Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

assessment

The End of the School Year is in Sight

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High School Pupils Celebrating End Of Term
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Yes, the end of the school year is in sight.  Teachers are worried about finishing the curriculum, checking in books, taking posters off the walls, entering grades, and all of their other year-end tasks.  Administrators are ticking items off of their unique building goal lists and sending out reminders and final instructions for the last days of school, all the while contemplating their summer worklists.  In anticipation of the end of the year, we experience a seemingly abrupt conclusion followed by a collective sigh.  Afterward, the thoughts of “Oh, no, we forgot… “ settle into our minds.

Let’s start now to check off the tasks and items that are complete or need follow-up.  

We can then take time to reflect and celebrate the positive accomplishments that we might otherwise overlook in a rush to the end.  The provided checklists are republished to serve as a guide to districtwide and classroom reflection and to remind us of all the tasks that require completion or monitoring to start the next year.

3 Ways to Avoid the Dreaded “Teacher Lottery”

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We’ve all heard it. Kids talking about their schedules like this, “Yes! I’m going to get an A in math this year because Ms. So-and-so is so easy!” Or, “Dangit, science is going to be so hard. I got Mr. Tough-stuff, and he doesn’t let anything slide.” As teachers, you never want to be considered the easy teacher, but you also don’t want to be the hard teacher that the students dread. But, what if there was no easy teacher or hard teacher, and all learning environments were equally fair? Here are three ways to even the playing field for your students so that the “teacher lottery” becomes less varied.

Set Clear Curricular Expectations

First things first, standards are not curriculum, and neither is a textbook! Depending on the state and content area, some standards are written to be very broad and general. Some are written for a grade band rather than a specific grade level. In many cases, a standard can be interpreted differently by different teachers. Additionally, standards are not organized into teachable units and may not include a level of emphasis or rigor. Textbooks, on the other hand, may include levels of emphasis and rigor, but may not reflect local priorities and may have more lessons than can be taught in one school year. In my Intro to Business class for example, my textbook included 28 chapters. But in any given year, I could only get through 13 of them with my students. The textbook that my school had adopted for that class included more than twice the amount information that I could teach my students.

The solution to both of these issues, is to develop a local curriculum that is organized into teachable units made up of learning targets that are written clearly (so all teachers interpret them the same way), are measurable (avoid verbs like understand, learn, etc.), and is appropriate for the amount of time that you have with your students. This way, the expectations are clear for both teachers and students.

Make End-of-Unit Assessments Common

When all teachers for the same course are using the same assessment to determine success, students are held to the same expectations. To further ensure that teachers are administering the common assessment fairly, include a set of “administration guidelines” as a cover sheet. Information that should be clarified in the Administration Guidelines includes:

  • the amount of time a student is allowed to complete the assessment (must the assessment be completed within a single class period so students cannot discuss answers when they gather after class?),
  • any materials they are allowed (are math students permitted to use a calculator, or language arts students a dictionary?),
  • the amount of assistance a teacher is allowed to give when a student has a question (may a teacher explain the definition of a word, or clarify directions?),
  • and the criteria for successful completion.

Please note that the Administration Guidelines as explained above are meant for general education students that are not on IEPs. Any student with an IEP must be given the modifications that are outlined within their IEP. Similarly, when administering common assessments to ELL students, consult their ELL teacher to determine appropriate accommodations.

Collaborate as a grade-level team

The big idea for all curriculum and assessment work is to improve classroom practices. By collaborating with your grade-level team, you’re able to share what worked and what didn’t. So, if something didn’t work in your lesson, ask a colleague who saw success to share what strategies they used. It’s OK to be vulnerable, and in fact, improving your teaching depends on it. Look for areas that you can improve and help those that can use your help to find more success in their classroom.

Students have enough to deal with without having to worry about which teacher they’re going to have. It will take a bit of work up front to complete the steps outlined above, but your school will be better for it. Your school doesn’t need easy teachers or hard teachers, they need good teachers.

Need some help with these things? Let us know!

