Category Archives: Assessment

PLCs and Question Four

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Assessment

Our district started the year with a huge professional development day—all morning with the secondary staff and all afternoon with the elementary staff attending an inservice designed to reboot, reenergize, and refine our Professional Learning Communities. Our administrative team from “the hill” flew a guru out from Utah to train us.

I have to admit, I was impressed with her style. Whatever it took to make PLCs work in her school, she made it happen. “You need a place and time to meet all together? I can coordinate that!” “You need pizza and Cokes? I’ll bring it in!” “You need everyone to have laptops? I’ll buy them!”

I was less clear where she found the money to make it all happen. Pizza and soda for every PLC meeting? New laptops for every teacher? Maybe she writes really great grants.

She led us through the process to the inevitable high point—the increase in test scores. The impact on the lowest performing students in math and reading was, again, impressive.

Then we took a break, and I was able to go up with my little sticky note question, “Did the test scores for your top reading and math groups show comparable gains with your low groups?”

When we reconvened she answered my question first. “No,” she admitted. And, she added, in their euphoria over their success, it took a while for them to notice the discrepancy and start to address the needs of their highest students.

It’s a nation-wide issue that, I believe, has been exacerbated by No Child Left Behind. The legislative emphasis is on “meeting the standard.” Politically, that doesn’t give much incentive to pouring a lot of time, energy, effort—and money—into children who already “meet the standard” in September. So what is the result?

In 2008 the Fordham Report showed that the lowest fourth grade reading group posted a 16 point gain over seven years while the highest fourth grade reading group posted a 3 point gain. The lowest eighth grade math group posted a 13 point gain over the same seven years while the highest eighth grade math group posted a 5 point gain.

In our PLC we have four questions. Unfortunately, there is a sense of order to those questions, almost a sense of priority. Often, we never get to grappling with question number 4 until we have thoroughly resolved questions 1, 2 and 3. Those kids on the high end need us to answer the question now, not after they have moved on to college.

The truth is, it is not enough for teachers to ask, “How will we respond if they already know it?” There should be an incentive in the testing system itself, not to bully individual teachers but to acknowledge high-achieving schools and districts.

When the WASL first came out (remember that precursor to the MSP?), districts earned one point for every child who moved from a 2 to a 3 in a test—math, reading, writing, or listening. But districts earned 2 points for every child who moved from a 3 to a 4. That system gave districts an incentive to continue pushing students past simply meeting the standard toward exceeding the standard. I have no idea what the points were used for, and unfortunately the incentive system disappeared almost immediately.

I was sorry to see it go.

I want to see the test scores for the top groups go up as much as any other group. Because right now, those are the children most likely to be “left behind.”

My Growth around Student Growth

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Assessment, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom |

We have always cared about our students’ growth. If we didn’t care about that, then we probably weren’t doing our jobs.

We’re quickly nearing that time when all things TPEP “go live” and are real for all of us. Many districts have invested time, training, and honest effort into preparing teachers for this coming moment, and I’m hoping that it will pay off.

As I shared here, my growth toward understanding student growth took time. I needed the past two years of learning to really get to a point where I now feel like it all makes sense. Best of all, the way my district has implemented, I know that even if I stumble, need to change course, or decide to make revisions, this is actually a valued step in the process, not a sign of ineffective teaching.

What I’ve learned:

First and foremost: students achieving standard and student growth are not the same thing. Growth is about every kid making appropriate movement toward a goal–not every kid scoring X on an assessment.  This is why the old SMART goals of “85% of my period 5 will score 80% or better on the chapter test” doesn’t cut it here. Instead, it is about moving every kid toward higher proficiency at a skill, not just a higher score on a test. The challenge for me is actually with my high-fliers…those kids who come in not only ready to learn but with high skills. Growth (for me) has always been easier to cultivate with kids who have a long way to go. This system reminds me that I still need to foster growth for those kids who enter at or above standard already.

