Category Archives: Assessment

Identifying Students for Highly Capable Programs

It’s hard to identify students for gifted—or Highly Capable (HC)—programs.

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s 2009 book What the Dog Saw. One chapter was called “The New-Boy Network: What Do Job Interviews Really Tell Us?”

Gladwell explained that people can give a terrific interview and be bad at the job. Why? Because people’s traits and abilities are task-specific. Someone may have the characteristics of a great interviewee and the ability to answer interview questions well, but that same person may not have the temperament or personality or skills to perform well at the job. An interview and a job are different situations, and the person will respond differently to the two types of situations.

How does that apply to gifted identification? Imagine that a district limits itself to a single test. You may have a child who delights in that type of test question and who is comfortable with that type of testing situation. On the other hand, you may have a child who finds that kind of test question boring or who is distressed at the testing situation. If those same children have identical abilities, the first child is going to have a higher test score.

A psychologist in New York state gave a 4-year-old girl an individual IQ test that took over an hour. When the test was over, the psychologist came out and said the child missed the cut-off score by one point. However, he added, the score wasn’t valid because the girl got hungry halfway through the test.

He never gave her the chance to take a snack break.

In a district in North Carolina, the means of identification was single creativity test: “Draw a person.” Of course, the more detailed the drawing, the more creative the student. One child barely drew a stick figure, so was not identified as gifted. His mother said they should have had him draw a map. He would have been working on it for over an hour. 

He needed a different prompt.

In Washington state, districts are required to use multiple criteria for identification.

  • The more points of information, the better. Having just three items is ridiculously low, especially if two of them are subjective.
  • The more diverse kinds of information, the better.
  • The more familiar the setting for data collection, the better. Assessing kids in their own school during the school day is the best.

Joy Loss: Diagnose That

Despite the growing pushback against the term “learning loss,” it does not seem to be going away, and that is a problem. We have mandated diagnostic testing to make sure that we are addressing learning loss, meanwhile losing the time where we would be learning in our classrooms to excessive testing. Ironic? Yes, it is.

This obsession at the administrative level seems insane. I mean, no one is arguing that the last two school years were normal. Students lost time in the classroom, and we have not regained a so-called “normal” state in education since the pandemic struck. True. However, “learning loss” ignores two basic truths:

Truth #1: Our kids did not stop learning just because they were not in school. They learned a lot from these crazy times, i.e. how to navigate online learning, how to communicate digitally, how to avoid controversial topics with adults on social media, how to live through a pandemic… So many things.

Truth #2: We have ALWAYS met kids wherever they are academically. Some are at grade level, some beyond and some below. Always. They will still reach their potential. No need to panic. Honest.

Learning has happened, is happening, and will happen. But we HAVE lost many, many other things in the last year and a half- important, invaluable things: laughter, music, art, play, companionship, smiles, theater, dance, hugs, cupcakes…JOY.

Joy loss. Why are we not more concerned with joy loss?

I first saw this term on Twitter. Dr. Gholdy Muhammad tweeted: “The issue with the rhetoric of “learning loss” presumes that students were only at a loss during a pandemic, yet children and uniquely Black children have been at an educational loss (and identity & joy loss) since the inception of this country being colonized.”

Of course, her tweet is equity-focused, and it is devastatingly true. When I read it, I realized two things. First, there are always students who are marginalized, all the more reason to reform our practice. And, the second new learning: identity and joy are essential to success in school, for all children.

I am all in on this ideology. I believe that each child in my classroom needs to feel welcome, safe, acknowledged, valued, and happy. That is the only way that I can ensure that they will learn.

After stumbling on the idea of “joy loss,” I went Googling and found a blog on the ThinkLaw website. ThinkLaw is an organization founded by Colin Seale that creates curriculum to foster critical thinking skills. That was an interesting find on its own, but the blog had some great points. Check it out here.

One of many takeaways from this blog was the idea of a joy mandate. What if we cared so much about how our students felt at school that we mandated their joy? This is not to replace academics, but to enhance learning. What if every classroom was full of happy, engaged, and joyful children? Before you get too skeptical, consider this: Isn’t that just as achievable as every child meeting standard on a state assessment? Therefore, is it not a goal worth pursuing?

If you are unconvinced, if you feel like we need to seriously drill those skills and teach for those tests, think about educators and their joy loss, too. These are tough times for all of us. How will doubling down on testing and measuring learning create better school environments?

