Why I Support the Common Core

I’ve been a supporter of the Common Core State Standards since I first saw them and worked to use them to guide the work I was doing to lead the improvement of an ELA department’s (grades 6-12) curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment work.  Just for some context, I was in downstate NY, and it was the 2009-2010 school year. I had done similar work years before with the Maine Learning Results, but that was a weaker document with a more limited scope, and because of a number of factors, I would find myself doing the same work in another suburban NY district and in a NYC public high school before moving, for family reasons, to Massachusetts in the summer of 2013.  

I have been in a lot of conversations about the Common Core and continue to believe in its potential to combine a lot of efforts in favor of enhanced student learning, but I haven’t yet written about it for my blog.  Since I was personally asked in a FaceBook post by Mass Parents Opt Out of PARCC Pilot Testing, though, I thought I’d give a go at laying out my position. These are mostly generalizations.  Sorry, but I’m not prepared to craft a written version of all that I feel and know about them.  I know it may be tough to do so, but you will have to realize that some of this We’ll start with my concessions:

Even though I support the standards, I know:

- That there are imperfections in them that ought to be clarified and revised over time.  Having these standards in the purview of our legislators makes this way tougher than it ought to be.  I don’t believe that this is any different, though, than the revision process for other versions of states’ standards that would be revised every five years or so.  

- Schools haven’t been given enough time to learn about the shifts and change their work to allow for success with them.  The specificity of expectations are actually much different than a lot of outcomes teachers may be used to using, so there is a lot of work to do when schools shift to the teaching and learning with the Common Core.

- The Common Core is part of a much bigger chunk of work that’s attached to Race to the Top.  Because of that, there is a hot mess of an assessment system coming into American schools that I think we have reason to be very cautious around.  NYs attempted rollout over the past few years stands as testament to that.  

- Even if these tests turn out to be perfect, which I hope all experienced educators know is true of no test(s),  tying the results of the tests to teacher evaluations and school report cards - whether it’s officially through a VAM system or otherwise - is another problem.  There are ways to use student achievement data as a piece of teacher evaluation, but turning the students’ scores into a grade for their teachers isn’t one of them. All this has done is to increase paranoia and decrease the collaborative, trusting spirit that’s needed across stakeholders.  Please read here and here for my suggestions.

- The bump in lexile levels for each grade-level’s reading is a sincere issue.  I’ve been an ELA teacher long enough to know that giving a student texts that are difficult to read isn’t going to make them into better readers.  While I think I had been able to fruitfully scaffold and contextualize the literature lessons, the literacy pieces need a lot more support and patience.  I could, for example, help my students understand what is going on (plot and themes) within The Scarlet Letter, but they would still struggle with reading it on their own.  I think Kelly Gallagher and others are doing amazing work with envisioning new methodologies for ELA classes, but this is a huge shift that will take more time than schools have.

- More money doesn’t always lead to better schools, but I can think think of so many helpful ways to leverage money towards this initiative, mostly involving professional development, collaborative work time, ensuring offerings such as art and music and engineering don’t lose their presence, building classroom libraries, redesigned school libraries and technology.   It’s frustrating to see schools trying to operate on ever-shrinking budgets while we are pouring so much money into the tests and politics of modern education.  

In light of all of this, though, the Common Core Standards themselves, as I’ve said, still represent tremendous opportunities to me and have been extremely helpful guides in the schools where I’ve worked.   Here’s why:

- Content literacy:  I know that a lot of people already include this in social studies and science classes, but far too many still don’t, and the existence of explicit documents that lay out the need for it and its interdisciplinary connections is the catalyst that our students need.  Gone, hopefully, are the days when a few insightful teachers stand by the side of a “literacy coordinator” to say that we are all responsible for our students’ capacity to read, write, and think.  

- Writing is to be done in all grade levels with a variety of audiences, purposes, and styles.  Hopefully, this will mean that the five-paragraph essay written for teachers to read as an assessment of students’ content knowledge - as functional as it can be - will lose its standing as the predominant form of writing that I’ve found it to be in so many districts.  

