Author Archives: Maren Johnson

Just a Tweak? Educator Effectiveness and the Evergreen Effect

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Education Policy, National Board Certification

Evergreen EffectBy Maren Johnson

Educator effectiveness is where it’s at right now in Washington state. Student teachers are currently filming themselves and analyzing student learning for the edTPA (teacher performance assessment). We have a challenging ProTeach evidence-based assessment for teachers trying to get their professional certificate. Approximately 13% of the teachers in our state are National Board certified. In addition to all of this, we have a new teacher principal evaluation system that is currently being piloted and will go into effect next school year.

Against the backdrop of all these educator effectiveness programs, last week Chad Aldeman, with an organization named Education Sector, released a report titled, “The Evergreen Effect: Washington’s Poor Evaluation System Revealed.” You can read a short summary blog post or the full report. When teachers and administrators across our state are working hard right now to get a new evaluation system up and running for next year, such a report deserves a closer look.

Mr. Aldeman starts by painting the picture of five elementary schools in Pasco. Aldeman talks about how the students perform poorly on state tests while the teachers, despite the low test scores, are almost all evaluated as satisfactory. My fellow blogger Tom White wrote more about this. What does Aldeman not mention? These particular schools in Pasco have 50-70% of their students learning English–some of the highest percentages of English language learners in the state. Our state tests are given exclusively in English—clearly students who do not speak English are going to be at a huge disadvantage. Giving teachers poor evaluations because their English-learning students do not perform well on tests in English is not going to improve student learning!

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Let’s Hijack that Spaceship: The Next Generation Science Standards

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Assessment, Education Policy, Science

Mars Roverby Maren Johnson

The Next Generation Science Standards, like the Mars Rover or even some new and strange
space ship hovering above a farmer’s cornfield, are about to land here in
Washington and in many states across our country.  Our job as educators? Let’s hijack that spaceship. I mean that in a positive way: let’s grab
those standards, make them our own, and use them to improve student learning
and our science education system.

The final version of the standards will likely be released this month, and probably be adopted
soon thereafter by our state.  Some
changes from the earlier drafts many are hoping to see? Hopefully, some increased
clarity in language and a reduction in the overall scope of the standards,
avoiding the “mile-wide and inch-deep” problem. 
As one reviewer said, “We're
here to produce learners, not people who have been exposed to a lot of content."  Possible opposition to reduced scope in
standards? One person mentioned the “Julie Andrews” curriculum problem: what does
an individual want to include? “These are a few of my favorite things”—and it
is not possible to include everyone’s favorite things.

Why do I say the Next Generation Science Standards resemble a new
and strange spaceship?

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Fund Education First? It just won’t work

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Social Issues

 

Photo Mar 1, 2013, 9:58 PM

by Maren Johnson

When the state Supreme Court ruled on the McCleary case, we all cheered. The state has a constitutional duty to fully fund public education–all right! So how is this going actually going to happen?

One budgeting strategy that has been widely floated is to "Fund Education First." That means to actually go ahead and write a separate budget that would fund public education, see how much it costs, and then with whatever is left, fund the rest of the state's needs.

Sounds good, right?

But fund education without simultaneous consideration of the wrap-around social services? It won't work. Here's just one example why not:

I spent a day in Olympia this week with a school bus driver and a few other people, speaking with our legislators. The bus driver has had a long and varied career: special needs transportation, different routes, services all over his school district.

The bus driver told the story of driving homeless students to school through the McKinney–Vento program. The federal McKinney-Vento Act is designed to provide assistance to youth who are homeless or awaiting foster care. One of the provisions of this act is that students who are in a disrupted housing situation because of homelessness must be transported to their original school. Yes, any stability we can provide these students, who are among our most vulnerable, is of course needed, and those involved are glad to be able to provide it. However, when the student is originally from one school district, and then must be transported to another, it makes for some very expensive rides. The bus driver shared some specific numbers, and I was really surprised by the total costs. These costs vary quite a bit from district to district, but even though the extra transportation is mandated, no extra funding is provided. It is a huge unfunded mandate, and the money ends up coming out of classrooms.

Clearly this is a complex funding issue, with both Washington state and federal components. When neither the state nor the feds pick up the bill, local districts are left to make do. So what about the "Fund Education First" idea? Do we fund education but not fund services like those supporting homeless youth? Makes no sense–the two are deeply intertwined. Education is the state's "Paramount Duty," according to our constitution. It must be fully funded. However, education doesn't happen in a vacuum, and putting together a fully funded education budget demands consideration of other factors affecting students' lives.

 

National Board cohort goes on a Road Trip

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National Board Certification, Professional Development

by Maren Johnson

We set out in a big red van with a fiery primary school teacher at the wheel. Watch out! This teacher sometimes uses her van to haul her miniature horse, but today, she hauled us, the local National Board cohort. Our destination? WEA Home Stretch, an opportunity for National Board candidates to give and receive feedback on an entry and prepare for the assessment center exercises. The intrepid candidates from our local cohort have only a short time left before their final deadline.

We picked up a math teacher hanging out alongside the highway and we were on our way. Oops, we're missing the band teacher, but not to worry, we finally found him on the ferry. We drove over hill and dale, canal and bridge, and then set sail on the 6:25 am boat across the Puget Sound.

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Double your fun with dual credit! Your Brain on Drugs

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Assessment, Life in the Classroom, Science
Photo Feb 9, 2013, 10:42 AM

by Maren Johnson

 

I'm excited about a new class I'm teaching next year. Yes, it's the honeymoon period–I haven't started teaching the class yet, so I'm still in the thinking, dreaming, imagining period–but hey, it's a good place to be–I'm going to enjoy it while I can.

