Blogger's Note: Earlier this week, I sent out this Tweet about the role that common assessments play in a professional learning community:
Without common assessments, everything else about the professional learning community model is just window dressing.#atplc
— Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) May 27, 2012
My buddy Matt Townsley -- an assessment junkie who works in a district level leadership role -- asked me yesterday if I'd ever written more about common assessments as a foundational element of learning communities.
His request reminded me of a bit that I wrote years ago for another blog about the impact that writing common assessments had on my original professional learning team. Figured y'all might dig it, so I'm sharing it here.
Hope it helps,
Bill
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Are you ready to be shocked?
Until I started to work on a collaborative team, I hadn't even really looked at the standards for the subjects that I was teaching.
Instead, I taught topics that I knew other teachers in my subject area were teaching – or that were listed in my set of classroom textbooks.
And I'm supposedly an "accomplished teacher?!"
That all changed when I began working in a school built on professional learning community concepts.
You see, one of the only requirements that our first principal had for our learning teams was that we had to develop common assessments that would be delivered in each of our classrooms.
He didn’t care how long they were. He didn’t care what kinds of questions we planned to ask. He didn’t care when we administered the assessments or how we planned to share results with parents and students.He just expected us to write our assessments together, to deliver them at ABOUT the same time, and to look at the results of the assessments in one of our regularly scheduled team meetings.
That simple requirement forced our team to have conversations with peers that we’d never had before.
We started by wrestling over just what content really WAS essential for students to master – standardizing the implemented curriculum across our hallway and pushing our team to look carefully at the state standards for our subjects in ways we'd never done before!
What we discovered was nothing short of embarrassing, y’all: The lessons we'd been teaching for years didn't directly fit the standards defined by our state.
Take our approach to introducing our sixth graders to Ancient Greece and Rome.
Knowing that dudes with lightening bolts and rivers of fire capture the imagination of 11-year olds in a way that few subjects can, we LOVED our Ancient Worlds unit enough to spend TEN WEEKS on it every year.
We made temples, ran mock debates, practiced Socratic seminars, and read myths day after day – after day after day after day and after day. Heck, I'm pretty sure that I even threw on a toga once or twice and I HATE togas.
Now, I’m sure that our kids ENJOYED our Greecefest – and I'm also sure that they learned tons of essential standards and skills both in language arts and social studies.
But after looking closely at our standards, we realized that were burning nearly 50 instructional days on the TWO history objectives in our social studies curriculum while simultaneously glossing over the FORTY-ONE geographical objectives – things like studying the impact that the movement of people has on cultures and the links between economic resources and quality of life – that our students were supposed to learn before the end of sixth grade.
Crazy, isn’t it?
Making careful choices about what to teach – which many people assume plays a primary role in every teacher's preparation or professional experiences – came only when our professional learning team began to develop common assessments together.
Common formative assessments also pushed our team into meaningful conversations about what mastery looked like – something that teachers never have to consider while working in traditional buildings where success is defined by the standards of individual practitioners rather than by an external set of expectations informed by multiple perspectives.
Today, conversations about what mastery looks like happen all the time on my learning team – and while they are challenging discussions that we don't always look forward to, they are incredibly important.
By coming up with common definitions of mastery, we are increasing our collective assessment capacity.
What’s more, carefully considering what excellence looks like through the lenses of collaborative peers has made all of the members of my learning team more reliable judges of student performance as individuals, too.
Now don't get me wrong: My learning team still struggles to develop assessments that we think are reliable measures of student performance.
The simple truth is that we have had little training in how to craft assessments that are tied to state standards AND appropriate for the skills that we are attempting to measure.
We know we're supposed to deconstruct standards, but we don't have the time in our day to learn how. We know that certain skills and behaviors are best measured by performance tasks, but we don't know which ones they are.
We know that there are certain processes for identifying trends and drawing conclusions from collected data, but we don't have the tools to sort through the mountains of data that our common assessments generate.
In many ways, we’re STILL an assessment nightmare!