- Non-fiction reading should have always played a role in all classes, but it hasn’t.  Too many ELA teachers only taught fiction and too many other content area teachers didn’t teach writing at all.  As someone who has always used all sorts of current events and primary source documents to support my ELA classes’ reading, I can say that it works.  

- There’s a clear scope and sequence for teaching grammar and language skills.  I’ve seen versions of this within individual schools, but I’ve rarely heard of such work being effectively shared across schools or with other departments.  Now, all teachers, students, and parents can see what’s expected.  

- I love that it prompts us to help students understand how to find and use the most appropriate technology for whatever particular work they’re trying to do.

- The Standards for Mathematical Practice remind us that math curricula has to be about more than identifying and solving formulas.  Students should know how to think about the math and apply those thinking patterns to other areas of study.  

- I know that “readers response” has a valid place in world of literary criticism, but students don’t need classes and teachers to understand how to react to a text; readers do that naturally.  The reading standards mandate that schools teach students how to identify, deconstruct and analyze authors’ intentions.  This should mean that readers have a firm understanding of topics and ideas before they react to them and form their own opinions.  This skill of listening, considering, and understanding before offering one’s own perspective, is sorely missing from American culture.  

- To add to this, students now must have solid text-based support for the opinions they’re forming.  We are hopefully chipping away with the "I think this is right because I think this is right" mentality that's behind far too much of our culture.

- Have a complete set of standards like these moves all schools one giant step closer to what I feel will be the biggest and most valuable shift that now trending in American education, the use of standards to guide our teaching, learning, and assessments. If all goes well, we will - before too long - be able to know that students classroom assignments and grades are being based on their needs within a course's standards.

As always, I’m interested in any feedback, questions, additions and observations that are out there, so I welcome your comments.  

3 Administrative Non-Negotiables: How I work towards success

School administrators bear the weight of myriad responsibilities.  Our days are filled with diverse questions, interactions, scenarios and tasks.  Some of these happen predictably and can therefore be planned for, but many realities in our purview present themselves organically, with little forewarning.   Schools are living systems, hopefully steeped with a variety of academic, social, experiential, and even virtual experiences geared towards  students’ growth.  No two days are going to look alike and chances are that no solution is going to work equally well a second time without being at least finessed into the specific situation.  Even within this variety and uncertainty, however, there are a few non-negotiable traits that afford me my best chance at success.

Although I am ultimately responsible for everything in a building, I know that I can’t even come close to doing all of the work myself.  Being at my best, then, has always meant actively making use of the unique and innovative talents within my schools.  The first key to my success as an administrator is, after all, my ability to form tightly bonded relationships with the educators, support staff, and other administrators in the building.  These trusting and culture building relationships hinge on three things: 1) I must believe in the faculty’s, support staff’s and students’ strengths and abilities to grow and take on tremendous challenges.  Only then will I be able to sincerely seek out and listen to ideas, delegate efforts, and involve many stakeholders in the decision-making processes.  2) I must be humble enough to know that my job title doesn’t make me the expert in every room or situation I walk into.  Keeping this humility in the forefront reminds me, again, to keep seeking out advice and listening to all stakeholders’ perspectives and ideas.  3) I believe too strongly in the urgent need for everyone to receive a quality education to ever let people out of their obligations, but I do need to empathize with people’s struggles instead of chastise and blame them for coming up short.  Whether I’m working with students, teachers, families, or colleagues, I always want my schools to be places of learning, where we work collaboratively to recognize struggles, identify their root causes and find paths forward.  I take pride in being an administrator who says: “I hear you.  I understand.  How are we going to find a solution?”

When one student in a class has a question, I have always found that (s)he isn’t alone, so I would think about not only supporting that one student in the moment, but also how  to adjust the overall curriculum and pedagogical work so that I can improve my work in ways that hopefully prevent the issue from manifesting the next time.  The parallel for my work in administration is to leverage the strength of my building, school district, and professional learning network to understand struggles within my school and brainstorm ways to overcome them.  Systems are strong and the vision I have for schools can best be manifested when I’m smart enough to leverage the collective work, insight, experiences, and resources of a learning community instead of working in isolation.  Improving a student’s literacy experience, for example, used to be considered something for which his/her English teacher was responsible.  By changing the paradigm, however, I can dramatically increase that student’s chances for success through vertical and horizontal teaming and the alignment of curriculum and assessment.  Now I can connect the work being done from year to year and ensure that all teachers are framing lessons with multiple levels of literacy in mind, helping students to access, process and express their understandings and questions about information.  Examples like these continue to prove to me that turning individual relationships into supportive communities is a non-negotiable part of best practices for strengthening schools and helping students.  This perspective allows me to use insights from both distinct, individual moments and large trends from a variety of places within the school to help improve upon the work I’m doing; it’s about being able to see the forest and the trees.  