As important: growth and grades should be two different things. This is a hard one for many high school teachers. We work with proficiency scales to describe growth, and so often I get the question “How do I convert my scale to a grade? Is a 4 an A, 3 a B and so on?” This is a major shift: growth monitoring and grades communicate two different things. The grade is how many baskets you can sink in a game, the growth monitoring is when the coach keeps track of your shooting form and gives feedback on how to improve. My answer to the conversion question? You don’t convert a scale to a grade…they are two different things.

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Time (again)

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Life in the Classroom

File53b48f9420c67By Mark

Central Washington University completed a "teacher time study" (which I found via CSTP's Facebook page) to explore how teachers spend their work days.

As I sit here on my "summer vacation," I realize that taking up the topic of teachers and work time is a dangerous one, though I did spend a couple of hours today working on next year's curriculum and sequence planning (in the sun while my sons splashed in the inflatable pool). Lest you think I am complaining about the time that I put in as a teacher, (1) my father was [is] a teacher, so I saw firsthand growing up that the work was not limited to the contracted day and (2) even knowing that expectation, I still chose this profession.

Ultimately, the conclusion of the time study was that a typical teacher spends an average of 1.4 hours at work (on site) beyond their contracted work day. Looking back on my own schedule this past year, at typical day included a 6:30am arrival and a 3:30pm departure, so I'm in line with the average in terms of time spend on the job at school. Unless I am misreading it, what this study did not seem to take into consideration was the work that gets taken home each evening and on the weekends during the school year. The study (linked above) parsed out how that at-work time was used but didn't go beyond time on site.

I would be very curious to see a time study of how much time Washington teachers invest beyond the hours worked on site. For me personally, it does ebb and flow. I deliberately plan the scope of homework (read: major student writing I give feedback on) based on my family's evening and weekend schedules. Big essay weekends mean dad's working at the computer for 14 to 16 hours a day, plus several hours on the weekdays either side. That's the flow at highest tide–one weekend per month. The ebb is at least half an hour to an hour each evening–usually planning, replying to parent emails and phone calls, reviewing shorter assessments or organizing for the next day. It is rare to spend fewer than two hours per weekend day on something school related.

And to be clear: I am not complaining about the time–I know that putting in long hours is part of being in a profession as opposed to the alternative. My wife and kids might have a different opinion, but I try to keep some semblance of balance…My "three months' vacation" which is actually really only "most of July" makes up for some of it. 

The other time study I'd like to see: what would happen to student learning if teachers worked the same number of hours but served only half the number of students? 

So Maybe We Should Get Our Waiver Back

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

U turn permittedBy Mark

I support that Washington state resisted political pressure from the USDE to require the use of state tests in teacher evaluation. My reasoning, among other points, included that the coming Smarter-Balanced tests based on Common Core State Standards were yet to be explored and fully understood by teachers, students, and school systems.

The Gates Foundation is now communicating a similar idea–to wait at least two years before using state test scores in teacher evaluations.

What I think is funny: When discussing the USDE's opposition to the call for a moratorium in using test scores in teacher evaluation, Dorie Nolt, spokeswoman for the USDE stated “We believe the most thoughtful approach is to work state-by-state to see what support each state will need, and not to stop the progress states have already made, or slow down states and educators that have been working hard and want to move forward” (from the article linked above).

What we in Washington state need, the progress we have already made, and the hard work we have done to move forward does not seem to have been considered when our NCLB waiver was revoked. 

And still, more and more research is coming forward questioning the actual impact a teacher has on standardized test scores. (My one worry: that this can get misinterpreted as "teachers do not impact student learning," thus further demeaning the impact that teachers have beyond what broad standardized tests are able to assess. These tests, by virtue of their intention toward universality, can only with validity assess the lowest end of cognition such as identification and recall, but cannot reliably explore analysis and synthesis.)

If nothing else, the call for a two year moratorium is a small-scale version of the Number One thing schools are rarely given but most critically need to enact meaningful change and reform: TIME.

