As the beginning of the school year approaches (for some of us it has already begun), we may hear discussions about "diagnostic testing" of students. I dislike the term "diagnostic testing" because it implies that the students are sick, and that our purpose at the start of the school year is to find out what's wrong with them, presumably, so we can "fix" it. Rather, they are where they are along the educational continuum toward whichever specific standards we are responsible for teaching. Our task, is to meet them where they are, and together move as far along the continuum as we can in the time allotted to us.

A few years ago, I wrote in detail about my pre-assessment process, and I share it here as an example of teacher-developed, performance-based assessment.

My pre-assessment process revolves around having students demonstrate through performance their abilities in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Only reading and writing are tested in the district or statewide tests; however, I include oral skills, not only because they are part of the state framework, but also because they are highly valued communication skills within the local African American community and the ones in which the students tend to be the strongest.

We begin with a short, carefully chosen reading passage It is almost always by or about an African American (preferably someone with whom they may not be familiar). First, we do a timed reading to determine their speed. Then, they are allowed to read the article in full, set it aside, and free write what they remember from the article (this tests recall and ability to pick up on main ideas and key details). Next, I'll have them listen to an audiotape of a professional speaker on a motivational or inspirational topic (such as how to be a better reader or how to be a successful student in high school). They are required to take notes during the tape. Scanning these later gives me an idea of their skill at listening comprehension. Finally, they may use their notes from both exercises to draft an essay. I make sure to give the essay an I-Search twist, such as "What, if anything, did you learn from the reading or the lecture that might help you this school year? What goals would you personally like to accomplish this year in English class?" These essays become my writing and grammar samples. All this usually takes a few days.

By the end of the first full week of school, we are ready to begin analyzing the results together and developing personal learning plans (PEPs). The PEP is the first requirement in the communications-skills portfolio for my class. I spend at least one full class period introducing the portfolio. There are several points in the portfolio that are negotiable, both initially and as the school year progresses. The final step is for them to take the PEP and the portfolio checklist home. Each student must identify a significant adult of his or her choice (parent, relative, neighbor, teacher, church member, Scout leader, etc) whose role is to encourage the student to keep up with the class and complete his or her portfolio. Students must explain the portfolio to the mentors and get them to sign a contract. [For those who could not find someone, I kept a list of school and community volunteers ready]. As soon as I know who they are, I contact the mentors to introduce myself, answer questions, take suggestions for adjustments in the PEP or portfolio, and open the door for communication throughout the year. All these steps help us create a culturally engaged learning environment….

I [used] the term culturally engaged instruction to describe how teaching and learning occur in my classroom. The students and I are engaged (committed to an interactive, mutually satisfying relationship over an extended period of time) in an exchange of cultural information. I have learned over time how dependent upon and integrated into the cultural context language arts instruction truly is. The students and parents must develop a level of trust with the teachers in order to compensate for the historically derived mistrust that language arts instruction has engendered with large segments of the African American community. This goes beyond just a superficial "I like my teacher" (although that may be the way the students articulate it). It is rooted in respect and communication.

Like that of so many of my colleagues, however, my classroom work has been affected by the current frenzy of reactions to the No Child Left Behind Act. I have spent years developing and analyzing my preassessments, only to have my school district insist I use a pre-packaged pretest for all students. Similarly, the administration has attempted to move all the major assessment of students out of teacher control by requiring only district office-generated end-of-grading-period tests. This stripping of professional responsibilities from teachers cannot bode well for the development of quality teaching in our classrooms.

At the time I wrote that passage, I was teaching English and journalism at Broad Street High School in Shelby, Mississippi. Broad Street served 370 students in grades 8 - 12. Of our students, 99% were African American and 100% got free and reduced lunch. (For more on my classroom research, teaching practices, and to meet some of my wonderful students, visit my website: Culturally Engaged Instruction (CEI): Putting Theory into Practice. ) We had state testing data from the previous school year available, which we were obligated to review. Unfortunately, it yielded very little useful information at the classroom instruction level. ["Student is weak in grammar, usage, and mechanics."]

I'd love to hear about some other teacher-developed assessments. Those of you who have used both your own performance assessments and more standardized pre-tests, which have you found more useful?