But the process of developing common assessments has benefited our students immensely because the instruction that we're delivering today is directly connected to state standards.
What’s more, we continue to have regular conversations about what students should know and be able to do – and about how we will know when those skills have been mastered.
In the end, those conversations are the "value-added" product of teacher teams collaborating around common assessments.
_________________________
Related Radical Reads:
Writing Student Friendly Learning Goals
Just finished whipping up a new slide based on a Doug Reeves quote in Finding Your Leadership Focus:
Hope you can find a use for it somewhere in your work!
Bill
_____________________________
Related Radical Reads:
Real Progress Doesn't Happen in Leaps and Bounds [Slide]
How Clear is YOUR Vision [Slide]
Practitioners and the Poliwillies [Slide]
Original Image Credit: Lifeguard Hut at Santa Monica by Angus MacRae
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 29, 2012
As a science teacher, I've spent the better part of the past week pretty darn geeked about the launch of Space X's Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule -- as well as its subsequent docking with the International Space Station.
It's a historic week, marking the first time that a private company has launched a vehicle that has successfully docked with the ISS.
I imagine Elon Musk -- the billionaire entrepreneur behind Space X is JUST as geeked. After all, with their success, Space X has triggered a $1.6 BILLION dollar contract with NASA to shuttle supplies -- and eventually astronauts -- into space 12 more times in the next few years.
In many ways, American taxpayers should be pretty geeked too.
After all, by privatizing space travel, NASA is creating competition -- there are no fewer than 5 other companies working on vehicles that can replace the recently retired Space Shuttles -- and saving heaping mounds of cash.
Need proof?
Each Space Shuttle launch used to cost the American taxpayer $450 million dollars. Each of the next 12 Space X launches will cost the American taxpayer $133 million dollars.
#groupon
Need MORE proof?
Russia -- the only country with the ability to launch humans into space -- is currently charging America $60 million dollars PER ASTRONAUT for rides to the International Space Station. When Space X finalizes its own people-craft -- which should happen around the year 2015 -- they plan to charge America $20 million dollars per astronaut for rides to the ISS.
This should all be GREAT news, shouldn't it?
How could ANYONE find fault in a story about a public-private partnership that saves taxpayers a heaping cheese-ton of cold hard cabbage?
More importantly, given the success of the Space X program, how could ANYONE be opposed to our government pushing EVEN MORE public-private partnerships in order to save money? If public-private partnerships can save our space program, couldn't they also save our post offices, our police stations and our National Parks?
Couldn't public-private partnerships save our schools?
Wouldn't private companies find ways to do education cheaper if they had a paying audience -- and couldn't we create that paying audience by giving taxpayers vouchers that they could spend anywhere that they wanted?
The answer is a resounding hell no and here's why: Just like Elon Musk and Space X targeted their efforts towards supporting the space program of one of the richest countries on earth, voucher-inspired corporate "educators" would likely target their efforts towards serving the richest parents and communities.
They'll set tuition at $2,000 -$3,000 beyond whatever local vouchers are providing -- which is an easy reach for middle and upper class parents looking for a private school education but an impossible dream for poor families living from pay check to pay check.
Intentionally pricing out the poorest students means, for the most part, avoiding many of the expensive challenges that come along with fighting against the crippling effects of poverty.
And for the savvy businessmen behind voucher-driven schools, avoiding the effects of poverty is a bottom-line issue. When the students you serve come from stable families who have the means to provide enrichment and support beyond school, you are less likely to need subsidized lunch programs, social workers and extensive slates of expensive remedial classes.
What's more, intentionally targeting the richest communities creates a greater growth trajectory for a business-driven school. Selling extras like piano lessons, tutoring programs or spring break trips to Europe is a whole lot easier when your building serves middle and upper class kids.
Billionaire entreprenuers aren't stupid, y'all. They recognize a money-making opportunity when they see it -- and just like Musk spent little time supporting the space programs of poor countries, corporate education reformers will spend little time supporting schools in our poorest communities.