SBAC Reflections, Part 1

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Assessment, Elementary

Ccss-sbacBy Tom

Like most kids across the state, my students are in the middle of taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment, known in our school as the “S-Back.” It has been what I’ll politely call a “Learning Experience.” Most of us are used to giving paper-pencil standardized tests, and it’s stressful enough managing those; which entails keeping track of every single test, sharpening and distributing number 2 pencils, passing out the snacks, keeping the room silent, keeping the “fast finishers” busy with activities that are engaging enough to keep them quiet, yet not engaging enough to encourage the other kids to rush through their tests. With the SBAC, we have to deal with all that, plus the added stress of logging onto the SBAC Assessment Management Portal to generate an “Event Code,” getting a computer into the hands of every student, helping them log on using their 18-digit security code and the teacher-generated Event Code, and then helping them navigate into and through the test itself. As I told my wife, “Thank God for bourbon and thank God this year is only a field test.”

Three days removed from the stress and the hassle, I think I can safely draw three conclusions about these tests and the impact they’ll have on education in our state.

First of all, literacy will become even more integrated. Secondary teachers already teach reading and writing in the same period, but in the early grades, this is less the case, especially when teachers start getting serious about getting their kids ready for the state tests. The SBAC tests student’s writing skills by giving them a performance task which close reading of a series of texts and a response with an essay composed completely on the computer. Obviously we’ve always used student writing as a means to gauge their reading comprehension, but not when it comes to standardized assessments; in years past, the writing part of the test has been completely separate from the reading test and has had prompts that require very little reading skill. With the SBAC, there is no reading and writing assessment; it’s all one big ELA assessment, and the whole thing happens on a computer screen.

Which brings me to my second conclusion: students will be using technology a lot more for core curriculum activities. No more will teachers have their students draft, revise, edit and publish predominately on paper and use technology for stuff like social studies PowerPoint slideshows. To be successful on the SBAC, students need to know how to navigate between reading and writing panes on their computer screen. They’ll need to know how to compose from scratch electronically. And obviously they’ll need to know how to type. One of the things that amazed me last week was how many computers appeared out of the woodwork when it was time for those tests. That was great, but we’re going to need those machines all day, every day, in pretty much every classroom, if we want success. (And trust me; with the increased emphasis on results-based teacher and principal evaluations, we will want success.)

Of course, as everyone knows, simply placing computers into a classroom won’t cut it. Teachers are simply going to have to become proficient users of technology. We’ll need to know how to provide instruction with technology, present practice work using technology, help our students do that work on computers and then read, score and publish their work without ever having to print it out. Sure, there will still be paper, but increasingly there will be lots of web pages and word documents. For younger teachers that might not seem like a big deal, but for a guy like me, who started teaching when overhead projectors were cutting edge, that represents a significant evolution.

These changes and more are predicated on the idea that “what gets tested is what gets taught,” which is pretty much the way thing happen in education. Obviously the SBAC will get refined and improved after the results of this pilot year are analyzed, but I think it’s safe to say that we’re in for some major changes.

Next week, after my kids take the math portion, I’ll share my reflections and that side of the curriculum.

Reducing My Students to a Number

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Assessment, Life in the Classroom

Data snapshotBy Mark

I have a confession to make. For most of my teaching career, I've drawn lines in the sand, jumped on soapboxes, and in some cases thrown time-out-worthy temper tantrums about data. My students cannot be reduced to numbers. What do you want me to do, count the number of adjectives they use in an essay to show their performance? Reading and writing are both so very complex that they cannot be reduced to a string of numbers.

That's not the confession. The confession is this: I have reduced my students to a series of numbers. Not just numbers, color coded ones in an Excel spreadsheet. And (deep breath), I like it. It has actually made me a better teacher for them.

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TPEP Reflections

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Assessment, Education Policy

Tpep-logoBy Tom

Last week I had my final evaluation conference with my principal. I volunteered to do a comprehensive evaluation this year, so it was a long one. And it went well. Now that I’ve had a week to reflect on the whole affair I’ve come up with three conclusions.

First of all, TPEP is a lot better than what we had before. I’m not sure how your district used to do teacher evaluations, but in my district it was a joke. We basically chose our own goals, as well as the evidence by which we would be assessed on those goals. We then collected that evidence and presented it to our principals. It was essentially impossible to fail, as long as you chose a goal that you knew you could achieve, which everyone did.