Stephen Merrill’s blog on Edutopia, “Too Much Focus on Learning Loss Will Be a Historic Mistake,” speaks so well to the problem. We actually know- according to research- what works best for kids, and we have the opportunity to reinvent public education while it is in this relatively broken state. Why aren’t we reimagining how to create a better way? Read the article here for an in depth discussion of the topic.

The “better way” is a more joyful way, full of student choice, student voice, and student passion. This is evident in my own practice. I teach three grade-levels of English and a drama class. Even with my evolving mindset for a more joyful classroom, I often get stuck in that old rut, teaching the same English lessons as I did years ago. I don’t always respond to the apathy and lack of engagement I am seeing these days as quickly as I should. I am trying to loosen up and let go of the things that don’t matter, but, in a core class, with mandated diagnostics hanging over your head, you tend to clamp down from time to time.

On the other hand, my drama class is a vibrant and playful space. We are creating art on a daily basis and learning and practicing a myriad of skills. One of my new drama students told me the other day that he learns the most in drama. He values the skills he is learning, and he is having a blast at the same time. It brought me back to my thoughts on joy loss. What if my English classes felt like my drama class? What if they were having a blast learning?

Imagine this mandate: Foster joy in your classroom. I know some educators are going to be uncomfortable if we place yet another expectation on them. I also know that it is harder than it sounds. However, wouldn’t some PD and admin support for mandated joy be nice?

We can all choose to suffer under the traditional mandates, or maybe we can ask for a new way, a better way, a joyful way to help our students learn.

Testing is Inequitable, What Else is New?

Testing’s Back, Back Again 

Last year, when Washington decided to delay standardized testing, I was ecstatic. I wonder why we give students high stakes tests at all, let alone during a global pandemic. These tests’ measurement of student learning are suspect in the best of circumstances, so testing during a global pandemic seemed laughable. 

Plus, when we would have tested last spring, we were just starting hybrid learning and class time was a precious, rare commodity after a year of online learning. 

But, as promised, these tests came back with a vengeance this fall. As a part of my new part time role in the library, I was tasked with coordinating and administering these tests. I like a challenge, and I enjoy system level thinking, but as someone who fundamentally disagrees with high stakes tests as measurements of students’ ability, the irony was not lost on me. I felt like “the man.” 

To “make up” for last year, we ended up testing almost double what we’d normally do, taking care of delayed middle schoolers with our ninth graders and the skipped sophomores with our eleventh graders. 

To add insult to my personal injury, there are still graduation waivers in place (thankfully!), so these tests aren’t exactly necessary. At all. 

So when a student asked me “Is this graded? No? Oh, so, I could just click random buttons and get out of here?” it was hard to find a way to say something other than “Well, sort of. But still try your best. Please.” 

Inequities in our Systems

Because I have only administered tests in the past for my sophomore English students, coordinating across the whole school gave me real insights into the inequities baked into the tests themselves. 

For instance, most of the students who struggled even logging in were students of color. Several of our Black students have names with apostrophes or “non-standard” spacing and many of our Hispanic students have multiple first and last names. So, it became a guessing game to find which parts of their name the state recognizes as legitimate. 

One of these students with emerging English proficiency was doing his best to take three subject tests but the program didn’t even acknowledge his name. From step one, our “standardized” tests are telling them they don’t belong. 

Then, once we got the test rolling, the stress and utter bewilderment I saw, especially from students in IEP English and math, was heartbreaking.

One raised her hand and asked me, eyes wide, “What am I supposed to do? I have never seen this before and have no idea what to do. I haven’t been taught this.”

Students received the accommodations we’re legally required to give, but an “alternate testing space” is not going to make up for the content of the test themselves. That won’t alleviate the pressure they feel in a silent room, staring at a computer screen that is supposed to tell them how smart, or how behind they are compared to their peers.

Kindness Isn’t Enough

We have a lot of conversations in our building around equity and a lot of the pushback we regularly receive from staff is about kindness. Many believe that because they are kind to all their students, they don’t need to look at how racial, gender, sexuality, or ability identities impact their classrooms. 

Of course, kindness is an incredible value we should all practice. Our staff is loving and kind, but those traits alone can’t remedy the inequities in our system. 

Being kind does not increase the number of students of color who take AP courses.  Kindness does not diminish opportunity gaps that lead to graduation rates that are equitable across demographics.

My state testing experience this year has been illustrative of the need to use our equity lenses in every facet of our schools. 

One teacher can have an incredibly meaningful lesson plan, but what about the students across the hall, who aren’t in her class? If a student’s name isn’t recognized by a computer system, is it pronounced correctly by the adults in his life? Does that student in IEP math know what her strengths are and have hope for her future? 