#notworthit
That means if we believe that successfully educating EVERY child is a public interest worth pursuing, vouchers are a crappy alternative for education simply because they create little real incentive for businesses to work in the poorest communities.
Any of this make sense?
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Related Radical Reads:
For the past few months, I've been reading a book called The Method Method, which details the innovative strategies used to grow the Method line of home care products. It's a great read and I'm finding lots of interesting applications to my own work as a change agent.
One of the points that the fellas make time and again is that swinging for the fences when trying out new ideas is rarely successful. Instead, successful change is incremental. It relies on taking small steps and revising as you go.
I picked up a great metaphor in the text today -- that creating winning products is a lot like hitting home runs 50 feet at a time.
Planning on using that notion in some work that I'm doing at school, so I whipped up a slide:
Download Slide_HittingHomeRuns
Hope you dig it.
Bill
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Related Radical Reads:
Our Compulsive Obsession with the Impossible Sexy
What the Principals of PLCs can Learn from Hand Washing
Sustainable Change in Schools [Slide]
Original Image Credit: Baseball by Paco Mexico
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 22, 2012
Hitting Home Runs Concept from The Method Method
Over the course of the past week, I've been wrestling with one simple question: Are the grading practices in our schools too far gone to be fixed?
My thinking started when Dean Shareski challenged me to make self-assessment a larger part of the work that I do in my classroom. It was pushed further by a candid confession from one of my students that her determination to "do well" distracts her from actually learning anything.
The intellectual challenge continued for me when I stumbled across this remarkable Cale Birk piece which argues that schools need to be places where students are inspired to try instead of where students spend their time cowering in fear of failure.
Cale writes:
Call me Polyanna, but I want students to try the things they would not normally try. To do things that they would normally not think that they could do.
And the only way to get them to do those things is to build the belief that they CAN do it, to help them scaffold the task so they have the appropriate level of challenge, and to build their resiliency skills so when they are confronted with the inevitable challenges that will come they choose to persevere.
In short, I want them to approach their courses at school as though they cannot fail as opposed to thinking they might fail and that failure is good for them.
What Cale is hinting at is that we need to create buildings that take a mastery -- instead of performance -- orientation to learning outcomes, an idea that the Mindshift blog tackled this week.
The difference between mastery and performance orientiations to learning, according to Mindshift, is the difference between the kind of learning that kids do in summer camps and the kind of learning that they do in today's high-stakes classrooms.In summer camps, students learn for the sake of learning. Every day is a new adventure -- an opportunity to explore and to think and to experiment and to tinker without ever having to worry about whether or not YOUR tinkering is the RIGHT tinkering.
#mastery
In too many of today's high-stakes classrooms, students learn because they are afraid of the consequences of not making an A. They've been told for too long by too many important people in their lives that grades -- on report cards, on standardized tests, on college entrance exams -- matter more than exploring and experimenting.
#performance
#tinkeronyourowntime
The consequences of creating learning environments that emphasize performance over mastery couldn't be more clear according to this research report cited in the Mindshift bit. Performance-driven cultures lead to higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of determination in the face of difficult circumstances.
In other words, when the going gets tough in performance-driven environments, students stop moving forward because they know that if they get "the wrong answer" (read: the answer the teacher is expecting), their average is screwed.
Better to ask a thousand questions than to take an intellectual risk. Risks aren't worth taking when the stakes are so stinking high.
#crippledthinkers
On the other hand, learning environments that emphasize mastery INSTEAD of performance encourage kids to be intellectually innovative. Ideas matter more than scores -- and when ideas matter more than scores, engagement levels and motivation rise.
#alwayswonder
In the words of Rick Stiggins, hitting targets isn't half as important as being willing to continue shooting in mastery-driven learning environments.
If this is all true -- and it certainly resonates with everything that I know about teaching and learning after 18 years in the classroom and after 3 years of being a dad -- then WHY are we still pushing for #edpolicies and #edpractices that put so much emphasis on performance over mastery?
And more importantly, what steps do we need to start taking -- both as a profession and as communities who care about getting education right -- to make mastery a more important part of the work that we do with our students?
