assessment

Tracking Skills in Isolation: Missing the Forest For the Trees

Today one of my tasks was to create an assessment calendar for the year.  This is a plan for mandatory benchmark and interim assessments to track my students' abilities to perform on distinct sections of the NY State ELA exam throughout the year.  There are three major sections of the test, which we track separately through interims and all together in benchmarks: (1) reading & multiple choice, (2) listening and written response, and (3) reading and written response.  

I don't really have a problem with giving any one of these assessments.  After all, my school has a mandate to raise students' profiency levels, as measured by this test, and we need to do all we can to make sure our students are able to be successful on the it.  The standards being assessed are all important--supporting an answer to a question with evidence, identifying literary devices and so forth.

My problem comes when I look at this schedule of assessments as a whole: its effect on my teaching and what it suggests to students about what matters in their learning.  Between a September diagnostic benchmark, quarterly interims on each section, and a winter and spring benchmark, at least a day of class almost every month must be devoted to test practice, and hours of time to creating the tests, grading them, and analyzing the data.  

Since my time is not unlimited, this means that I do less grading and assessment of other types of tasks and skills.  In fact, these standardized-style assessments are the only ones I'm responsible for collecting data on regularly.  Of course, I can maintain my usual classroom assessment practices, just with a bit less time and encouragement to focus on them. 

So... what's wrong with that?  What's to say that standardized assessments aren't sufficient or even superior to teacher-created authentic assessments, being somewhat more objective and performed without any help from the teacher or other students?  Aren't we getting a more accurate reading of what students have learned in a standardized assessment?  That depends what we are interested in measuring. 

Standardized test questions assess students' skills out of context. This is what makes them more objective and simpler to grade.  However, in life, the ability to apply skills to a specific context is extremely valuable--more so today, it turns out, than one's ability to perform a task in isolation. Daniel Pink makes this point in his landmark book, A Whole New Mind, which warns that machines and cheaper labor forces overseas are taking over tasks that can be done out of context, through standardized methods. The jobs that remain for Americans demand that we apply our skills through the filters of sound principles, careful judgements and decision-making, empathy, cross-cultural competence, creativity and ever-increasing self-awareness.  

It's a complicated world out there, and changing every day.  "Mastering" skills in isolation is sort of like learning to sail a boat without going out on the water.  I don't have a problem with any one day on my official assessment calendar or any one skill assessed. I usually find it interesting to see how kids do and track their progress. But in privileging standardized-type assessments over authentic ones--which is happening all over the country, wherever the stakes are high for the scores--I suspect we are missing the forest for the trees. And, unfortunately, it's the kids who will lose. 

 

[image credit: nasa.gov]

Guest View: Teachers’ Report Points in Right Direction

Here's the response to my last blog post from my collegue, Susan "Ernie" Rambo. She has been a guest blogger here before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Renee,

I've read the report on teacher evaluation several times now and find myself comparing it to what my school district might have in store for us in the near future. Both the governor of our state and our school district's new superintendent are recommending that we adopt similar measures to evaluate our teachers. What I like most about the report, is that it includes teachers in the decision-making process of creating and implementing the four distinct areas of teacher evaluations. Bill Ferriter stated it quite well in his blog when he mentioned that the work of the Denver New Millennium Initiative (DNMI) extended the work of policy-makers so that teacher evaluation reform can become a reality instead of a "half-baked plan!"

Rather than dismiss any weaknesses within the Colorado policy, the DNMI made recommended several reality-based ways to strengthen the policy.

    The group focused on four areas within their state's new policy:

  1. Developing meaningful measures of student growth (including in non-tested areas) to comprise 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation.
  2. Defining qualifications and training for evaluators.
  3. Determining how to account for school conditions and student factors in a teacher's evaluation.
  4. Designing an evaluation system that informs both employment decisions and professional growth and learning.

You mentioned how the recommendations for the qualifications and training of peer evaluators reminded you of the training for scoring National Board of Professional Teaching Standards portfolios. I was also reminded of that process as I read the suggestion that teachers create individual growth goals related to their schools' growth plans, and develop the tools to measure their progress toward meeting those goals. Such work requires teachers to reflect on the needs of their students and why they choose specific strategies to support those needs, much like the work required in attaining National Board Certification.

