. In the other mind-set, one believes that learning and achievement can be cultivated through hard work and perseverance. In this example, we hold a growth mind-set.

Imagine the difference for students when administrators and teachers in their school regard them with growth mind-sets, not fixed ones! Combine this with the notion of choice words and compare these statements made by a teacher:

Wow, great work on this project. You are so smart.

Or …

Wow, great work on this project. You put a lot of thought and effort into it.

In the first example, the student is reminded that her inherent intelligence was responsible for her success. This creates a lot of pressure for a student—what happens if that intelligence isn’t enough? In the second example, the student’s work and effort is acknowledged. Hard work is not a finite resource. When a student struggles, perseverance will see them through.

How do we know our school and classrooms are places where it’s never too late to learn?

  • Review the content and level of cognitive tasks given to students. Do they represent high expectations for all?
  • Analyze formative and summative assessments for the depth of knowledge required. Are the questions asking students to recall and reproduce or to analyze information and extend their thinking?
  • Discuss academic recovery efforts in your classrooms and your school. What happens when students don’t achieve as expected? What supports are in place?

Pillar 5: Best School in the Universe

Although this statement might invoke images of bragging educators—We work at the best school!—it is actually about members of a school holding themselves accountable for creating the best possible environment for students. This pillar suggests a continuous improvement effort in order to make a school great. Teaching is a complex and demanding job that requires constant attention from motivated individuals in order to be effective.

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (2009), Daniel Pink identifies three critical aspects of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy speaks to our ability to be self-directed in our work and learning. Mastery describes our desire to get good at something. Purpose reflects our wish to pursue meaningful tasks—not busy work or artificial assignments.

These principles can be applied to the work of educators and the work of students within a school. After all, the best school in the universe is one that’s a great place to work as well as a great place to learn.

How do we know our school and classrooms are the best in the universe?

  • Are students’ tasks challenging, authentic, and relevant?
  • Do tasks offer students choices and collaborative opportunities?
  • Are supports designed so that students can master important learning?
  • Are educators given opportunities to be self-directed?
  • Are educators given opportunities and supports to continuously improve their craft?
  • Are educators engaged in meaningful pursuits that have a direct effect on student learning?

Don’t get too caught up in your curriculum without considering the environment. FIT Teaching™ begins with a culture of achievement.

REFERENCES:

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., Pumpian, I. (2012). How to create a culture of achievement in your school and classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Johnston, P. H. (2004). Choice words: How our language affects children’s learning. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.