Teachers, through groups such as Teachers Letters to Obama and the various meetings and conversations hosted by the Department of Education, and other channels have been trying for months to get the Administration to seriously re-think some of its positions on education reform as outlined in the ESEA Blueprint and the Race for the Top. For the most part, our concerns were dismissed, almost paternalistically, as already being addressed in the Blueprint. At times it appeared we were not making much headway in moving towards a serious consideration of these issues, but we persisted for the sake of our students and what we know is right.

Thankfully, some other influential voices are now being raised and real discussion of these points can no longer be avoided. A coalition of major civil rights organizations has issued a report titled, "Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn Through Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act." As I read the document, I am encouraged that many of the concerns I have had about the proposals put forward by Secretary Duncan are also being flagged by other thoughtful stakeholders. Like the authors of the Framework, I applaud the Obama Administration for wanting to move our educational system forward. To do that, however, we need to take a much closer look at what has been proposed, and where it not only falls short, but could actually do more harm to already suffering children and communities.

Here are my thoughts on some of the ideas in the Framework:

1. Equitable Opportunities

"We believe the age of establishing outcome standards without making input investments to achieve these outcomes must end."

1A. I support the call for Common Opportunity Standards and the proposal for "independent audits of state and district education expenditures…whenever historically disadvantaged subgroups persistently fail…."

1B. I also wholeheartedly agree with the criticism of putting most of the new federal dollars into competitive grants. As the report states, "If education is a civil right, children in 'winning' states should not be the only ones who have opportunity to learn in high quality environments." They correctly point out that such policies would roll us back to pre-civil rights days in many places.

2B. Paul Vallas, Superintendent of New Orleans, stated in a PBS report that he sees nothing wrong with having a teaching force of 50% short-term staff from programs such as Teach for America, and 50% veteran or career teachers. He thinks that's a great balance. On our TLN Teacher Solutions 2030 team we also envision in the very near future that teaching will be a much more fluid and vibrant profession with people entering and leaving at different points, as well as much more movement within the profession in the form of hybrid roles. The problem, as the Civil Rights groups note, is and will be the distribution of those teachers. Currently, minority and high needs schools are more likely to get the short-term or less qualified staff; and experience much higher teacher turnover rates than higher performing schools. Those two facts are not unrelated. High teacher or administrator turnover destabilizes a school and its community. A better strategy is to establish a critical mass of stable, highly accomplished teachers who serve as mentors and anchors for the more transient staff. This gives the schools both the flexibility and the stability to maintain consistent educational quality.

2D. I have questioned the Administration's limited support of Promise Neighborhoods in the absence of correcting some other inequities already mentioned. If basic school funding inequities and distribution of teachers and resources is addressed, then the idea of comprehensive schools with wraparound services becomes not only logical but possible.

2E. The groups' caution about school closure as a turnaround strategy needs should be seriously heeded by the Administration. Some of the same political forces that have perpetuated resource and other inequities for the schools that serve poor and minority children have also used closure and consolidation to further harm our most vulnerable populations.

3. The need for more public and civic engagement on the front-end of education decisions is long overdue. It is ironic that while some deride poor parents for their seeming lack of concern over their children's education, the policies which were supposed to ensure and encourage their involvement have been underfunded and unenforced. Case in point: Parents at many Title I schools have had their expressed wishes and even votes for how Title funds should be used in their schools ignored or invalidated. As a parent and as an educator I have been among those effectively disenfranchised by policies and maneuvers that meet the letter of the law, but clearly gut its intent.

4. I also support the Framework for urging the federal government to do more to ensure safe learning environments in many of our schools. There is a correlation between the overuse of exclusionary discipline policies and low academic performance. I'm not saying that those who are a physical danger to peers or teachers should be allowed to remain in school. However, there is overwhelming evidence that these policies are used with much greater frequency and severity towards Black and Hispanic students, especially males, than they are for white students, even those who have committed identical offenses.

5. While I agree with most of the points made in the section on Diverse Learning Environments, the insistence on Right to Transfer provisions has always been problematic for rural communities. Sending our children to another town or county should not be the best or only way for taxpayers to obtain our educational civil rights. The groups actually make this point under Section 6.