I am especially interested in the DNMI's recommendations for using teachers in hybrid roles – part time teaching and part time evaluating their peers – to improve the evaluation process of teachers. A national professional development organization, Learning Forward, recommends that every teacher, as well as every student, learns every day. A well-designed peer-evaluation system would generate an atmosphere where all educators could improve their practice through the proven application of reflection and action. The DNMI suggests using teachers in hybrid roles to first be trained, then master, and then train others to apply an evaluation process. Being evaluated by a peer, experiencing the same challenges as I do in the classroom, would maintain much more credibility than the brief visits of an over-burdened administrator who might or might not have time to visit the classroom during the year.

I commend the DNMI for putting forth the suggestion that teachers' evaluations should include a professional development component. The recommendation of using a professional guild to design personal professional development activities for teachers based on their evaluations would be a welcome improvement to the traditional "one-size-fits-all" and "sit and get" professional development provided at many schools. I would also like to see a component that includes each teacher using student achievement data and peer evaluation results to plan a personal professional development plan that utilizes the offerings of both the professional guild and external resources.

In my work with other teachers at the Center for Teaching Quality in studying Teacher Working Conditions, we recommended that teachers should be provided with High Quality Professional Development that focuses on meeting the unique needs of their students.The DNMI report extends this concept when they describe using teacher-evaluation rubrics that are created by the state but also include locally-based options for criteria that are based on local goals and concerns. Additionally, the component that encourages teachers to conduct action research toward goal attainment, as you mentioned in your letter, is a most powerful tool that allows teachers to substantiate the choices they make in their classrooms that impact student learning. What works in one classroom might work in another, but each teacher needs time and support to reflect upon and evaluate chosen strategies to determine their effectiveness.

Despite the concerns with using test scores to evaluate teachers, the Denver group has published realistic suggestions for how our schools can move toward continuous learning and higher achievement of our students.I look forward to more news from this group and from you, as we experience the changes in store for us.

Regards,

Ernie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anybody else think the teachers are pointing us in the right directon on developing effective teacher evaluation systems? What do we need to do to get these ideas into policy?

Teaching & Learning Are Messy

On my last post, My Kind of Teaching, on constructivist pedagogy, I received this thoughtful response from a veteran teacher, who chose to remain anonymous. I appreciate it so much, because it offers some validation some of my thinking and intuition regarding the thorniest of issues  when it comes to teaching methodology right now. It seems like in the push to be urgently focused on short-term objectives and obsessive tracking of student learning toward a measurable goal (performance on standardized tests), we miss some of the point--how students actually learn. Often messily.  

Thank you, anonymous teacher, for sharing your thoughts here:

I've been teaching for about 12 years now. When I graduated from TC, my advisor told me one thing that I took with me and that guides me still: If the kids aren't doing something, the kids aren't learning.  He meant that the kids should never just be sitting there listening to me talk, they should instead be working on meaningful tasks used to facilitate learning and later demonstrate what they've learned.  So I always plan like this: What am I doing?What are they doing? The reform movement, unfortunately, has been very bad for progressive teaching because it is all about standardized testing or "accountability."  It is not always easy to control for what a student has learned.  Sometimes students learn something completely different than what I intended.  Sometimes, a student learns what I wanted to teach days after everyone else.  Does that make me a "bad" teacher?  This is a phrase that gets bandied about a lot lately.  Many times I learn from the kids.  It's an interactive process.  Teaching is messy - that's the beauty of it.  The way kids learn is messy.  I also want to point out that alternative certification programs have brought into the teaching field new teachers who are much more traditionalists overall.  I think this is because there is so much emphasis on classroom management.  There's less focus in these programs on philosophical issues of teaching and learning as well as developing rich curriculum because the teachers have to be up and running in just short weeks.  So at TC we had lots of discussions about what the actual role of the teacher was and what the student brought with them into the classroom.  We were encouraged to let the curriculum take care of the classroom management issues. 

