Tamara Mosar

The start of the school year always has me thinking about how I will measure student progress/acheivement and how to share that information in a way that allows students grow as learners. Most years that means I'm re-examining rubrics, re-tooling and preparing to set up student portfolios. For years my district has been looling at Stiggins and how do we assess to promote learning. Accross the state a number of districts are moving to standards based grading. Something Kristin brought up recently.

Philosophically I like standards based grading. I think it offers teachers, students, and families a far more clear and objective picture of learning taking place. Much in the same way TPEP has potential to be a powerful tool for porfessional growth, standards based grading has the potential to be a powerful tool in student learning when accompanied by timely actionable feedback. But there are issues.

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By Tamara

Based on recent posts we have all been involved in a great deal of professional development over the summer. All much needed in light of the myriad changes coming down the pike between Common Core Standards,New Teacher Evaluation, and in some cases, like my building, piloting Standards Based Grading and Reporting. I am excited about each of these new "initiatives" (for lack of a better catch-all word). Each holds tremendous potential improving the depth and outcome of student learning, actionable professional growth and development for teachers, and clear communication with families about student learning and achievement. I am also terrified. Taking on all three in a single year feels like drinking from a fire hose. Each one asks us to reconsider and re-evaluate what we do each day in classrooms: how we impart skill and content knowledge to students, how we communicate their journey to mastery, how we assess our own performance. Not terribly unlike going through National Boards. Yet it seems so much more rides on how we adapt to implement these changes. Not just becuase it is an election year, but because we are reaching the tipping point were the industrial revolution model of educating people is no longer serving us. It is time to change.

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I teach biology and chemistry at a high school on the Olympic Peninsula.  After school, I like to run.  My main trail?  Straight from my classroom to a place called Big Rock several times a week. The running is a buffer between my time in school and my time at home with my kids. I also use this time, and this place in the woods, to think, and I write some of those thoughts here on this blog.  I’m a lifelong Washingtonian and I am committed to improving education in this state.  Follow on Twitter: @maren_johnson.

A few of my posts:

• 1080 Instructional Hours? New state mandates on instructional hours and collaboration time.  
• Speed Dating and Student Work: Teacher Collaboration Time and a Senate Bill. How might proposed changes to instructional time affect teachers working together?
• Student Growth Percentiles and Teacher Evaluation: More Questions than Answers What are Student Growth Percentiles? How do they relate to teacher
  evaluation and state test scores? 
• Ambitious Teaching = Rigor + Equity  Equity and access in the Next Generation Science Standards.
• Washington State Teacher Evaluation: At High Risk?  Taking a look at the US Department of Education’s high risk warning letter regarding teacher evaluation.
• Just a Tweak? Educator Effectiveness and the Evergreen Effect  A D.C. think tank policy analyst issued a critical report on Washington state teacher evaluation, “The Evergreen Effect.” Here’s my response. Is our new evaluation system really just a tweak?
• Let’s Hijack that Spaceship: The Next Generation Science Standards  So what about these new science standards?  What will implementation look like in our state?
• Teacher Talk: West Africa and New England  Thinking about schools in West Africa, New England, and even here in at home: Why those of us in public schools need to advocate for school funding and education!
• Accountability at What Cost? The Biology End-of-Course Exam  What are the implications of a high stakes biology end of course exam in Washington state? What are some possible solutions?
• Looking Back, Looking Forward: Legislative Advocacy for National Board Certification! National Board Advocacy in a legislative district.
• The ‘People’s Plan’ for Washington Education Looking at the Excellent Schools Now coalition “People’s Plan” for education in Washington state. This coalition’s plan has been revised and is now called “A+ Washington.”

Related articles

Washington State Teacher Evaluation: At High Risk?

Teacher Talk

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

Just a Tweak? Educator Effectiveness and the Evergreen Effect

Student Growth Percentiles and Teacher Evaluation: More Questions than Answers

By Tom

Last winter, Nick Hanauer famously called Washington State “an education reform backwater.” It’s a curious insult. Strictly speaking, a backwater is a stretch of river that moves slowly, due to a dam or other obstruction. It’s water that’s “backed up.” Washington’s geography, of course, is dominated by the Columbia River, which winds its way slowly from the Canadian border to the Pacific, through 11 hydroelectric dams, which render it, for all intents and purposes, a 745-mile “backwater,” a label that belies the fact that it provides power and irrigation for most of the northwest.

But that’s not what Hanauer had in mind with his insult. He was complaining that education reform tends to move slowly here in Washington State, due mostly to the obstruction of the Washington Education Association. If only he could have seen what I saw this summer.

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By Tom

Last summer I was part of a panel discussion with several other teachers. As it was winding down, the moderator asked us one final question. “What would you say is the most important factor impacting student learning?” Each panelist said something about class size, funding, standards, blah, blah, blah.

I got to go last. “The most important factor, as far as I’m concerned,” I said, “Is the extent to which we as teachers are able to work effectively with our students’ families.”

I still think that’s true.

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By Kristin

My school, a middle school, has been implementing standards-based grading.  It's a big deal for us, but elementary schools have been doing this for years. That means that when parents see an A on the report card, they can assume their child has met and is exceeding grade-level standards in that content area, even if he was the most disruptive child in the class and one who rarely did homework.  The standards we're using are the Common Core standards, and we've moved to consistency within grade level content areas.  

This transition means we've had to move away from things like marking down for late work, averaging a quiz's grade with a retake, or offering extra credit. 

There has been much respectful compromising.

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By Mark

It is wonderful when businesses offer ways to support effective teaching. People can speculate about the advancement of agendas, but anything that can offer opportunities to help teachers hone their craft and thus increase student achievment is a good thing.

I'm sure you've seen these commercials from Exxon Mobil about supporting science and math education:

Let's solve this: I like that. However, one piece of rhetoric is more troubling: "Let's raise academic standards across the nation" (00:15).

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By Mark

An opportunity arose about two months ago. It would have meant less work, more pay. It would have meant not losing evenings and weekends to grading papers and planning. When I sat to do my pro/con t-chart to help my decision making, the list of reasons why I should take the new job was longer than the list of reasons why I shouldn't.

Sometimes quality outweighs quantity, though. More money, more time, less "work": those ought to have been very appealing.

There was but one reason I chose to stay in the classroom and stay in education…and it is a selfish reason:

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By Tamara

So my dad asked me the other day what on earth would be the
benefit of dismantling the Department of Education. His question was prompted
by an article he recently came across. My response was,” have you heard of X,
Y, Z testing/educational publishing companies?”

If we did away with the Department of Education and public
schooling as we know it, these companies as well as private on-line schools are
poised to make bank. Along with their politically connected supporters (note I
did not single out a particular party-gains will be on both sides of the
aisle).

The New York Times not too long ago chronicled the gaffe
about a prompt regarding a pineapple on state exams. The testing company
responsible for the item in question holds the sole contract for standardized tests
not only for New York City public schools, but the entire state of Texas.
Apparently anti-trust laws don’t apply when annual testing has been legislate-
thank you NCLB.

The fact is privatization of our education system is a very
real possibility. Either through the dismantling of federal departments or the
lure of click-for-credit on-line programs. The question is, how is public
education going to respond and deal with this reality? And will our children
benefit or suffer from the outcome of the debate?