With TPEP, we’re measured by standards. We have to show that our teaching lines up to best practices. My district uses the Danielson Framework, which is fairly easy to comprehend and seems to spell out pretty much everything a competent teacher should do. Principals now have standards against which to measure teacher performance. Like I said, TPEP is a lot better than what it replaced.

Secondly, TPEP is a lot of work – for principals. My principal spends an average of fifteen hours per week on TPEP-related activities. That’s a lot of time, which begs the obvious question: What is he not doing? What he’s not doing is working with students, talking with parents, eating, sleeping and spending time with his family. We have a part-time dean of students, which helps us here at school, but I worry about the man’s private life. I’m sure the legislature didn’t intend to completely overburden people who were already completely overburdened, but they did.

And that brings me to my third conclusion. Let’s remember that the main purpose for the creation of TPEP was to make it easier to fire ineffective teachers. But at this point I’m not sure TPEP will actually achieve that goal. Consider a situation that I’m aware of: A teacher is ineffective in nearly every aspect of his job. The classroom is disorganized and unsafe. Learning is barely happening. Yet this guy somehow manages to pull it together for both of the required principal observations and is able to document some student growth over the course of the year. What happens?

Not much. According to TPEP, this teacher will probably keep on teaching, for two reasons. First of all, his overall scores won’t look that bad; at least not bad enough for dismissal. Secondly, in order to document just how incompetent this teacher is, the principal would need to spend a ton of time observing and meeting with him. Time that he doesn’t have. The irony of TPEP is that it demands so much of a principal’s time that he doesn’t have any time to fire bad teachers, which was the whole purpose of TPEP in the first place.

TPEP is new. Everything that’s new has glitches. I’m confident that in a few years we’ll work them out.

Washington Education: A bargain, for now…

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

By Mark

A recent guest piece by Bill Keim in The Seattle Times's Education Lab Blog points out some sobering numbers about education funding in Washington, particularly considering the Supreme Court ruling that the state of Washington is not adequately funding public education.

Keimgraphic-517x620Particularly interesting is the infographic from the Washington Association of School Administrators that compares Washington's per-pupil funding over time as compared to the national average, to Massachusetts (similar in demographic, economy, and education standards), and to Alabama (historically under-funded and under-performing by various measures).

Simply put, our state has been in neutral while Massachusetts, Alabama, and the nation as a whole has been in high gear. 

And here's the problem with that: As of right now, Washington's schools seem to be performing well. 

This is of course a problem for two reasons. First, it weakens the argument that Washington schools need to be better funded. Second, it runs the risk of leading people to believe that good performance can be sustained without resources.

The last three years in my classroom I have been living the good life. Due to local support, my program received funding that provided me access to desktop computers every day, every period for each my 9th grade English students. Every day, if I want, I can have my students use technology to consume and produce meaningful texts and engage with content in exciting ways. Instead of having to rely upon the (decades old) literature anthology on the shelf, the whole world can be our textbook thanks to the technology–which of course, came with a cost.

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New Study: Teachers Who Pass ProTeach are better than Those Who Don’t

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Assessment, Education Policy

Cedar leavesBy Tom

A new study commissioned by Washington’s Professional Educator Standards Board shows that ProTeach – our teacher licensing assessment – seems to contribute to an increase in student learning. The study was conducted by UW Bothell’s Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR). It was a complicated study, but essentially they compared teachers who passed ProTeach with those who didn’t by looking at their students’ test scores using Value Added Models (VAM).

The main conclusion reached by CEDR is that teachers who passed ProTeach correlate to higher student test scores, especially in reading. Not so much in math. It's worth noting that this is essentially the same conclusion they drew conducting a similar study on teachers who earned National Board Certification. The study also found the effect was greatest for those teachers who scored high on Entry 2; the one that concerns classroom management and family communication. I found that interesting; it seems more likely that Entry 3 – which is all about teaching and assessment – would be the one more closes associated with higher test scores. I guess that goes to show how important classroom management is. Overall, the results seem to indicate that ProTeach is an effective measurement of teacher quality, which must make the PESB feel relieved.