Proficiency Scales and the CLI Model

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Many of our school districts have begun work with proficiency scales, a tool introduced by Robert Marzano and Marzano Research to determine levels of student learning. Teachers have seen success in their classrooms when sharing proficiency scales with their students and allowing students to track their progression from level-to-level; therefore, allowing students to take ownership of their learning. One benefit of including proficiency scales in your curriculum, instruction, and assessment work is that both the teacher and student can use them.  Let’s take a closer look at what proficiency scales are, their purposes, and how they work within the CLI Model.

Proficiency scales, typically a four-point scale, include related curricular targets and scores which are intended to clarify a progression of learning. They allow teachers and students to identify student performance. Please review this sample template. The use of proficiency scales is a decision to be made by your Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC).  Keep in mind, that proficiency scales can be altered to meet the needs of your school or district.

Additionally, a proficiency scale can aid Subject Area Committee (SAC) members in identifying which curricular targets are a priority and must be on a common assessment. Therefore, creating proficiency scales fits perfectly as the first step of assessment work in year three of the CLI Model. This graphic organizer, revised from the Common Assessment Development Cycle graphic from Marzano Research, illustrates the assessment process that we use in our model.

By creating proficiency scales first, SAC members identify priority curricular targets (components) and use this information to better plan their assessments. Jan Hoegh, a consultant for Marzano Research, recommends the following questions as a way to identify what should be included on a proficiency scale.

What is the primary topic of the outcome? Outcomes are summary statements for a unit of instruction. They are meant to encompass all of the components listed as steps to achieving the outcome. Determine the primary topic of the outcome and use that information to develop your level 3.0 score. Sometimes, one of your components may fully communicate the primary topic of the outcome and can, therefore, be copied and pasted into the level 3.0 field of the proficiency scale.

Are there any components that don’t directly relate to the primary target? Some states include standards that are meant to be repeated from grade-to-grade or are more supplemental in nature. Although these standards are important and work well within an outcome, they may not directly relate to the primary target. If this is the case, they may be excluded from the proficiency scale.

Please remember, however, that even if a component is not included on the proficiency scale, it must still be taught and assessed. Everything that is included in your district’s guaranteed and viable curriculum is essential, and students are still expected to learn it. But, components of this nature may be evident in the final product without having specific items that measure them; they tend to be critical understandings or skills that contribute to the end result.

Are there any components that are pre-requisite knowledge or skills? Evaluate the remaining components to determine if they meet this criterion. If so, these may be included in your level 2.0 score.

Similar to other steps of your curriculum, instruction, and assessment work, please think of these questions as guiding questions, and understand they will not always provide the answers that you need to complete your proficiency scales fully. That does not mean that your curriculum was written poorly, but it does mean that you need to think about the end result and include information on the proficiency scale that will prove beneficial to teachers and students. Remember, the purpose of a proficiency scale is to clarify the learning progression for teachers and students and further allow them to identify where a student lies on that progression.

Leaders Hungry for Details of Systemic Change

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In July 2018, we were invited to present at the Southern Region Leadership Conference in Biloxi, Mississippi, hosted by the Mississippi School Board Association.  The goal for our two sessions was to help district leaders from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas prioritize specific take-home steps for their districts to build and establish systemic leadership for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  Reflecting upon the group and individual interactions both during and after the sessions, we believe that we achieved the level of interest for which we were striving! District leaders were excited about the specific implementation details for creating systemic leadership and questions for evaluating their current leadership processes for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

While not a comprehensive list by any means, we present this list of questions to initiate and open a dialogue regarding district-wide academic processes among stakeholders within a district.  These challenging questions could help an administrative team affirm or evaluate their current curriculum structures and processes.  The questions are posed from a first-person perspective from within a district.