Finally, I’d add that the clearest truth about work within education is that there are wide varieties of unpredictable factors that will contribute to my days and my planning for the school’s future.  This uncertainty brings a sense of life to the work that is one of my favorite aspects of working in schools.  It’s not a problem I have to deal with, but it does mean that I must be flexible.  While I begin any work with goals and a vision, working in education means that the people I’m serving and the systems within which I’m working will likely present needs, mandates, perspectives and issues that I have to take into account.  Learning is, after all, much more fluid than it is linear.  

Embracing Learning - Mistake Making 2.0

Growing Past Standards

 I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen. - Henry David Thoreau

But to act, that each tomorrow / Find us farther than today. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The very end...it was so sudden. - Fletch

Are we asking the right questions of ourselves? - Leadership mantra

I’ve just finished reading a spot on blog post from @garnet_hillman (The Freedom of Being a Beginner).  If you’re not yet following her work, story, and thinking, she is a co-moderator of #sblchat (Standards-Based Learning Chat, which used to #sbgchat - Standards-Based Grading Chat). She is also a humble, reflective practitioner and a strong, insightful advocate for the growing movement that’s bringing schools away from traditional assessment systems that allow many things to affect a student’s grade (think: assignment completion, timeliness, general compliance, and positive behavior mixed in with content knowledge and skill acquisition) and into a world where only a student’s capacity with defined academic standards will count towards his/her “grades.”  A standards-based program would define specific course-level expectations and - after summative work is completed - denote how far a student is along the trajectory towards mastery.  We wouldn’t average quarter grades together; we wouldn’t have percentages for homework and quizzes and participation and projects in our gradebooks; we won’t even be grading homework because that will be formative work, a chance to provide feedback without giving an actual grade.  

I love it. I’ve been a dedicated weekly contributor to #sblchat for a long time now.  What I love most is that the discussion is always about teachers and schools challenging themselves to grow beyond what they’re currently doing in service of students’ educations, which is exactly where educators’ thinking needs to be. In fact changing the name of the chat speaks to this because going from “standards-based grading says that the “movement” ought to be about our designing curriculum and teaching classes around standards, not just grading students on their mastery of the standards.  Even though the moderators have been very successful at pushing a philosophy and growing the discussion, they were willing to say: “What’s next? What can we be doing better?” And then to realize that this minor tweak to the name actually holds a world of deep meaning to our practice in schools.  

Garnet’s blog post insightfully prompts people to let go of the need to know everything in lieu of embracing our development as learners.  We ought to do this for ourselves and our students.  The expectation that we - and oftentimes students - already know everything and the following anxiety of being a “failure” if we’re caught not measuring up to that expectation have proven to be toxic to the learning environment in our schools and culture.  We are at a place now where too many people feel that they can’t admit to having to learn anything.  Whether or not we accept standards being set by national and state groups, I’d bet we can all accept that there are outcomes we’d like to reach, levels of achievement we’d like to attain, skills we’d like to master, and content we’d like to know.  It’s the process that we’re now struggling with...and it’s this process I’d like to suggest putting front and center.  Garnet alludes to it by saying that we have to give ourselves the freedom to be beginners at things, that we ought to embrace the discomfort of uncertainty because uncertainty is actually a signal that we’re learning.

So I want to suggest another shift forward...in semantics, something I really like to talk about because I think there’s power in purposeful messaging.  For example, in this post I wrote about education’s newly minted love for “failure” needing to use the word “struggle” instead.  I also changed my own messaging after reading a post from @swpax on using “vigor” instead of “rigor.”   