6. It is necessary to take very deliberate steps to ensure the protection of hard-won civil rights for all of America's schoolchildren. While the report is right to condemn the awarding of federal education grants to states (or districts for that matter) where inequity has been established, we should also remember the lessons of the "massive resistance" movement that followed the Brown decision. During that period, some state and local bodies chose to deliberately violate the civil rights of Black citizens precisely so that federal funding would not reach those same citizens. Thorough monitoring and listening to the voices of parents and the community will help distinguish where there might be procedural but not substantive accountability.

I'm not sure we need a summit, a panel, and another commission as called for at the end of the Framework to get these things done; perhaps we do. It is a big job and a big country. I am sure that these points needed to be raised and addressed if our country is going to keep its promise to all of its citizens. For that I thank these organizations for once again standing up for what is right.

Picking up on my theme from the last post, here's an extended quote from a new article by George Wood:

Somebody Explain This to Me | The Forum for Education and Democracy.

For the past eighteen years I have worked as a high school/middle school principal along side a dedicated staff and a committed community to improving a school. In that time we have increased graduation and college going rates, engaged our students in more internships and college courses, created an advisory system that keeps tabs on all of our students, and developed the highest graduation standards in the state (including a Senior Project and Graduation Portfolio).

But reading the popular press, and listening to the chatter from Washington, I have just found out that we are not part of the movement to ‘reform’ schools.

You see we did not do all the stuff that the new ‘reformers’ think is vital to improve our schools. We did not fire the staff, eliminate tenure, or go to pay based on test scores. We did not become a charter school. We did not take away control from a locally elected school board and give it to a mayor. We did not bring in a bunch of two-year short-term teachers.

Nope, we did not do any of these things. Because we knew they would not work.

Wood goes on to suggest, and I wholeheartedly agree, that the key to helping improve the quality of all schools is to look at and listen to those who have actually been successful at doing what we claim we want to accomplish.

And here's a tip: Some of the best educators in the country can be found inside some of the most dysfunctional or statistically low performing schools. Another reason to resist the lure of reconstituting a school  or mass firing of teachers and staff without an honest evaluation of the expertise that often exists stifled within it. 

A thoughtful blog at S.M.A.R.T. Learning Community took issue with my recent piece on how testing can harm students that was picked up by Teacher Magazine.

The author, unfortunately, misconstrued my intent with the piece, so let me clarify a few points.

First, I am not arguing for the elimination of standardized testing. These types of tests are useful for measuring certain things in our schools, especially when used correctly and judiciously. 

Many of these tests, however, are not effective measures of student learning.  The ones my high school students took generated reportsthat were so generic and vague they were of very little use to the students or me in determing what they did know or needed to learn. Some standardized tests, especially those created for national marketing (despite test company claims that they have tailored their pool of questions for a specific state) still reflect test bias against various subgroups of students by ethnic, geographic, or socio-economic background. These inherent flaws make them a tool of limited value under the best of circumstances.

The schools and students most impacted by test results are usually not operating under the best of circumstances. Standardized tests can only provide some general indication of class and school performance, and very little reliable information on the perfomance of individual students and teachers.

To counter my example of a student harmed by improper use of testing, the blog author describes a student helped by her Texas school's use of testing every six weeks to guide instruction and set goals. The point of the piece is "testing is not the problem" but rather how the testing is used. On this point we agree. There has been much misuse and abuse of students in the implementation of testing programs across the country, and not just in the urban high poverty schools upon which ed reform policy largely focuses.

Attaching the high-stakes to the testing and rushing to develop testing programs in order to meet federal grant guidelines has only contributed to such misuse. 

What I do favor is putting testing back into its proper place. Timely, appropriate, comprehensive evaluation of student learning is an essential responsibility of a fully trained, accomplished  classroom teacher or a team of such teachers. The ability to use standardized test results as one part of a much larger picture of student performance, measured primarily at the classroom level over time and through a variety of formats is one of the hallmarks of an effective teacher. That aspect of our work has been distorted, and in some places, completely removed from teachers' jurisdiction. I'm arguing for not just a restoration, but an elevation of teacher effectiveness and professionalism in the area of assessment. To accomplish this, we may have to place a moratorium on the current testing frenzy in order to assess better and more deeply.