Also, make sure to read Alfie Kohn's new article, "Poor Teaching for Poor Children," in which he argues that "it’s possible for the accountability movement to simultaneously narrow the test-score gap and widen the learning gap." Scary, but possibly true. 

[image credit: sophiemazingarbe.com]

 

A Glimpse Into Shared Responsibility for Assessment

John,

I can’t believe we’re already on Spring Break (whatever “break” means for either of us). With only a few weeks left for New York State’s assessments in English and math, teachers all over my state have mixed feelings about this break. On the one end, it’s probably the most important break we get because we’re so spent from this “crunch time.” On the other end, we’re hoping that our students come back ready to do well on their exams and at least retain enough information so we can just “refresh” them on topics instead of re-teaching them. This is the present mentality we have in New York, all across the nation. In general, the trend towards holding everyone accountable for tests that may or may not measure our students’ actual learning is imprudent at best, yet, because of the environment we live in, we still fall back into this mode of teaching even as we hold these ideals about what testing should look like.

Your piece about iPads in the young classroom reminds me of the power in having technology available to us in the classroom, and having access to such tech is vital for this fast-paced world. It should also shake anyone who believes that they can be the center for all knowledge. It also reminds me that, because of the sheer depth, breadth, and speed of the sources by which students can accumulate [true and false] information, we too have to change the way we see assessment as a direct reflection of the teacher, and more as a reflection of the ecosystem of learning developed for the children.

That is to say, we become so enhanced in our systems thinking, we use assessments less as indications of how one specific teacher influenced their ability to pass a test and more as an indication of the skills and values that teacher actually taught a student. Does the student think more abstractly now? Does the student have more stamina and focus on problems? Do they inquire and ask good questions more? (Yes, there ARE such things as good questions.) Can the student struggle with problems and use the tools they have to solve the issue? Can they connect discussions they have in the classroom with other things they’ve learned in their own lives?

As teachers, we won’t always need to be Kobe Bryant or Dwyane Wade, the high-scoring, high-flying NBA champions. We can be Shane Battier and still contribute very effectively to any team we drop into. The stats may not show our impact immediately, but the team does better as a result with people like us on board.

Personally, I prefer to be judged on my own growth as a professional, and whether students actually believe in the things I do. At my best, I deliver consistent, effective instruction and have a system in my class in place that leads to concrete class discussion. I make them believe that they can do any math problem given the proper push. I set guidelines for expected behaviors, least of which is sit quietly and do exactly what I say. I’ll assess them weekly, but unbeknownst to them, every assessment I’m giving is all formative, and only when I’m satisfied with their progress do I consider it summative.

Few of us live in a world where our entire lives depend on one solid hour of bubble sheets and white spaces to fill in. We live in a world where we get assessed in our motions, our work ethic, our personality, and our ability to create and innovate. We need people who understand that and prepare teachers to teach the future generation for that future.

This is an assessment we simply can’t skip.

Evaluate Teachers on Our Ability to Teach and Test What Really Matters

Like educators in nations whose educational systems outperform ours, U.S. teachers should be evaluated on our ability to teach and test what really matters.

The more I think about the current rush to set up quick-and-dirty teacher evaluation systems based primarily on results of misused standardized testing data, the more I realize that we are losing sight of the real prize: our children's learning of important things, and developing the professional expertise of our nation's teachers. That expertise includes being able to teach well and to measure student learning accurately.

During the season of testing-induced madness around the country, I'm reflecting on something I wrote a while back that was also quoted in our new book, Teaching 2030.

For years, one of my favorite classroom assessments has been to tie my opening activity fo the semester to my final exam (a composition). Students start the class by telling me (in writing) about their past experiences with writing, types of writing they have done (in and out of school), and their views on what constitutes good writing. For the final exam, I ask them to revisit that piece and explain what has changed as a result of their experiences in this class. They have to document examples of their own growth as writers. Thus, I have an exit essay that can be graded using the rubric adopted by the English faculty, but I also give the students a tool that guides them through a reflection of what they have learned and why. Student work samples like these (which can be digitized, stored, and analyzed over time) are also extremely valuable to me as evaluations of my own work and of how the class could be improved or changed.

