Across the country, parents, teachers, and students are beginning to pushback—hard—against the misuses and abuses of standardized testing in our educational system.

First, most people do not understand what standardized achievement tests are actually designed to measure. They are not designed to measure what students have “learned” over a specific period of time or from a specific teacher. Therefore, attempts to use them for that purpose are at best misguided, at worst, deceptive. For more on this point, I recommend listening to the recent interview of Jim Popham by Steve Hargadon at Future of Education.

An expert on tests and testing, Popham reminds us that standardized tests by nature of their design sort students based on socio-economic backgrounds, not academic accomplishments.

Because our federal and state governments have tied such high-stakes to the results of these misused tests, we have created additional crisis situations for students and teachers, particularly for those already facing the most challenges, as my colleague NYC teacher Jose Vilson reminds us.

I cannot do justice here to the many aspects of the testing/evaluation issue, or to the far-reaching debate over it among teachers and students around the country. That debate is yielding some important ideas, however, that deserve closer attention. In a series of articles sponsored by Education Week’s Teacher Magazine, several teacher-leaders connected with the Center for Teaching Quality have offered some much needed clarity and advice on better ways to assess what students are learning and how teachers are teaching. In one of those series, Testing at the Crossroads, teachers look at the growing resistance to standardized testing starting with the much publicized refusal of teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School. In another series, another group of outstanding teachers offer ideas from the field on how to better measure student learning.

Likewise, my teacher colleagues and I have long been examining the issue of how to improve teacher evaluations. Back in 2011, I made this still pertinent observation on teacher evaluation:

How can we evaluate such rich complexity with all the varying levels of performance and experience they represent across the largest profession in America—with a few five-minute walk-bys and a checklist? Hardly. The old factory evaluation model, which was never a good fit for education, will be even less so as we move further into the potential of immersed learning and interconnected teaching. One principal trying to evaluate an entire faculty whose members practice a dizzying variety of pedagogical skills will be painfully ineffective. Like our students, teachers need assessment of our work based on a combination of measures and reviewers, with teachers taking responsibility for our own professional growth based on mutually established, student-centered goals.

To get there from here will require transformed thinking and some significant power shifts, neither of which, history reminds us, come easily. But I believe we are on the verge of such a shift as teaching finally morphs into a true profession. One of the trademarks of a profession is peer review of each other’s' work against high standards established by the profession.

Some of America’s best teachers have been offering up our expertise on how to improve assessment of students and teachers for quite a while now. Thankfully, there are signs that those valuable ideas are gaining well-deserved attention, but the fight against politically expedient assessment and evaluation must continue.

Cross-posted at National Journal: Education Experts

I’ve just returned from a meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and I am thrilled about where this important organization is headed.

I also feel the need to set straight some disparaging rumors about NBPTS and encourage people to look more closely at what is an important front in the education reform battle in this country.

First, it is important to note that while the staff of NBPTS has been reduced due to reorganization, that staff now includes a significant number of NBCTs—including the Chief Operating Officer, Andy Coons. Another is the Director of Standards, Kristin Hamilton.

NBPTS has also matured to the point that the majority of the Board of Directors (15/26) are NBCTs including (besides me): Kimberly Oliver-Burnim (former National Teacher of the Year), and Glenda Ritz, newly elected state superintendent of Indiana. The majority of the NBCTs are practicing classroom teachers.

Under the direction of new president, Ron Thorpe, NBPTS has made some important changes and earned some much-deserved respect both nationally and internationally. Responding to the needs of NBCTs and candidates, the Board has recently (some would say, finally) shifted to electronic submission of the portfolios, upgraded its website, and other moves to make it more accessible and user-friendly for NBCTs and potential candidates.

Another exciting development, again thanks to the prodding of NBCTs, has been to make better use of the vast NBPTS database of accomplished teaching resources (videos and teacher reflections). Thus was born ATLAS [Accomplished Teacher Learning and Schools].

The National Board is getting its first look at the use of ATLAS in a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education through its Investing in Innovation (i3) program.  Working closely with Linda Darling-Hammond and the Stanford-based Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (edTPA), along with AACTE, the two teacher unions, Deborah Ball’s team at Michigan, and evaluator AIR, ATLAS will be introduced into teacher prep and induction programs.

While ATLAS was originally imagined as a support for teacher preparation and early career development, pilot programs in the states of Washington and Maine are now using the resource to train principals to be better observers and evaluators of teachers. National Board has received other inquiries, too, regarding professional development for teachers faced with implementing the new Common Core State Standards and other content areas. Whenever and wherever this resource is used, it extends the teacher voice into the way the profession works. (Building a True Profession, Part III)

One rumor I would like to smack-down is that the NB certification process is being run by Pearson. That is an insult to my fellow NBCTs, Board members, and staff who have fought hard and long to maintain both the independence and the quality of National Board Certification. Currently, Pearson is contracted to handle the logistics of the certification process. However, the development of the standards, as well as how they are assessed, scored, and reviewed is all under the control of NBPTS. The unfortunate glitch in release of candidate scores a couple of years ago, was a problem with Pearson’s logistics, but the scores were never lost (just regretfully delayed). National Board Certification was and remains a process created and run by teachers, for teachers.

Most important, NBPTS stands poised to help bring the teaching profession to one of its most elusive, yet essential goals: The development of a true profession. If we, educators, want to be treated like professionals, we have to be a profession. That means setting and maintaining standards for who enters, stays, and excels in this profession. It means holding ourselves and each other accountable for standards and ethics we have developed. To paraphrase Thorpe:

Governments do not create professions. Neither do businesses nor foundations. By definition, professions are created by those in the profession. If teaching is going to claim its rightful state as a true profession, then teachers and other practitioners must make sure [our]voice guides the work. That voice should exert itself through the standards of accomplished practice and the path that all teachers travel to become accomplished. Both will put teachers in a position to define the key terms of [our]work and will create the habits of mind that need to become the profession’s norm. ]We] teachers must realize, however, that no one will do this for [us]. [We] either do it for [ourselves],or through [our]silence agree to comply with the vision others have for [us].