Recently, the Teachers Letters to Obama group sponsored an online teach-in to explore some of these questions and issues about testing with our guests Dr. Yong Zhao of Michigan State University, Monty Neill of the FairTest organization, and Doug Christensen former state school commissioner of Nebraska. Ideas from that session will be shared by teachers at our next online event a Roundtable: Assessment Done Right, Monday June 28th, 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Sign up for the free event here.

Following initial attempts by a determined group of teachers to engage in direct discussions with the Obama administration about the ESEA Blueprint for reauthorization, some of us thought it might be a good time to re-examine some of the issues related to the Blueprint, and why seeking the expertise of successful teachers might help develop better policies.

One of the first points identified by teachers as a problem is that the proposed plan continues an emphasis on test scores. What's wrong with a focus on test scores? Don't we need to know how students are performing?

I'm going to revisit one of my earlier posts as I begin to answer.

I recently had opportunity to talk with some parents, including some of my former students. One of the most profound and disturbing discussions was with a young mother I'll call Debra. Fourteen years ago, Debra had been in my high school English class, and managed to graduate just a few days before her daughter was born. Debra's life, which had never been easy, took a deeply tragic turn five years ago when that child was murdered.

Sitting next to me at the health program, we watched her other child, 9 year-old Donnell sit passively through what was otherwise a lively group discussion. She shared with me her concerns that he was growing increasingly frustrated with school, and more and more withdrawn. Donnell had serious learning disabilities that affected his language and reading skills. According to Debra, his Individual Education Plan (IEP) and previous tests indicated that he could handle the equivalent of first, maybe second grade work. But the newly enacted changes in special education placement and testing to meet AYP required that he be moved to inclusion setting and tested with the fourth graders. She had tried, unsuccessfully to talk with the special education staff, even the superintendent, along with some other concerned mothers of special needs children, about giving him a more gradual transition.

"I don't understand," she said nearly in tears, "why they insist on giving him work and a test that they know he's not ready for yet? He thinks he is stupid, and he's ready to give up on school," at nine years old.

She's been to the school 15 times this year already. His new teacher, with an already overcrowded classroom is struggling to give Donnell the extra help he needs while not neglecting the others. Both women are frustrated and angry with the system.

Donnell's story has been repeated all over the country with tens of thousands of special needs students. The focus on test scores and the over-reliance on them to determine student learning has led to this widespread abuse.

Under the current and proposed federal requirements, we have used test scores to justify punishing schools and students who have been chronic underperformers BEFORE we took the necessary steps to correct the profoundly unequal learning conditions that have been created within those schools. Case in point: My children attended the Black high school here in town which had no science labs (although we parents are charged an annual lab fee). Their teachers resorted to buying lab kits out of their own pockets with which they could at least demonstrate the principles for the students to watch. My children had to take the same state Biology test as their classmates at the predominantly white high school across town which had a fully stocked and usable science lab. I'm not talking 1950s here; this is 21st century inequity; one district, same leadership, responsible for providing equal opportunities to all students. Guess which school's students' performed better overall on the state test? But which school might be punished for low performance by having its funding cut even more? Which teachers are in danger of losing their jobs?

It's a harsh reality that some students in this country receive a rich, challenging curriculum which allows them to perform consistently well on tests and other evaluations; while other children--particularly the children of the poor--are more often in schools focused on control and remediation. Ironically, many of those who insist on forcing teachers and students to spend inordinate amounts of time drilling basic skills believe they are helping "close the achievement gap." In fact, they may actually be making it wider. Lest we forget, the purpose of all this testing is to determine what students have actually learned. The goal of education is not to produce great test takers, but to prepare tomorrow's citizens.

One of my TLN colleagues, David B. Cohen, who teaches at the upscale Palo Alto High School in CA, summed it up nicely:

What I wish people would realize is that "good" schools with high test scores don't think of their instruction as some kind of reward for the test scores.  They don't focus on basic skills and then suddenly reach a point where they...develop deeper knowledge, enrich learning, engage students' interests, etc.  It's not basics and then enrichment.  The basics can be addressed more covertly, more authentically, and more effectively, when those skills are developed in a meaningful and motivational context.  That type of environment shouldn't be the exception, the unearned privilege of the children of privileged parents, and those lucky enough to attend schools that test well. That type of education is the birthright of every child.