The purpose of my classroom writing assessment is so students and I can measure the amoung of individual progress made by each writer. They all start from different points and end with various levels of proficiency as writers. I can generate reports, based on our school-adopted rubrics and learning outcomes, that show where each student is in relation to those outcomes and how far each student has moved over the course of the semester.

If the scoring instruments that I'm using within my classroom are of high quality, then I as an ethical professionally trained expert should be able to use those instruments to evaluate my students' work accurately and fairly. [Hint to policymakers and pundits: This is what 'good' teachers do]. Why is that too big a leap for our society to make in thinking about what makes an effective classroom teacher? We make exactly the same assumption for doctors, professional sport referrees, and auto mechanics. Do some of them make mistakes in their judgments? Yes. Are some of them unscrupulous or inept. Yes. Do we question the entire enterprise because it includes imperfect assessmsents or some poor performers? No.

We're asking the right policy question when we ask: "How can we better prepare the nation's teachers to conduct, evaluate, and use classroom assessments (formative and summative)---and to share that information in a format usable by parents, schools, employers, and other interested parties. This is the broad vision of accountability that we need.

 

 

 

 

 

Turning Crisis Into Opportunity

The Feelings:

As I embark on a much needed week of relaxation and personal recharging, for some reason I am plagued by the feelings I have about the small but significant percentage of students who profoundly missed the mark on our recently finished project.  I am disappointed on some level in both them and myself.  This was a writing unit designed to have multiple ways in for everyone, one of the most accessible studies we will do all year.  It feels particularly *not okay* for some students to have skipped steps along the way, tuned out important directions, avoided the revision and editing process, and turned out work that is less than what they are capable of doing. 

Identifying the Problem:

I know that I've got to put away the stick, stop beating myself up for it.  In talking to a friend about it, I realized that part of my frustration is knowing that if I had worked one-on-one with many of these students, the outcome would have been much better.  So the problem is that I did not give some students the individual attention they needed in order to make progress.

Cause of the Problem:  

What happened?  One important fact is that I now work with 105 students instead of 55.  And I have only 45 minutes a day with each class.  It is not a small difference. So I went about the unit in the same way I always have, and naturally did not reach every student who needed me in individual conferences.  I did not realize I'd have to do some things differently in order to serve every student in my new school.  In some cases, the individual attention should have also come in the form of a phone call home, advising the family that their student had not been keeping up in class.  

Solutions/Next Steps:

All these feelings are here to guide me to make some kind of change.  What I have come up with is this:

  • Make a list of the students who were far from meeting my expectations in this project. Share this list with the learning specialist so we can put some additional focus on these students in future projects.
  • Create a tutorial section comprised of these students, and propose the change for the week we return from break. (Tutorial is a period each day where we can work with smaller groups of students who need extra help.)
  • Go over their work with the students and have them reflect on what happened.  Explain to them they now have a second chance--like a retake of an exam, only a redo of the project.  The semester ends at the end of January. We have a month to redo all the steps of the project using a new topic of their choosing.
  • Speak to their families about what happened and the new tutorial.  Keep them updated on their child's progress.  
  • Celebrate their success at the end of the month.

The image at the top of this entry is the Chinese symbol for crisis.  It includes two characters: one for danger, and the other for opportunity.  Moving beyond my instinct to beat up on myself for the failure of some of my students, I hope that by embracing the information I now have about them as an opportunity to change something, I can bring them out of the danger zone they are currently in with their education.

[image credit: austincc.edu]

Paperless

Though the work of a teacher is never ending, there are several things my school does with technology that make my day go by more efficiently, thereby saving time.  Maybe I'm just not good with paper, but organizing the paper flow of a teacher's "office" has always been difficult for me and often sent me in circles looking for something.  Check out these paperless options.

1. Laptops.  Instead of a teacher's lounge with desktops, like many schools have, or a few desktops in the classroom, each teacher is loaned a laptop for the year.  The school is new, so the laptops are new Macbook Pros, and they are fast and reliable. (Each year the school brings on new staff, so the cost of this isn't so far from the cost of maintaining and updating a computer lab at the school.  