This is the second in a seven-part series on National Board Certification Standards for teachers.

 “Teachers are committed to students and their learning” (NBPTS Core Proposition #1).

True to its core beliefs, NBPTS is celebrating its 25th anniversary by engaging in some hard reflection and making important (some would argue, overdue) changes in some of its processes and products. But the heart of National Board Certification remains the Standards, and those Standards are still the best statement by our profession of what it means to be a highly accomplished teacher.

Like all of the 25 certification areas for National Boards, special education teachers have their own carefully developed set of standards (the Exceptional Needs Standards) against which their teaching practice will be measured.

Standards are developed and revised by a committee of 12-15 members who are broadly representative of accomplished professionals in their field. A majority of the committee members are teachers regularly engaged in teaching students in the field and developmental level in question.  [emphasis mine] Other members include experts in academic content, child development, teacher educators, researchers, and other professionals in the relevant field. Standards are disseminated widely for public comment and subsequently revised as necessary before adoption by the NBPTS Board of Directors.  (nbpts.org)

I’ll be sharing more about the fascinating standards development and review process later in this series, but I want to stress here that these standards are developed primarily by teachers for teachers. On the review committee for the Exceptional Needs standards, for example, 8 of the 12 members were practicing and distinguished special education teachers from around the country.Similarly, a majority of the NBPTS Board of Directors who adopt the standards are as required in our bylaws, National Board Certified Teachers.

So according to the NB standards, what does it mean to be a highly accomplished special education teacher?

For one, it means being an effective advocate for your students. As stated in the standard document:

Teachers understand the special pressures and frustrations that some students with exceptional needs experience and the significant physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges unique to their exceptionalities….As advocates for students, accomplished teachers base decisions on students’ needs, even when those decisions are difficult to implement or contrary to popular opinions.Teachers recognize that their professional responsibility includes defending students when students cannot defend themselves.

In developing the standards for the Exceptional Needs certification, the review committee wrestled with how to develop discrete standards (there are 12 for this certificate), while acknowledging that in actual practice, the skills identified in the standards are highly integrated and overlapping.

Because teachers of exceptional needs children have to be able to work with students ranging in age from birth to 21, they have to demonstrate ability to do that work in a variety of settings. They also have to be able show evidence of how they turn those various settings into safe and positive learning environments for their students.

My TLN colleague and Teaching 2030 co-author, Laurie Wasserman, is a National Board Certified special education teacher in Massachusetts. Her description of what the National Board Standards and process is typical of what we have heard from NBCTs over the years:

• Going through the NB process developed my ability to become a reflective practitioner. As I observe my students who struggle with learning challenges, poverty, speaking another language, and just the day to day difficulties of being 'tweens, it has helped me to understand how best to help them, and be the best educator I can be for them.
• As a special needs middle school teacher who now works in a general education classroom for the majority of her day, the NB process developed in me the strength in myself to share ideas and teaching strategies with fellow educators.

The standards are not only valuable for measuring what a teacher has already accomplished in her/his career, but also as challenging goals for new teachers and teacher candidates.

Reading the standards document gave me a renewed respect for the depth and breadth of professional knowledge my colleagues in special education must have in order to do their jobs well. As a mother of two special needs children, I have had positive and negative experiences with my children’s teachers. Some were clearly more genuinely convinced that my children could learn and excel; while others, though kind, betrayed a debilitating paternalism.

The teacher who knows and can do what these standards describe is the teacher I want working with my children everyday. What about you?

Related articles

Making Teaching a True Profession

One of the best kept secrets in education might be the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

(Open Disclosure: I am an NBCT and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Board).

Since 1987, the Board has worked “to advance student
learning and achievement by establishing the definitive standards and systems
for certifying accomplished educators….”(Mission
Statement, NBPTS).

read more

Just before the holidays, I spent four days at the regional accreditation association conference (SACS/COCS). It was alternately sad and eerie to watch another level of educators wrestle with distortions of accountability and assessment.

Sad, because discussions about accountability and assessment should be a natural part of our professional lives.

Eerie because it so reminds me of 2001-02 when NCLB was rolling out and causing all manner of unnecessary confusion in the K12 world.

The discussions of accountability take on a slightly different flavor in a world where "academic freedom" has been so highly touted and defended. Where teachers do not have to use the same textbook--or any textbook. Where grading scales and formulas can range from intricate to esoteric. In the relatively few cases in which a student challenges a grade given by an instructor up through the official grievance procedure, it usually stops in the Dean's office. There the student learns that it almost requires divine intervention to get a professor's grading or teaching methods overruled. 

Until very recently, colleges did not have to account for student learning at all as part of their accreditation processes. Now, the concept of tying public universities funding to their graduation rates has some members of the academy planning early retirement. 

Most college instructors have no pedagogical training, so even terms like student assessment, learning outcomes, or student performance data are foreign to many outside of the teacher education programs. I was sitting at the table when the accreditation site team visited our community college and asked, "What does an A in Freshman Composition mean a student actually knows how to do? Does it mean the same thing in every section at your college?" Jaws dropped; eyes glazed over. Those of us from K12 background took up the discussion, but nerves had been rattled. 

I can hear you K12 folk snickering, "Yeah, welcome to my world."

But are these conversations and conversions necessary? Should we be moving the expectations of accountability to the post-secondary level? Is this a case of "what's good for the goose..." or "enough is enough"?