  1.      Do we have an academic structure in place to ensure that our curriculum processes are district-based rather than site-based?
  2.      Do we have a model or system of processes we follow, as a district, for alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
  3.      Does our current model or system of processes have a built-in reporting method so that documentation is readily available for accreditation           visits or mandated reports (ESSA, AdvancED, etc.) without having to spend an extra amount of time and expense to prepare such evidence?
  4.      Have we, as a district studied change theory sufficiently to support first and second order changes within the district?
  5.      Do we need outside help to establish a systemic, shared-decision making culture for these issues?
  6.      Do we have a district-wide, board-approved policy for how curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning decisions are made to             ensure stability when there are administrative staff changes?
  7.      Do we have a structured timeline (long-range plan) to indicate the cycle of curriculum development, resource adoption, and the writing of               local assessments for every subject area?
  8.      Do we have a district-wide, representative body of stakeholders (various levels of administration, teachers, specialists, board members,                 community members) that meets regularly rather than leaving the responsibility to a single person to address such things as:
    • Acceptable grading practices
    • Assessment use (security and administration)
    • Accountability requirements to assure implementation of the district curriculum
    • Instructional alignment to the curriculum
    • Definitions of mastery
    • Use of data from assessments
  9.      What roles do the building principal or other administrators play as instructional leaders within the district?
  10.    Do we have consistency in what is taught and what is expected of students within the same grade level or course regardless of the                         teacher, building, or year?
  11.    How are new staff members prepared to follow the model/procedures before they begin teaching in our district?
  12.    How does the district ensure that the required use of the curriculum is put into practice with fidelity?
  13.    Do we have valid, local assessments to use as data for timely intervention for students who are struggling?

Although not exhaustive, these are some examples of questions that the Curriculum Leadership Institute Model for School Improvement provides support in answering.  Click here for a rubric to determine where your district’s current strengths and weaknesses are in addressing these critical issues.

Photo Credit: Jamie Street

Choosing a School Improvement Strategy

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Old public school building

download_pdf_smWhether your district is already working with CLI, or is considering that possibility, it is important to know why CLI is the right choice in this new era of school improvement.  CLI’s comprehensive and multi-dimensional Pathways to School Improvement Model fits nicely with all new and emerging recommendations for meeting standards and expectations.

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During the original NCLB era school district leaders could choose an improvement strategy focused primarily on gathering and using data about student learning, and ensuring that students meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals as measured on a state’s assessments.   Board members and a district’s administrative team often chose an improvement strategy that emphasized the internal development of classroom and grade level or subject area “common” tests.  Such tests were to be aligned with state standards in NCLB’s designated subjects, initially mathematics and reading.  The logic behind this kind of school improvement seemed clear:  Tests identify what students should know or do, so instruction should be designed and delivered to ensure that students do well on those assessments.

Any outside individual or organization asked to help the district achieve that type of measured accountability had to guarantee progress in achieving AYP.  That usually meant improving the effectiveness of local techniques for gathering data and using them appropriately.   It also meant raising the ability of teachers to create classroom learning targets and helping students meet them on standards-aligned local tests.

Changes Caused by the Common Core, NGS, C3, and Other State Standards

Although not all states have adopted or kept the new, more nationally accepted State Standards, they influence the general discussion about school accountability in new and complex ways.  What emerges from those discussions are novel ideas of what schools should be like, most of which involve much more than what was included in the original NCLB era.  In a nutshell, here are four ways conditions are different and how CLI can meet the new challenges:

  • Teachers: The standards are now centered on the importance of students being prepared for college and careers, and that requires teachers to be more than instructional guides for helping students do well in specific and narrow learning outcomes.  Teachers must now create a scholastically deep and meaningful learning environment that includes theories, applications, and dynamic involvement with the subject.  That means both the preservice and ongoing preparation of teachers must be more comprehensive, intense, and involving.
  • Accreditation: Leaders in both education and business now realize the importance of a PK-12 district in developing, maintaining and implementing a well-articulated and sequentially coherent academic program.  No longer do key organizations that approve public school programs isolate their attention on individual buildings alone, or ignore the internal decision-making and action-taking dynamics required to make programs run smoothly.  The primary school accreditation association in the United States is AdvancED, which evaluates these internal processes at the district level and assists in identifying areas of strength and weakness as well as goal-setting to improve.  The CLI Model aligns almost perfectly with the AdvancED standards with the exception of tangential aspects such as budget priorities.
  • Assessment/Student Expectations: The media have been reporting on debates concerning what public school students should know or do, and a consensus is emerging that traditional fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice assessments are losing favor as a sole means for measuring student academic skills.  Assessment organizations such as ACT, PARCC, SBAC, and SAT have made it clear that students should also be able to score well on performance-based assessments that show college and career readiness, although there is some debate about the formatting and weight of these types of questions.
  • Scholastic Behaviors: It’s unclear how pervasive the less measurable aspects of school improvement can become, but such professional organizations as the National Education Association are capsulizing important student behaviors as they prepare to become productive and reflective college students, job holders, citizens and leaders.   The NEA refers to them as the “Four Cs,” which stand for critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.  These four behaviors are either inherent to or supportive of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains, which are also a significant part of the CLI Model.