Good questions, huh?
Wish I had some meaningful answers.
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Related Radical Reads:
What if Schools Created a Culture of Do INSTEAD of a Culture of Know?
Just Another Race to Know-Where?
Teaching Innovation with the Curiosity Box
Original Image Credit: Aiming for the Gold by Joe Hagan
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 19, 2012
If you've been following the Radical at all, you know that Dean Shareski has gotten me thinking about the role that self-assessment should play in my classroom.
After having my students work through a few opportunities to assess their own learning, I asked them to assess self-assessment as an instructional practice.
Specifically, I told them I was interested in (1). their perspective on the fact that self-assessments aren't graded and (2). their perspective on having the chance to reflect on their own learning.
One of my favorite responses came from Anna Beth, who wrote:
Self assessment really helped me to find what my written work was missing. The questions you asked got me to realize that my work was not as good as I thought it was.
After looking at my work carefully, I came to the conclusion that my thoughts were not explained clearly enough for someone else to be interested in my work.
I find that I do better on most assignments that aren't graded versus knowing that they will be graded. I think that this is because the pressure of a grade is taken away. Therefore, I am assured that if I don't do well, my grade won't be effected.
When that pressure is taken away, I focus better on what I'm doing and I tend to do better. This is where my Ravenclaw side is shown because I want to do well, but I can be so focused on wanting to do well that I can get distracted from actually learning.
That's an interesting take, isn't it? I especially liked the last line: I can be so focused on wanting to do well that I can get distracted from actually learning.
I wonder if that holds true for other students too? Have we gotten to a point in our high stakes world that grades have replaced learning completely?
Is that something we can fix or is grading too far gone to actually fix?
If you've read the Radical for any length of time, you know that my thinking is often pushed by Dean Shareski -- a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
What I love about Dean's posts is that they're a perfect mix of practical and provocative ideas. He's just as likely to challenge my instruction as he is to challenge my thinking -- and that's cool.
A few weeks ago, Dean wrote about the role that self-assessment plays in the university classes that he teaches.
His central premise was one that struck home: Traditional grading practices centered around teachers collecting student papers and giving letter grades with little real feedback -- the kind of practices that are uncomfortably common in my classroom -- are failing our students.
Near the end, he issued a challenge:
"So I'm wondering if you're ready to let your students assess themselves. Not as some experiment where you end up grading them apart but where you really give the reigns over to them? If not, is it about trust? Is it about readiness? Fear?
I'm thinking that even 6 year olds should be able to assess themselves. If we give them the tools and expectations."
I decided to take Dean's challenge to heart this week, giving my students the chance to assess themselves on two assignments that were due.
"There won't be ANY grade attached to these tasks," I explained. "Instead, you are going to evaluate yourselves. Then, you will get feedback from me on the first assignment and a peer on the second assignment."
I gave students handouts designed to guide their thinking as they evaluated their own performance. Both of the handouts included a series of structured questions that forced kids to look closely at the kind of criteria that define accomplished performance.
Check them out here:
Download Handout_MetaphoricalSelfAssessment
Download Handout_OWISelfAssessment
Then I turned the kids loose. I gave them about 7 minutes to fill out each column on the self-assessment handouts we were working with. Combined with a bit of introduction to each of the questions, self-assessing each task took about 40-45 minutes worth of class time.
I learned a TON about student self-assessment during my experiment. Here are a few of my favorite lessons:
The VAST majority of my kids reported NEVER taking the time to systematically assess their own work in ANY subject or ANY grade level before our classroom experiment.
I asked my kids when we started our self-assessments how often they spent time evaluating the quality of their work before they turned it in. Most reported that they NEVER self-assessed simply because they (1). didn't have time for self-assessment, (2). didn't really think that self-assessment was important or (3). weren't really sure what "self-assessment" looked like in action.
That was a shocker to me because I just assumed that EVERY kid carefully looked at their work before turning it in. After all, that's the kind of thing that accomplished learners do naturally, right?