  

So, I want to think about a new message...a new tag-line that’ll express our (certainly mine) interest in focusing significantly more on the lengthy process of learning than on short moments that prove our abilities.  Once we stop haggling over who writes the outcomes or standards, we’ll realize that 1) they aren’t actually changing all that much (e.g. reading, speaking and writing is still reading and writing.  In fact, read this post about Indiana’s dropping the Common Core) and 2) we can’t expect anyone (students, teachers and otherwise) to meet those standards without the right culture and processes.  I wish PBL didn’t already mean so much to so many because “Process-Based Learning” is what I’m striving for.  In my opinion, focusing on the process of learning would positively affect everything we do.  We, after all, spend 98% of time going through the process of learning, whether it’s a good faulty process, and the assessment (time proving our abilities) at the end is just so quick.  

A culture driven by the learning process would include a class that helps students understand where they are on a particular learning journey so that they’re aware of what they’ve accomplished and what’s next to be learned.  I got my own kids’ “standards-based report cards” yesterday and learned that they’re “excelling at the standards” in almost all areas.  That’s great, but there are months left in the year.  Now, my question is “What’s next in the process?” I also realized that there are some habits my kids need.  These might show up as only “meeting” or “approaching” the standards, but they instead ought to have been organically included in “the process” of learning within the path toward the standard.  Why am I being told about this struggle now instead of hearing that my kids have been working harder on certain things before now? Because the school - and all of our schools - are spending more energy on where we want to go instead of how we’re going to get there.  

It’s a curriculum process that leads a teacher to know (s)he needs to teach students how to use word processors and internet databases before assigning a research project because those - and many more things - are necessary parts of the process that must take place before “meeting the standard” can ever be a reality.

It’s essentially analogous to “showing your work” in math class.  If we were nailing all of the answers to modern students’ needs, I’d say that maybe this is overboard. Since we’re far from it, though, we need to be more transparent about where our issues are...somewhere in the process.  

It’s a society that says wanting all students to meet high expectations is only selling public relations bullet points unless there’s a viable plan that changes the methods and resources we access as means of getting everyone there.

If I think back about first reading Garnet’s posts and finding out that she loved the idea of standards-based grading, I have to wonder how her blog might currently read differently if she evaluated herself by outcomes instead of allowed herself to grab onto process and grow over time.  I want us to follow this model and own not only that growth mindset, but truly shift our focus beyond the standards to adapt the laser focus on what it takes to reach them.

As good as standards-based learning is, as much of an improvement as it represents, I think we can do even better.

Am I missing something?  Taking something too far or too seriously?  Making no sense at all? I’d love your feedback.

A Middle Path on Teacher Evaluation - Somewhere Between VAM and Irresponsibility

I AM DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN NY - AND THEREFORE ELSEWHERE - WITH REGARDS TO TEACHER EVALUATION SYSTEMS AND RTTT.  THIS POST IS MEANT TO DEFINE A PATH FORWARD THAT INCLUDES STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT DATA BUT MOVES AWAY FROM OBFUSCATED AND HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE VAM MODELS OF “DATA-DRIVEN TEACHER EVALUATIONS.”  IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT THE CONTEXT FOR MY CONCERNS, PLEASE CLICK HERE AND FIND MY EARLIER POST.

I HOPE YOU’LL LEAVE SOME FEEDBACK AND CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION.  WE CAN TALK HERE OR ON TWITTER.

As always, I want to start my thinking with questions that need answering instead of solutions I’m hoping will fit.  In this case, I’m wondering: What expectation(s) can schools actually and realistically have for teachers when it comes to students’ learning, including standardized testing results?

I know this sounds crazy to ask, and many of you are already thinking that I’m about to lower the bar and let teachers off the hook when students don’t achieve, but that’s not where I’m going. I am, though, very hesitant to back value-added models of evaluation that promote paranoia and professional doubt and suffer from flawed formulas, flawed philosophies, myopic accountability plans, and deep obfuscation.  I also believe proactive and reactive action, not accountability, ought to be policy’s goal.  Are we - as a culture and a profession - looking to blame people for a problem or prompt people to find a means of moving towards its solution(s)?  

So, I need to hone the next phase of my initial question… Can schools ask teachers for:

1) an analysis of what the data from required standardized test(s) tell them about their students?