2.  Gmail accounts.  Every faculty member and every student at the school has an email with their first initial and last name on the schools google server.  This makes it easy to email anyone without hunting for their email.

3. Google Docs.  Every meeting agenda is sent out ahead of time as a Google doc.  One person a the meeting takes notes on the Google Doc.  Action steps are easily accessible, and the doc can be updated at the next meeting without anyone hunting for their notes.  I used to have a HUGE binder full of notes and handouts from meetings. Now I just have my laptop!  This means that I cannot forget where I put notes or handouts.  It also means that everyone has the notes, not just the facilitator. 

4. Google Calendar. If I want to meet with someone, I check their schedule in Google Calendar and invite them to a meeting, or vice versa, instead of hunting through schedule documents that are often not accessible to me anyway.  And if I want to sign out the laptop cart for my classes?  Each laptop cart has it's own calendar.  I just check to see that it's not already "busy" and invite it to my classroom!  This is way quicker that having to walk to a central location in the school and check through a calendar in a binder.

5. Teacher Pages.  As part of our google sites, each teacher has a page or his or her classes.  We update the homework and provide other helpful information about our classes.  Not every student has internet access at home, but the majority do, so this is an easy way to help students and parents stay on top of the work. The google site has limited capabilities, but is extremely easy to work on as opposed to some other sites I've tried to use.  

6. Gradespeed.  I've been using an online Gradebook for a while.  For anyone not using one, it takes about 15 minutes to figure out how to use and it is a huge timesaver.  If your school doesn't subscribe to one, there are sites you can use yourself that cost less than $50 a year.  But what I like even more about how my school uses Gradespeed is that we take attendance on it.  I have my laptop open on my desk.  After the first five minutes of class I enter attendance.  That means if a student comes late to my 4th period class, I enter that, and the school can easily access data about which students are chronically late to class.  Detention is assigned to students who are late a certain amount in a week.  I also can't count the times that I filled out or forgot to fill out, the old paper attendance sheet and then couldn't find it when the attendance person came to collect it.  Gradepeed and other online grade books can be set to send automatic email messages to parents about lateness or missing homework.  I've never used those features, but would be interested in trying at some point.

7. Google Spreadsheets for Parent Phone Log. Instead of every teacher having his or her own way of logging parent contact, there is a form that becomes data in a spreadsheet that I fill out when I make parent phone calls.  I just enter the students' name, my name, whom I contacted, the reason and the result, and press submit.  Somehow, typing that information seems much easier than filling out a graphic organizer by hand or finding the students' note card and recording the same information.  I'm actually getting faster at typing now than hand writing...

8. SchoolNet.  This program allows multiple choice tests to be scanned and graded electronically.  It does take some time upfront to load a test into it, but it eliminates the grading of anything that can be done in the multiple choice format (you can do short answer or essays, but have to grade them yourself, then enter a score for that question on a bubble sheet).  I think I will need to address this more fully in another post.  Of course, I don't give that many multiple choice tests. But, for example, practice state tests can be given and graded immediately.  You can link each test question to a state standard, and get data about how students scores in relation to specific standards.  Finally, using that feature, I'm working on a way to grade student writing on a rubric I've created, then creating a "test" where each category of the rubric is a "question" tied to a standard.  Then I can plug in students' rubric scores for each test question and have data about how your students perform on different areas of their writing, and track that throughout the year.  This is still a work in progress for me as a timesaver, but the capabilities of SchooNet open up a lot of opportunities--and why take time to do something a computer can do faster?

One of the only things that remain in paper form is student work. What would it be like if every student had a laptop and internet access at home?  I know some schools and districts around the country are doing this.  That will have to wait for another post.

 

[image credit: faqs.org]

How Students Measure Great Teaching

 Lately when it comes to education, the country has been focused on the goal of measuring good teaching--and I think most people would agree that it's not an easy thing to do.  Some (such as Nancy Flanagan of Teacher in a Strange Land) have noted that teachers have been mostly left out of the process, though we are known to play the single most important role in a child's education.  There is another group of key players that has had even less voice in how we measure good teaching: the students.