Unless a mandatory, standardized test can do all those things, I’m not at all convinced we should use our precious time, resources, and brain power administering them. What if we channeled all of that energy into coming up with some sort of portfolio system to give the state and federal government its data? 

Even the inventor of standardized multiple choice tests, Frederick J Kelly said “These tests are too crude to be used and should be abandoned.”

Based on my experience this year, I wholeheartedly agree with him. 

Giving Grace around Graduation

Earlier this month, Governor Inslee signed into law a bill intended to start a chain of events that I’m optimistic will lead straight to the students I teach.

EHB 1121 essentially authorizes the State Board of Education to establish procedures for local schools to grant credit waivers to certain graduation credits on a case-by-case basis for students impacted by events beyond their control.

There are several things I like about this. One, it isn’t limited to this year: it establishes a protocol which can be applied when a student’s education was impacted by local, state, or national emergencies.

Two, this part: School districts may be authorized to “grant individual student emergency waivers from credit and subject area graduation requirements established in RCW 28A.230.090, the graduation pathway requirement established in RCW 28A.655.250, or both” (page 2, lines 7-10 of the law as passed, which you can read here).

That last authorization is key to authentic flexibility. There are a variety of ways that students may have been impacted this year, and the “waivers from credit and subject area” requirements will hopefully give us some leeway. Some kids might have engaged in their art electives because it helped them cope with what was going on in their world, but might have struggled with distance-learning chemistry class. Conversely, another might have thrown themselves into the latter and felt unequipped to engage in the personal vulnerability that might have been plumbed in the former. The language about “credit and subject area” waivers allows us to take either situation into consideration, and not withhold a diploma from a student who was not able to check the box next to that last art or science credit.

While I do believe that the graduation pathways were a positive step forward, I am relieved that they are included in the waiver, since their nascency in policy might have meant that the COVID years would have been their first attempt at full implementation in many districts.

Bigger than all of this, though, is what the need for this bill reveals about our high school graduation credit system as it is.

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Behind the Score

Every teacher out there can safely say, “I hate testing!” Yes, it is a part of checking for student growth. Yes, it gives us a baseline and can inform instruction. Yes, in some cases it may be necessary.

In every case, there is always more behind the score.

Testing is a complicated, sore subject. Educators work hard to create the best possible setting for students to excel on these tests. So, what does this mean in the midst of a pandemic, when the testing environment is no longer our classroom? 

Testing environment is one that teachers work so hard to get just right. The right lighting, music, no music, chairs, no chairs, water breaks, snacks, seating charts. It even comes down to what is on the walls. If testing environment plays such a huge factor in student success, how does testing at home correlate?

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Schools aren’t failing, grades are.

Oh, the headlines. The numbers of students who are failing is “off the rails.” Others talk of COVID wreaking havoc on grades. And there are occasional wonderings if just maybe grades during a pandemic aren’t fair.

The panic: What ever will we do about all these low grades?

We’re once again paying attention to the wrong thing.

For decades, the standard logic is that grades are necessary extrinsic motivation for students. Fear of getting an ‘F’ is what drives the student who gets an ‘A.’ While that may be true for some kids, secondary schools have for too long operated under the assumption that if fear of an ‘F’ might (might) motivate an ‘A’ student to perform, then giving any student a low grade should motivate them to invest time and effort.

Never in my 20 year career have I seen this to be the rule. If students (as a rule) were truly motivated by grades, we would see grades motivating them. In many cases, the high-grade-earning students are motivated by something other than the learning that supposedly accompanies the grade. Those students may be motivated by the one-must-go-to-college-to-be-successful narrative, of which grades are the opening scene. Those students may be motivated by parents who threaten punishment or consequence for low grades. They exist, but rare is the student who earns an ‘A’ solely because of the learning it represents and not for the supposed benefits attached to that mark on a page (the car insurance discount, the access to some post-HS program, preventing their video games from being taken away…)

Grades simply do not function as motivators the way we want to believe they do. If they did, all the kids logging Fs right now would be supremely motivated to get those grades up. What I’ve observed far more in my career is the de-motivational impact that grades have on students, particularly if such “demerits” accumulate to the degree that the student begins to see themselves as inseparable from their grades.

For students who lack a track record of “good grades,” bad grades are punishment, not motivation. Sure, relying upon intrinsic motivation would be a great root for motivation, but those intrinsic motivators assume that the extrinsic needs are being met… self-actualization, of which intrinsic motivation is a part, is the pinnacle of Maslow’s after all. And regarding intrinsic motivation, there’s another unwelcome reality: not everyone wants to learn in the way that schools frame learning, or even what schools require (by law and policy) that kids must learn. A kid intrinsically motivated to learn everything there is to know about their favorite anime, or how a two-stroke engine works, or why there are two political parties, or why shortening and butter result in such different chocolate chip cookies… these curiosities, intrinsically driven, can’t always fit into the rigidity of a 24-credit hoop-jumping system. That is further proof that our system is locked into valuing grades rather than valuing learning.