2) evidence of their ability to formatively and summatively assess their students so that they will create data for things they want to know about their students that aren’t portrayed by the standardized tests?

3) evidence that their curriculum and pedagogy continually reviewed and revised so that they are appropriately designed to move students from their current achievement levels to proficiency and mastery of the desired standards for the course?

Why do I like these questions?

1) They reinforce the idea that teachers’ work must be steeped in students’ learning.  There is a non-negotiable connection between data, curriculum, and pedagogy.

2) They allow for teachers’ growth over the course of time instead of unrealistically expecting them to be experts at helping each students in each course as soon as they meet.  Not doing this would be akin to telling doctors that they’re no good if they have to “run a test” to see what’s going on.  

3) They allow for the application of data from local and standardized testing data without suggesting that one is more important than the other.  There is no unilateral approach to improving teaching and learning.  It’s why testing-based, standards based, and technology based reforms will all struggle until they include a bigger picture.  

4) They recognize that it’s teaching appropriately that moves students forward, not “holding high expectations.”  Without great teaching, holding high expectations is nothing but a bunch of soundbites.  

5) They force conversations between evaluators and teachers and between teachers and students.  Currently, VAM models can be - in fact, I believe almost all are - enforced by a computer in a room somewhere.  Students get matched with a teacher.  Scores go in.  Teacher gets a grade in the mail.  This model pushes teachers to get to know their students and their needs as well as administrators to deeply get to know their teachers’ work.  It truly couldn’t be done remotely.

6) They provide a ton of room for a lot of supportive feedback loops and collaboration along the way.  There are no surprises when you’re not hoping to get all of your answers from a one-time event like a major exam.  

7) They support the very real idea that teachers are going to struggle and potentially even fail at times.  It’s knowing how to recover and who to ask for help that’ll ultimately make them great at their work.  If we’re being honest, we all know that that’s a truth for anyone.  

Do I, then, believe that there’s a place for students’ actual scores in a teacher’s evaluation?  Until I see some serious research about this working well at an aggregated level, I’m just going to say that even if it’s possible, it doesn’t seem to be worth the infighting and political capital it’ll take. It’s not worth the divisive and desperate culture that’s manifesting in our schools today.  I also know that I do fully believe that if we get teachers working towards purposeful and researched classroom practices, the achievement we want will happen.  

How can we move to this?  It’s simple, I think.  Let’s take out the pieces of states’ evaluation systems (in NY, it’s worth 40%) that account for testing scores, and instead create a rubric around the three questions of data-based practice I’ve outlined above.  We’ll add it to whatever observation rubric is in use and move forward from there.  

The Hot Mess of RTTT, Teacher Evaluations and Student Testing Data In NY

THIS POST IS MY TAKE ON THE CONTEXT AROUND TEACHER EVALUATION AND STUDENT ASSESSMENT DATA IN NEW YORK (AND OTHER STATES).  IF YOU WANT TO SKIP THIS AND GO RIGHT TO READING MY MIDDLE-PATH PLAN ON MOVING FORWARD, HERE IT IS.

I’ve started this post five times this morning.  Because it’s about Race to the Top, teacher evaluation systems, and New York education, I have a lot I’d like to say, and I wouldn’t even be able to scratch the surface.  We’ll have to start in the present, then, and assume that if you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of the history of our Federal government’s intervention into public education that includes No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.  Truthfully, I hope someone is putting together the objective history of these last bunch of years.  I don’t believe the debate or the stances are anything new, but the time period between A Nation at Risk and 2020 will make for an extremely interesting case study, one in which all of the arguments and the attempted fixes are elevated to an extreme at which our modern world is becoming far too talented.  

I want to focus on a tiny piece of this milieu: teacher evaluation and student-testing data.  I’m talking about the idea of using data on students’ performance on standardized tests as a large piece of a teacher’s overall evaluation.  In order to measure this, “experts” have created a method called VAM (Value-Added Measurement) to ostensibly assess how valuable a student’s time in any particular teacher’s class has been.  If you want more background on it, try this, this, this, and/or this article/feature/blog.  This is statistics and algorithms at a whole new level; it’s highly controversial, and one of the two pieces that have brought legislators and the Board of Regents in NY to a deeply unhealthy level of uncertainty and infighting.  