The new class? It's a "college in the high school" biology class–a partnership between my high school and a state university to offer students dual credit. Students will be able to earn both high school and college credit while taking a class right here in their own school.

The class itself is fascinating. We are going to study the fundamentals of biology while looking through the lens of addiction, psychoactive drugs, and the human brain. We're going to do a series of cool labs, there's an online component, and even an interesting text. The biology of cells, organs, systems, and behavior–it's all there, we're just using a specific, high interest focus–the brain and addiction–to study it.

And why do I have time to think, dream, imagine about a new class? It's because I have a student teacher.

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The Kids want to Learn about Ducks! Time to review the Next Generation Science Standards

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Assessment, Education Policy, Science

Duckby Maren Johnson

You’ve never seen science standards like these before. There’s a big change coming to science education in Washington state and in much of the rest of the country, and if you want to have a say in it, the time is now. The final public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards is now open for review and will close on January 29, so give those standards a glance! Read as much or as little of it as you want–all feedback welcome. With a strong integration of science and engineering practices with traditional science content, these new standards are challenging and thought provoking. Washington state is very likely to adopt these later this spring, possibly in March, so now’s your chance to weigh in.

I’ve had a few different opportunities to discuss this draft of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): once in a charming rural cafe with a group composed mainly of local science teachers; once in an urban conference room with science education professionals who were primarily not teachers; and on Twitter at #NGSS and #NGSSchat–check out those hashtags!

So what did people have to say about these standards which are radically different from what we have now in both form and content?

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A New Proposal

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Assessment, Education Policy, Science
Photo Dec 30, 2012, 9:54 PM

By Maren Johnson

A press release, an op-ed, and a television interview—what’s up with all the media on Washington state assessment? Our Superintendent of Public Instruction just released a new proposal: reduce the number of exit exams required for high school graduation from five to three. This proposal shows concern for mitigating some of the negative effects of large amounts of testing on the Class of 2015, sophomores I currently have as students. Specifically, the number of math exams would be reduced from two to one, and reading and writing would be combined into a single exam. In science, however, the proposal would still move forward with a brand new graduation requirement this year focusing on biology. This means that not only will our state’s sole high school science exam be in biology, but the emphasis on biology will also be increased by making that exam high stakes.

Randy Dorn cited some excellent reasons for the overall reduction in assessments, saying “too much classroom time is devoted to preparing for tests, taking tests and preparing to retake tests.” He also noted the high cost of Washington’s assessment system.

However, there is another factor besides cost and time that comes into play here: assessment drives instruction. When there is a single high stakes science assessment, and that assessment is in biology, then chemistry, physics, and earth science will be neglected. An alternate idea: we could keep administering our existing biology EOC, which would satisfy federal requirements, but delink the biology EOC from graduation. Eliminating the graduation requirement would relieve the current pressure on schools, which, in many cases, is distorting high school science education to emphasize biology. Delinking the biology exam from graduation would also save a considerable amount of money in remediation, retakes, and rescoring. Most expenditures in education hold out some promise of benefit: this expenditure is actually detrimental to science education in our state by marginalizing chemistry, physics, earth science, and STEM.

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Should I sharpen up my Teaching Points?

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Science



by Maren Johnson
Sharp pencil

In my district, we adopted a new framework for teacher
evaluation, UW CEL, and I learned a new phrase: Teaching point.  What's that,
you ask?  Learning target, learning goal,
performance expectation, lesson objective, power standard: while they each have
an important nuance of meaning, they all refer to what students should
understand or be able to do by the end of a certain period of time.

Posting those learning targets every day so they are visible
to all?  Yeah, I've never done that, for
a variety of reasons.  However, I have
repeatedly heard that all three frameworks in our state are based on research, and
hey, I want my students to learn, so when I read in our district’s framework
rubric about daily posting as one possible way of communicating learning targets,
I figured–I'm game, I'll give it a try—and I have been posting these in class
for the last two weeks.

I shared what I was doing with a fellow teacher—and we had a
very animated discussion (raised voices in the copy room!) about the pros and
cons of posting learning targets and how this might or might not fit into
teacher evaluation.  I will say I put
some thought into how and when during my lessons I was going to post these targets
and discuss them with the students.  I knew that for many lessons, about the
last thing that would be helpful would be to have a posted learning target at
the beginning of a lesson. 

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Thinking about those NBCTs

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National Board Certification

Pin

by Maren Johnson

Teachers.  Great teachers.  Lots of them.  Thousands of them, literally, all across Washington state.  What do I think of when I think of National Board Certification?  I think of all those effective teachers, in all those classrooms, teaching all those students in our state.  This week on Stories from School, we are celebrating National Board Certified teachers and candidates with a series of blog posts.  So what does National Board Certification mean to me?

1. Deprivatized practice:  As a candidate it was a new experience for me to share my classroom videos and writing very publicly with a group of teachers I did not know particularly well (or at least I didn’t know them very well at first), and I became a better teacher because of it!

2. Teachers supporting other teachers: Teacher support is the heart and soul of the National Board process.  In my district, one candidate said to another as our cohort meeting started last week: "I came to this meeting today because I wanted to watch your video!"  In another district, a retake candidate wrote after finding out her scores, “I’ll tell you what was a big motivating factor when I was feeling terrible after learning my results. The response of NBCTs.  I wasn’t entirely convinced before, but now I know this is a community I very much want to be a part of.  Every single person I know who is National Board certified has offered to help me redo my portfolio. Every single one.”  While the response this candidate received was extraordinary, without a doubt NBCTs are as a group generally very helpful to other teachers.  

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