My virtual colleague from the Teacher Leaders Network and blogger at the DailyKos, Kenneth Bernstein, brought this AOL News article by Kelly Middleton to my attention.  There, students were surveyed about what makes a great teacher.  Their responses (copied below directly from the article) are quite interesting:

  • Know us personally, our interests and strengths
  • Let us know who they are as individuals
  • Smile at us
  • Encourage us to participate in school activities
  • Spend time beyond class time to help us be successful in their class
  • Give us descriptive feedback on assignments
  • Tell us why
  • Share how what we learn is connected to real life
  • Apologize when they make mistakes
  • Give meaningful work
  • Are energetic, enthusiastic and enjoy their job

As I prepare for a new school year, this list is a welcome reminder to me of what matters most to many students.  As Ken pointed out, students did not cite raising their test scores as a major factor in a teacher's quality.  That in itself is no surprise to me, nor does it necessarily discount the value of test scores in measuring student learning... however, if we only look at test scores, it seems we are discounting the students' experience.  

Much of what the students listed would go under the category of building positive student-teacher relationships.  However, it seems there is little movement to encourage teachers to build better relationships with our students.  On a very qualitative level--though I wonder if we could get some numerical, survey-based data on this--I feel that the focus on data and test preparation has created a new kind of distance between today's teachers and students.  

Educators in New York regularly refer to specific students as numbers: "She's a 1; he's a high 2..." etc.   And as I spend more time looking at student work for data on what percentage of the class has mastered standard X and deciding how to respond, I have less time to give meaningful qualitative feedback on student work, which is something students reported to be valuable in the above list.  

The nature of high stakes testing and all of its consequences makes working in a high need school (and maybe other types of schools, though I'm not sure) much more stressful than it was when I started teaching 6 years ago.  Are we smiling less?  That might be worth studying as well.  

Extra-curriculuar activities are being cut in city schools and nationwide in place of more math and ELA instruction, so there are fewer activities to encourage students to participate in.   Teachers are often discouraged from spending time on meaningful work that might not apply directly to standards measured on state tests. Remember, tests only measure what can efficiently be standardized.  That leaves out a a great many areas of meaningful academic work (writing fiction and writing poetry, in my discipline, for example).  

Students value a teacher who tells them why.  My guess is that the answer, "Because it's on the test," has become much more common and will continue to do so as long as test scores are the go-to measure for teaching and learning.  This is not to say that tests do not provide valuable data for us about student learning.  I just think that, for lack of a better way to measure good teaching, the country is going too far in the use of test scores.  

As I look at what the students say makes a great teacher, I worry we may be we may be discouraging the development of such warm and thoughtful teachers.  It seems like so much energy is going to distract us from these things: smiling, words of encouragement...there is no guidance in that direction from those policies which seek to guide us teachers.  

We also must not forget that we have a staggering national high school dropout rate (close to 50%).  My friend who teaches in Oakland at a second chance school, for high school students who've already dropped out and want to come back, did some research on her students' experiences that led to their dropping out.  Overwhelmingly they had felt all alone in their education, lacking a strong relationship with any adult at school.  Ability and time to form relationships with students needs to be given some formal value.  If we constantly measure learning outside of any real context, we are really going astray of what our students need, which is real connection--both to academic content and to their teachers.   

[image credit: http://www.daisakuikeda.org/main/educator/edu/edu-04.html  This website is very interesting, about a model of education called Soka, which is based on positive relationship between teacher and student.]

    Accounting for 2009

     On TLN, we have a tradition of posting our New Year's resolutions. Usually I am pouring with ideas and professional goals, but this year I found it difficult.  Then, as I was reading other people's goals, I remembered...I am in the midst of carrying out a big goal I set for myself in August before the school year started.  What I need to do now is check in on them and regroup for 2010.   

    The most tangible goal I set for myself this school year was to improve my assessments.  I wanted to make sure I could clearly track the learning of my students.  Why? Partly, for my own piece of mind--in this age of "accountability," I wanted to be sure of what my students were learning and be able to say say clearly what each student knew how to do and what each student needed to work on.  I wanted to be able to answer to people who say, "How can you prove what your students are learning, if not using standardized tests?"  