I believe, when it comes to implementing top-down initiatives, that I should work my hardest to change towards what good for students and take a “path of least compliance” with anything else.  This means that I know I work for people and for a system, but if my team(s) and I don’t see how something’s not beneficial to students, I’m not going to push to be ahead of the curve on it. I’d rather see how things will play out.  NY, however, opted to be an early adopter of not only the Common Core Standards, of which I’m a supporter, but also the idea that grades 3-8 testing must be “aligned” to the Common Core.  If this isn’t making sense, realize that all RTTT states are in a transition between their own testing systems from NCLB and either the PARCC or the SB consortiums’ tests, which have release dates that are coming soon but haven’t yet hit.  While there are many differences that are being expected from these new tests, the most important is supposedly going to be their ability to accurately track how much a student is learning with a given amount of time in a particular teacher’s room, VAM. NYs desire to be out in front meant that it’s own tests were “transitioned” to a version that more “aligned” with the  CCs increased “rigor.”  These would better measure what students “actually” knew and could do, and that would allow them to best be used to assess what is being learned in the teachers’ classrooms.  

This plan has been unravelling for a few years now for the following reasons, in no particular order:

1)   Parents, teachers and students are very upset about the amount of testing many of states’ plans involve.  This includes the states’ tests and, in NY, the assessments being used as “local measures” of student performance.  While few people are listening to teachers’ opinions, the parents’ and students’ voices are disrupting the process.  The “opt out movement” (see this as a general version of grass root action) is generating great amounts of anti-testing press and threatening schools’ ability to have enough students taking the tests to meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) requirements.

2) The tests themselves have issues.  From poor questions to marketing within test questions and a lexile level of questions that seem absurdly inappropriate for kids, there have just been too many questions about the tests themselves for most people to feel okay about it.  Let’s also add the truth that many of the big test makers (in NY, it’s Pearson) is also profiteering by selling it’s curriculum and workbooks to schools as a way to prepare for its tests.  

3) You can’t sell failing grades to parents with a smile and expect to walk away.  It’s truly unbelievable to me that those in charge of NYs education plans - the governor included - haven’t done a better job predicting and handling public backlash over all of this.  When the tests became more “rigorous,” the grades were expected to drop.  This makes sense, but NY went ahead and opted to count these exams for all sorts of things, including teacher evaluations, instead of finding a way to pilot new questions.  They then went about insulting parents and dismissing all concerns.  They’re taking a “we don’t need your hearts and minds behind this since we’re more powerful than you are” approach that’s now haunting them.  They simply could have said: “We’re not going to have cut-scores that define student achievement this year.  It’s a trial. We’re going to analyze our data to figure out where our students are and how where we have to improve our efforts so that we’re all ready for PARCC.”  It just sounds better than: “Many more of you will fail this year than last because your teachers aren’t that good and you aren’t as smart as you’ve always thought you were.” Duh.  

4) Although both PARCC and SB claim that their tests are going to be able to measure students abilities with higher-order thinking and the upper reaches of Bloom’s Taxonomy, nobody has shown how our current tests are doing that, so - at least for now - very few people are interested enough in what the tests can actually tell us.

5) Increasing the rigor of a test as new curricula is being written around standards that have just somewhat recently been released isn’t going to give accurate measures of a student’s learning in a class.  Rushing the curriculum writing and the testing rigor only makes VAM less believable.  Teachers unions now held the moral high ground on what’s good for students (alongside parents, which made their case stronger than ever) and the professional validity to publicly denounce VAM and therefore the overall APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) program that came along with it.  

Whew, we’re almost caught up.  Just this month, NY realized it has to bail, at least a bit.  If you read this, you’ll rejoice that NY is going to follow Massachusetts’ lead and take some time to consider their initial plan and adjust things as needed before students and teachers are held accountable for the Common Core curricula to which schools are still transitioning.  This leaves a ton of questions on the table, but it means that fewer people (students and adults) will be crying at night over the attached judgements and career-defining evaluations the way they were last year.  Questions I have:

1) Is there now a plan to ensure schools are moving forward with curriculum transitions?