Of course, we can also look at these results from another direction. Maybe they indicate that VAM is a valid measurement, at least for reading instruction. Personally I found the entire report a little presumptuous; strongly implying that VAM is the gold standard and that teacher performance assessments like ProTeach are valid to the extent they correlate with student performance assessments like VAM. I may be biased (I’ve never been a big fan of VAM), but I place a lot more credence on an evaluation that focuses on what teachers are actually doing when they teach than an evaluation that looks at student performance, which is effected by a myriad of factors that include teacher quality. So perhaps the fact that VAM results and ProTeach results are correlated might show that VAM is legitimate. At least in reading instruction.

In a larger context, it seems to me that if there’s a place for VAM, then this is surely it; used on aggregated data like in this study. Where VAM is not appropriate is when it’s used on individual classrooms and individual teachers. That’s a complete travesty. It’s also a shame, because advanced statistical analyses – like VAM – can be invaluable when it comes to showing which instructional practices are effective and which aren’t. And I’m here to tell you: teachers across the country who are evaluated using VAM hate it with a passion you don’t often see in education. If we manage to steer clear from that mistake in Washington, I can see the day when TPEP reaches maturity and we have a large database of teacher evaluations and researchers like the folks over at CEDR can use metrics like VAM to help us understand which teacher practices are most effective.

But for now, we’ll have to settle for what we have: a somewhat obvious conclusion that tells us that good teachers produce good students. 

Want innovation in the classroom? Get teachers involved in Policy

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Assessment, Education Policy, National Board Certification, Science, Teacher Leadership
image from http://aviary.blob.core.windows.net/k-mr6i2hifk4wxt1dp-14031620/71248eaf-3628-450a-8a5b-67a49178f444.png

 

by Maren Johnson

I spent the weekend in Washington DC at the Teaching and Learning 2014 Conference. It was dazzling. Famous and thought provoking speakers, incorporation of art and music, huge diversity in education viewpoints and experience.

With all the hubbub over the big names at the conference, what I'm heading home thinking about is a session led by a middle school science teacher from Washington state. From the small town of Cheney, no less.

Teacher Tammie Schrader's session was titled, "Coding in the Classroom." I went into the session expecting to learn a bit about coding itself, and perhaps a bit about how to use coding to teach concepts in life science. I came out of the session thinking about innovation and education policy.

Tammie started out the session by introducing herself and her classroom programs. She has been facilitating student coding in her science classes for several years now. That, itself, is innovative, but not extraordinarily unusual.

Then Tammie started talking about education policy. My ears perked up. What was going to be the tie-in here? I've been to sessions on innnovative instructional methods. I've been to sessions on education policy. I have rarely been to a session incorporating both.

Tammie's point? She wanted to do cutting edge things in her classroom. In order to be free to do these things, she needed to be released from some of the usual considerations of what might be expected in a classroom. There were a few non-negotiables, however. She would still need to assess; she would still need to show student growth. She wanted to assess and show student growth in a way that would fit her classroom. The solution? Get involved in policy. Tammie has done this, in a big way, at state and national levels.

I thought to myself, "This woman's message needs to get out there." So there I was, like the paparazzi, taking photos and tweeting. Not that Tammie isn't already well known in many education circles, but I wanted to do my part!

image from http://aviary.blob.core.windows.net/k-mr6i2hifk4wxt1dp-14031621/8e1854ea-84f9-461c-90bc-4e482f91c4cc.png

The policy involvment has allowed Tammie's innovative classroom work to become systemic. Tammie has worked on state assessment committees and on designing frameworks for Career and Technical Education. She helped write the state science test. Because she knows what students are expected to do, she's not ignoring the state science standards or the Next Generation Science Standards. She's not letting all of that go. She's just helping to shape policy and then use it in a way that helps herself and other teachers be innovative in their classrooms.

Tammie has spent time talking to policy makers at all levels. Having a teacher involved in these areas allows education policy to encourage innovation as opposed to stifling it. Want innovation in the classroom? Get teachers involved in policy.

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