    Obviously, I've always had to grade students, and I've used a combination of rubrics, simply assigning grades, just giving comments, etc.  This year, I have put many more hours than ever before into grading everything stringently using rubrics I created and keeping track of the trends and where individual students need help.  At first it was interesting and somewhat motivating for me, but soon I felt myself b-u-r-n-i-n-g  o..u...t........ I kept going, though. 

    My conclusion at the close of 2009 is that I have not learned anything ground-breaking from this extremely time-consuming (left-brain heavy) process of "accounting" of my students' learning.  I realize that I was always using student data (though not always in numerical form) to inform my instructional decisions.  I always had a pretty good grasp of what my students understood and didn't understand because I looked at their work.  

    In fact, this assessment process has made my vision of my classroom somewhat more myopic than usual.   For example, if you ask me what a particular student knows or doesn't know about, say, point of view in literature, I have to consult the numbers in my grade book, whereas before I could probably tell you off the top of my head.  This is because I've forced myself to focus on the empirical side of assessment (the numbers) and less on the actual student! I am less tuned in to the "soft" aspects of teaching, such as how I am motivating my students, and how much joy and creativity there is or isn't in my classroom.  I *count* that as a loss for both my students and me.  

    I did discover a few good things about this practice.  The rubrics were often helpful as a tool to communicate clearly to students what they needed to work on. When I've given students opportunities to revise or redo the work, many of them have done voluntarily, which is a big success. I notice this form of feedback is most helpful with students who are already at least somewhat achievement-oriented. Students who generally struggle with academic skills and engagement, however, seemed to disengage more than usual when they found everything was graded strictly based on the 8th grade standards.  This raises some questions for me that I will share below.

    2010: As a result of my learning this fall, I will use rubrics when I want to communicate to students about their progress on a specific objective, especially when I will be giving them new opportunities to achieve greater mastery the concept or skill.  Ideally, though, I want to structure my class so that my students get to a point where they can assess their own work, where I do not always have the final word about what's best.  

    In 2010, I will not continue to keep track of student learning using rubrics to create numerical data just for the sake of it, or to answer to some higher power.  If I am the single most important factor in the learning of my students, then I need to do what enables me to be the best teacher I can be, which means NOT getting burnt out in the process. Moreover, I need to approach teaching in a way that feeds my spirit. I need to use my intuition to stay in tune with the pulse of the class as a whole and build relationships with all my students.  I resolve to welcome formal and informal occasions for joy, humor, and creativity in my classroom. I am fairly certain that these are no less important than mastery of standards.  

    Questions: I'm still torn about whether actual grades and rankings are ultimately helpful.  In From Degrading to De-Grading, Alfie Kohn explains the well-researched fact that grades take the child's attention away from the learning itself, which is detrimental to all learners, from struggling to gifted. Written or verbal feedback, he says, is very helpful, but grades--which rank the work, whether we use letters or points, or percentages--make students focus on the grades, not the work. What would happen if I stopped giving grades and only gave written feedback?  What if I gave and scored quizzes, but at the end of the term asked kids to look at their work and feedback and assign themselves a grade and explain their rationale for it.  How would they fare? 

    In the use of rubrics, I question the practice of deciding beforehand what every student should learn from each assignment.  For certain objectives and certain assignments, yes.  But everything? For every student? Isn't that an attempt to standardize the learning that takes place in our classrooms?  What about play? Innovation?  What's the right balance between accountability for student mastery of pre-determined standards and the need for students to explore, discover, and learn in a way that is authentic and honors their individuality?

    [image credits: www.readingpl.org/, eduspaces.net, www.flickr.com/photos/ bingramos/126661740/]

    New Structure, New Classroom Life

    Over Thanksgiving break, I planned to launch a new novel study. Boys will read The Dream Bearer by Walter Dean Myers and girls will read Like Sisters On the Homefront by Rita Williams Garcia.  This is always a very successful study for the students, because they find the novels compelling and the gender split adds some developmental dimension to the experience (This is the only time in the year I split by gender. More on that another time.)