2) Is there now a plan to gauge test validity and reliability?

3) What does this delay do to NYs relationship with RTTT funds?

4) What are this year’s exams going to look like?

5) Is PARCC going to become hesitant to go ahead with its plan for rigorous assessments?

6) What exactly will teacher evaluations look like since 20% of NYs were based on these assessments?

And finally, there’s this article, in which we learn that NYs teacher evaluation system is to somehow move forward, as is.  What a hot mess.  

MY NEXT POST ELABORATES ON HOW NEW YORK - AND ALL STATES - CAN MOVE PRODUCTIVELY FORWARD WITH THE CONNECTION BETWEEN STUDENT ASSESSMENT AND TEACHER EVALUATION.

Where All Students Learn

We all have talking a lot about the need to address all of our students' needs. It's our mandate, so I'm hoping your school has embraced the call. It's bigger than new programs...bigger than technology integration and standardized testing. It's even bigger than - I think - the achievement gap issue in that we're talking about the needs of all of our students in all of our schools.

None of these are easy to do, and each requires a number of posts and plans for bringing it to fruition, so I don't mean to sound overly casual here. These five pieces, though, represent what I feel are non-negotiable pieces to making it happen.

As always, your feedback is deeply appreciated.

1) Adapting the Right Mindset

Educating teenagers is extremely difficult work that has to start with the right attitude.  Simply put, everyone’s “hearts and minds” have to be in a place that says all children can learn and that it’s our job to support them through the necessary processes.  Every school needs to somehow include Carol Dweck’s Mindset (or some parallel research) into their teachers’ and students’ work as it details the truth that all people can learn more than they currently know and become better than they currently are.  It’s not the overly optimistic hype that says anyone can be a surgeon or a physicist, but instead, it’s the very strong reality that who we are today is not who we need to be tomorrow.  Being able to meet the needs of all students means that a school has to believe that all teachers and learners can and must grow.  If we don’t believe in everyone’s potential, our school culture will reflect that; the limits and negativity will be palpable in the conversations and interactions between teachers, students, administrators, and staff; people will continue to struggle as a result.

2) Clearly Defining Quality Benchmark Standards  

Once we believe all students can grow and achieve, schools will embrace the process involved in identifying, accepting, and teaching to high and interesting benchmark standards for all students.  It’s important to have these standards defined in ways that are understood by the students and addressable in our assessment systems because that’s how students, teachers, and families are going to know what students are learning and what they’re having a hard time understanding.  As we are better able to understand exactly where students are struggling or not, schools will become increasingly better at helping them take steps forward.

3) Building Relationships, Allowing for Choice and Voice

A tremendous piece in educating teenagers and engaging anyone is showing them respect. Part of our best practices ought to be finding ways to include students’ voice and choices in their education.  If we’re actually looking to meet the needs of all learners, we really need to talk to them and build relationships with them, which will include considering what information would interest them, how best to engage them, and what chances can we give them to show what they know.  Education should be something done with students, not to students.  

4) Finding and Supporting Solid Tier-One Strategies for All Classrooms

As I said earlier, teaching teenagers is extremely difficult, nuanced work when it’s done right.  It’s a bigger task than ever to find ways to appropriately use assessment data and differentiate lessons while properly addressing core content and skills.  We must have opportunities to continually research, try, share, observe, reflect, and improve upon classroom practices.  Teachers have to feel safe when they find something new that may work.  Setting up a mentoring system that includes 1:1 time, collegial intravisitations, critical friends groups, grade-level professional learning communities, and vertical departments codifies a culture of learning and sharing what works best for students, which means that fewer students will need further interventions to find success.  

5) Creating and Using a 360 Support System

Learners struggle for a variety of reasons, and schools who want to meet all learners’ needs must have not only a wide range of academic, social, and emotional supports ready to help students, but also dedicate time to helping all adults in the building serve as that first set of eyes and ears who will notice when students need help.  I actually believe that addressing students’ emotional needs can pay tremendous learning dividends by making students know that the school’s adults care about them and can most often happen casually by building relationships in classes.  Using frameworks such as UDL and UbD will dovetail with this relationship-building philosophy by solidifying a purposeful and differentiated academic system for teaching courses’ content and skills.