COVID and remote learning has only confirmed to me that grades do not do what we have made ourselves believe they were capable of and designed for. We have to accept: In their supposed role as a motivator, grades did not do their job during remote learning… and perhaps revealed that they were never really right for the job at all.

Let’s move past grades and design schools that find better ways to motivate students to actually learn.

My Hopes for a “New Normal”

One silver lining: Sometimes it takes the unimaginable to jar loose our imaginations.

When we finally get back to face-to-face education with kids, I have a few changes I hope I’ll see. Some of these are based on my own personal experiences with distance learning, some are broader. I hope to see…

  • Continued curricular flexibility and resources to individualize for kids based on their needs, interests, and situations.
  • The devaluing [elimination…?] of grades and task completion as a means of measurement in favor of teaching and learning rooted in skills and standards.
  • The dismissal of “the way we’ve always done it” as a argument with any merit whatsoever.
  • The recognition that different environments (in-person, virtual, etc.) have strengths and limitations, that these vary from student to student, and that each student can have access to their own “just right” mix.
  • Realization, without question, that quality teaching demands quality preparation, which demands time… and that we revise the teacher work-day to include actual, meaningful, and significant time for preparation, collaboration, and design.

How about you? In what ways do you hope school looks different upon our eventual return?

No Right Answer

It is a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

My own three children are in three different buildings in the same school district (one elementary school, one middle school, one high school; all in a different district from where I work). Technically, their teachers have been directed by district admin not to send homework yet.

My elementary schooler’s teacher has done so anyway, with the clear communication that it is optional. She has sent suggested math pages from the workbook, along with video guides. She has also video recorded herself reading aloud to kids. My son is in a Spanish-immersion program, so he is also charged with continuing his online practice program. I’m okay with all of this.

My middle school son was asked by his science teacher to finish up a project about natural disasters that they started before the shutdown. His math teacher has sent e-packets of worksheets. There hasn’t been a clear statement of “optionality” for these. We haven’t heard from his other teachers. I’m okay with all of this.

My high schooler? Radio silence from teachers. I’m okay this, too.

Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Denise Juneau has stated that the largest school district in Washington will not transition to online learning in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles (LAUSD) school system is investing $100 million in making sure kids without online access are provided tech and internet during the shutdown. From one side, Superintendent Juneau is being praised for her pragmatic view of the access divide among Seattle students. The other side is quick to drag her publicly. (I’m not hiding my bias well, am I?)

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Equity in Education: A Systems View

There is ample evidence that current public education institutions, as designed, are producing predictable inequitable outcomes.

Some people (including some educators) will pivot and blame families, society, or the students themselves, but the reality is that the charge of the public school is in a certain sense to disregard the external. We are to welcome each child, see them for who they are, and craft a path toward educational attainment (presently measured by assessment scores and diploma achievement). We don’t get a “pass,” and nor should we, if the child’s external life throws down obstacles to this forward movement.

There are several entry points to the examination of equity in education: some look at teacher behavior (does the adult express implicit bias toward specific children in offering opportunity, praise, or punishment), some look at curriculum (does the subject matter represent multiple perspectives and reveal diverse experiences), and some look at systems (do policies result in disparate treatment or disparate outcome, predictable by demographic).

All are necessary angles for examining whether we are serving all kids equitably. However, as a classroom teacher myself, and as someone who cares intensely about eliminating the inequities perpetuated by the system I am complicit in, I am noticing a serious problem. It is the same problem that consistently gets in the way of every single effort to move and improve what school systems do.

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WARNS of Trouble…

Peace and quiet. Ahhh…I looked out at my students as they were silently reading and took a mental survey of what I know about this group of 6th-8thgraders. Who are these young people?

In my room, at least 60% are in homes where I know drugs and alcohol are playing a role in the family environment and nearly 80% are coming from homes where poverty has a firm hold. One in four are being raised by widows. Quietly they all read, lost in worlds of adventures far from the starkness of their real lives. 

It is not hard to see where almost every single one of my students faces a daily challenge in which they must use some kind of coping mechanism just to show up at school. I am actually quite surprised that truancy is a rarity in my classroom. However, I have had to become familiar with the new laws surrounding truancy this year. 

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