    As excited as I was to start the novel study, I felt that over the last month or so, things had gotten too ragged in my classroom. Students seemed lax about their own behaviors--in conversations with them later, students knew exactly what they had done wrong, but just seemed to lack self-consciousness or motivation to act appropriately in class. I'm talking about the usual 8th grade stuff--socializing excessively during class, antics that interrupt lessons or set off other students, etc., etc., etc.  These behaviors were upsetting the momentum of the learning and the group dynamic.  

    At the end of every period I have the class assess itself as a group in 5 categories on a scale of 1-4: 

    • Agenda (did we complete it?), 
    • Quality of Work (this is for the class as a whole, not individual students)
    • Jobs (official jobs in each class are Teacher's Assistant, Supply Manager, Director of Maintenance, and Librarian--did they do them?)
    • Golden Rule (Harm no one in word or deed--did we follow it?)
    • Neatness (how did we leave the classroom?)

    The self-assessment chart serves as a good data source for me.  Students are very honest when completing the self-assessment, because it doesn't count as a grade, so there's no motivation to cheat.  I saw the scores decreasing and decreasing--and it was only November.

    20% of my students' final grade is reserved for a category I call "Member of a Learning Community."  In my mind, it's very clear what this includes: coming prepared to class, participating in lessons, meetings and discussions, active listening, supporting peers, following the Golden Rule, good work habits, professionalism, etc., and I have communicated this to students.  However, I needed to find a way to make students' individual grades in this category more visible to them, more immediate and short-term, and empower them to improve in specific ways.  But logistically this can be challenging. 

    I remembered something a student teacher I had last year from Bank Street College shared with me from another cooperating middle school teacher she'd worked with that year--Sharon Kramer, also a Bank Street-trained teacher who teaches in NYC public schools.  I had debated implementing it in September, but thought nah, I'll be alright without.  Now things are falling apart a little bit, so it's time for a change.  

    So it's only been 2 days, but this new system has been really positive.  The atmosphere of the class is quite different.  Kids are more focused, more self-aware and we've picked up the pace a lot.  Maybe it's the new novels, or the new system, or a combination.  Any which way, I'm happy about the change. I'm happy I found the courage and time to take a risk and switch things up.  

    The new system: Each table has a student leader who keeps track of participation points on a chart using a code for the members of the table. Every student begins every period with 60 points.  Positive behaviors and negative behaviors are assigned + or - point values and a code letter.  For example, coming to the meeting area within 60 seconds of the bell ringing (M) is worth 10 points.  Cursing (C) is worth -10 points, and so forth. Students gain points for great group work, helping another student, leaving their table area beautiful, etc.  Students lose points for eating in class, coming late, not having a writing utensil, breaking the Golden Rule, etc.  I made it so there are equal number of positive and negative behaviors.  (I've been training students to calculate grades based on those letter codes, which as some basic math value as well!) 

    The table leader rotates weekly. At the end of the day I tally up the points and make any corrections if need be.  Every day students see their official grade from the day before. At the end of the week each student averages their scores from each day together and gets a grade out of 100, which I will enter into my online grade book.

    It's not rocket science, but I think it helps kids be clear on what they are choosing to do and the consequences of those choices, good or bad.  Also, there are many ways within a single period to redeem a falling grade, and this makes that visible.  However, if a student has made poor choices throughout a period, it also becomes clear that he or she can't simply work for 5 minutes and redeem the grade.  It helps kids check each other, which is much much better than me playing the cop.  I hope and suspect students also see more clearly how their actions affect their learning and the rest of the class.  Maybe that's something we could have a class discussion about soon.  

    I've never really been a fan of point systems for behavior.  Ideally, we will use this for a while and then outgrow it.  But for the moment, it's the structure and clarity my students need in order to do their best work and become members of a learning community, not just students in a class. 

    [Image credit: a student deep in thought on a trip to study the neighborhood. This is how I want my students to feel in class every day!]

    12next ›last »
    Syndicate content