I spent the day away from my students grading the writing portion of the 8th grade NY State Common Core ELA Exams. I got to grade one short response and one extended response. I've done this in previous years, but given all of the changes in the exam format and the standards being assessed, everyone was paying extra close attention to the way we were were trained to score the questions.

I have some serious questions about what I learned today, but unfortunately, that's about all I can say. That's because I had to sign a confidentiality agreement before the training and scoring began that said I would not share anything I saw or heard today in relation to the scoring of the test. (I wrote about this last year too--Must Teachers Keep Quiet About the Test?)

The way Pearson directs the scoring of writing pieces on these tests will impact the overall scores of our students this year as well as the way teachers prepare students to meet the demans of the test in subsequent years. The state released a rubric for the writing tasks in advance of the test on engageny.org, but the way the rubric gets applied to student work is where the rubber actually hits the road, so to speak, in the standardized assessment of these Common Core standards. 

Here's the problem. These standards are still new and experimental, and so are the standardized tests designed to measure them.  Inevitably, at this stage there are going to be glitches or issues with both the standards and the way they are being measured, especially when the people directly involved with them (teachers and students) did not have input into their design.  It seems that teachers are being forced to comply with new standards and assessments, but not given a forum to offer vital feedback about them and the transition process. 

I don't like being made to promise my silence. I don't understand what purpose it serves either, besides keeping problems out of the light. 

To NY State and Pearson--don't require our silence. Admit that there are flaws in the new system with potential to do as much damage as any other flaw in our education system, and invite teachers and school leaders into the revision process.  

[image credit:www.123rf.com]

Directly before administering Day 2 of NY State ELA testing, about two 2 weeks ago, I gave students a warmup sheet, which asked them to "draw an emoticon or face that shows how you are feeling about the test today." Then it asked them to free write about it in the space below.  

Below is a collection of some of the emoticons they drew. I find them entertaining in the way that they communicate some of the spirit of the middle school child, but also poignant in what they express about this yearly ritual that takes up significant space in their educational and personal lives. I wish I had photographed all of them, but this is a pretty good representation of the overall response:

Any classroom teacher could have looked at Day 2 of the NY State ELA Exam that was administered last week on Wednesday and known that it was too much for students to do in the alotted 90 minutes. Unfortunately, it looks like neither Pearson nor the NY State Department of Education saw fit to consult (or listen to) teachers on this.  The result was a test that many students did not finish, which will yield data that does not tell us much about what students can really do, when it comes to the new Common Core standards.  (See this NY Times article for reporting on reactions to this test.)

As I looked through the test booklet to process each question, being a careful and not especially fast reader myself, I knew I would have struggled to finish in time. The test presented students with the following tasks to complete in 90 minutes:

• 3 lengthy passages, of 2-3 pages, with plenty of unfamiliar vocabulary for students to probem-solve and complex sentences for students to read and reread for understanding
• 7 complex multiple choice questions on each passage, which required students to look back at the passage and really think about what the question is asking and consider the implications of each answer choice to choose the best one. These were not straightforward, "did you understand what you read?" type questions and answers. There were several questions, for which neither I nor any English teacher on my team, was sure of the correct answer.
• 5 complex "short response" questions which require textual evidence in paragraph form. 
• an extended response to one passage (an essay)

A sixth grade teacher I know--who finds the new CC standards a natural fit to her teaching--said, "If critical thinking is what we're really emphasizing with the Common Core standards, why was there no time given for that on the test?"  Exactly.

The Common Core Language Standards say nothing about students needing to be able to read or write at a certain speed.  My fast readers (students who read significantly faster than I do) had no problem with the time, but even very high performing students who read at a more regular speed or who think a lot about each sentence they write had trouble finishing. A good number did not complete the test.  My students were not the only ones. An elementary school teacher I know reported that just over half of their students completed the test. One of my students with friends at NEST, a high performing, gifted and talented NYC school, told me her friends said only one person in their class finished the test. 

The most unfortunate part of this is that we'll have no real way of knowing how our students would have done, had they finished the test.  The data won't tell us much about our students' performance on the new types of tasks included on the test.  I don't personally need such data to tell me what my students can and cannot do--but I know this data will be used to evaluate what my students' skills, as well as the impact of my teaching.  

Though I have many criticisms about the use of standardized testing to measure teaching and learning, today I simply draw the line at a test that was impossible for many skilled readers and writers to finish. All they had to do was show some teachers that test... gross negligence, willful ignorance, or just mean? Any which way, students and teachers should not be guinea pigs for high stakes experiments.  

[image credit: www.prevention.com]

Professional development for teachers today is often done "to us," not "by us."  There is a lack of consistency in these top down PD initiatives, as different solutions to old problems are tried almost yearly, but never actually established or appropriately reflected upon by teachers and leaders.  These "flavor of the month" initiatives are met with a lot of eye rolling by teachers, because they rarely speak directly to the needs we have in our classrooms. What's especially strange to me about this model is that it does not set up teachers to be the experts in our own field. 

I imagine that in a transformed, more teacher-driven profession, most teachers would have a professional pathway that looks something like this--

1. Once teachers acquire the basics of teaching (or during that period), we
would identify areas of interest, such as designing assessments, teaching the skills
of collaboration to students, or connecting with communities around student learning, to name a
few possibilities. 

2. Teachers would then explore these areas deeply in their
own teaching, drawing on available research and methods and developing their own practices that work for their students in their school
context.

3. We would also participate in the discourse around
these practices within the wider profession.  Unfortunately, the discourse has often included only
professors and researchers, and to some degree, preservice or beginning teachers through course work, but not
experienced, practicing teachers!

4. Finally, they would find themselves in a position to
share their developments with other teachers, both in their school and outside. They could write, present at conferences, and
moved into various leadership roles.

The result would be a more deeply skilled, empowered teaching force, in which we are clearly the experts at what we do.

[image credit: careergirlnetwork.com]

I've dreamt of a hybrid role that allows me to teach part time and lead part time.  Here, for example, was my birthday wish a few years ago... the image from that post was so great I had to repeat it here.

Right now, there is a great discussion happening at Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable hosted by EdWeek Teacher and CTQ.  Several teacher leaders, including myself, have posted descriptions of our ideal hybrid roles, and the discussion has been equally interesting.  

My post is about creating a multi-layered teaching position and I'm working on a follow-up.  Brooke Peters of the Odyssey Initiative has been writing about how to create a school around teacher leadership and she shares great suggestions and ideas for hyrbid roles gleaned from her travels to schools around the country.  Ilana Garon, Lhisa Almashy, and Linda Yaron describe their unique, ideal hybrid roles.

Check in now--follow up posts are coming out!

 [image credit: http://natalie.ukdesignernetwork.com/art/psele.jpg]