School improvement isn’t easy; however, CLI advocates that all districts can empower themselves to meet the challenges through well-planned and implemented processes.  School improvement is always a top priority for every school district!

Reassessment Done Right

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The words Time to Evaluate on an ornate white clock, counting down to the moment a manager will perform an evaluation, review, assessment or reevaluation of a worker, property or process
Reteaching is not about punishment, it is about the end goal—learning.

download_pdf_smWhen thinking about mastery and student learning over time, it is almost impossible not to think about reassessment.  Philosophically, if you believe in allowing students to retake assessments, you may struggle with the application of this belief in actual classrooms.  The question is not whether students shall be allowed to reassess, but instead, how to reassess effectively.  So, when a student takes an initial assessment and performs below required proficiency, what happens next?  The following steps will guide the creation of your own reassessment procedures.

1.  Conference with the student.  Part of building relationships with students is communicating openly with them about expectations and learning.  As soon as you realize a student is not meeting proficiency, have a conversation and begin to make a plan.

2.  Set a timeline for reteaching and reassessment. During the conference, set up a schedule for reteaching to provide time and support for the student to demonstrate successful learning.  This must always occur before students are allowed to reassess.  If reteaching does not occur, how can a student be expected to perform at a higher level?  Also, schedule the reassessment.  Due to obvious time constraints, there must be a sense of urgency to complete the reassessment.  Some districts use a reassessment contract requiring student and/or parent signatures in order for students to retake assessments.

3.  Provide reteaching opportunities. Just like teachers, students are busy! They are taking many classes and may also be involved in activities outside of the normal school day.  It is important to provide varied opportunities for them to receive help within the reteaching timeframe.  Maybe the student needs to come in before or after school or during study hall, or maybe they can watch a video at home and complete alternate assignments to demonstrate their learning, or perhaps another teacher could provide additional instruction.  Remember, reteaching is not about punishment, it is about the end goal—learning.  It doesn’t have to be epic; in actuality, reteaching may only take a few minutes.

4.  Contact help when needed. Oftentimes, if a student is struggling on multiple assessments in one subject area, he or she will also be having trouble in other subjects.  A teacher won’t always know how a student is performing in other courses; however, counselors and parents should.  If a student continually struggles and is caught up in a reassessment cycle, it is imperative that the cycle is broken before the student gives up.  There could be a placement issue or a need for a special education referral.  Maybe the student is going through some emotional struggles due to something happening at home.  A sure sign of trouble is when a student is not meeting the timelines agreed upon within the reassessment conference.  If this is the case, reach out to the people who can help as soon as you can.

5.  Provide a reassessment that is different from the original assessment. It is always wise to have more than one version of an assessment.  If students know the reassessment is exactly the same as the original assessment, it is very easy for them not to prepare and to use the original assessment as a “practice” assessment.  Remember, it is important that you know what they know—not what they memorized after taking the first assessment.

6.  Decide whether the student needs to retake the entire assessment, or just a part. In many cases, summative assessments contain individual questions that require students to apply multiple skills or varied knowledge in order to answer them.  In these cases, students would more than likely need to retake the entire assessment.  However, an assessment may also contain very specialized questions related to one specific skill or piece of knowledge.  If students perform poorly on these types of questions, they may not need to take the entire assessment over again.  They could just retake the parts that relate to that skill or knowledge.  Particularly on project-based assessments, the student may need to improve only portions of their project—not redo the entire project.

7.  Decide how retakes will be scored.  Grading typically falls under district guidelines and policies.  It is important for all teachers to follow the same reassessment rules.  Will the most recent reassessment score replace the original?  Will the highest score be taken?  Follow district approved procedures for recording the appropriate score.