Here's the thing: Our kids AREN'T accomplished learners yet. We need to teach them how to evaluate the quality of their own work in the same way that we need to teach them how to complete equations or write solid paragraphs.
#lessonlearned
The VAST majority of my kids gave themselves accurate feedback when assessing their own work.
In my skeptical moments over the past week, I assumed that my kids weren't going to have the skills to rate their own work reliably. After all, what do THEY know about quality work, right? They're ONLY 12 -- and I have a degree.
In my REALLY skeptical moments over the past week, I assumed that my kids wouldn't even be HONEST with themselves when they were assessing their own work. After all, would YOU tell the truth about crappy work if YOU were 12?
The good news is that my kids proved me wrong. Not only were they honest when assessing their own work, the feedback that they gave to themselves -- the strengths and weaknesses that they identified and the suggestions for improvement that they offered -- was AT LEAST as good as the feedback that I would have offered.
That probably means that I really CAN trust them to be evaluators of their own work -- which MIGHT mean that I can spend less time killing myself to give them formal feedback on every task that I assign.
#lessonlearned
The VAST majority of my kids enjoyed giving and receiving feedback from their peers MORE than receiving feedback from me.
The difference between our first and second attempts at self-assessment was simple: After the first task, I collected student self-assessments and gave each student individual feedback myself. After the second task, students partnered with a peer and gave one another feedback.
When I asked my kids which approach they liked the best, they almost unanimously chose receiving feedback from their peers -- and their reasoning was sound: They got MORE feedback from their peers AND they got that feedback immediately.
"You only wrote me two sentences, Mr. F" one of my favorite boys told me, "and it took you a WEEK to give me my paper back. That's not very helpful!"
And he's right: It DID take me over a week to get feedback to my students -- and even after spending 8 hours of planning time on that task alone, I was only able to give each kid 2 or 3 sentences of feedback. That's what happens when you have 120 kids on your student load.
While relying on peer evaluation still seems sketchy to me -- after all, the quality of feedback that a student receives is completely dependent on the quality of the peer that they are working with -- I'm more confident than ever after seeing the kinds of feedback that students gave themselves that peer feedback can play at least SOME role in our classroom.
#lessonlearned
The VAST majority of my kids wanted to give themselves a number rating anyway.
One of the most interesting trends that I saw in the feedback that my students gave themselves was that they were CONSTANTLY slipping numbers into their self-assessment. Statements like, "I would rate my work a 3 out of 5," or "I would give myself an 80 for this" were sprinkled everywhere.
What's more, when we talked as a class about what my kids liked and disliked about self-assessment, more than a few students mentioned that the thing they liked the least was NOT having a final number to refer to. "I just want to know what I would have earned," they'd say.
#oldhabits
#hardtobreak
#lessonlearned
For the amount of time that I spent on this activity, it was hard NOT to put something in the gradebook.
The fact of the matter is that no matter how much I believe in self-assessment, I STILL have to generate a numerical average for the kids in my class.
As a result, it's REALLY hard to spend the amount of time that I spent on this activity -- 2 days of class time and about 8 hours of planning time responding to student feedback -- WITHOUT adding something to my gradebook.
#oldhabits
#hardtobreak
#lessonlearned
In the end, I was jazzed with our self-assessment experiment -- and I'm sure that kind of work will continue to play a role in my classroom.
My students loved the fact that they could be honest with themselves about the quality of their work because they didn't need to worry about a grade. That carries value in and of itself for a guy who is sick of scores being more important than learning something new.
And I loved the fact that my students were the ones sweating the assessment. Formative assessment expert Dylan William argues time and again in his work that kids should be working harder than teachers in the assessment process.
That definitely happened in my room this week. My kids were genuinely engaged in evaluating their own performance against a set of clearly defined criteria -- and that's cool.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? Suggestions?
Looking forward to hearing what you think.
Whipped this up for a presentation this week. Thought y'all might dig it:
(click to enlarge)
The quote comes from David Allen's book Getting Things Done.
Hope it helps,
Bill
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Original Image Credit: Through the Glass by Josh Samson
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 7, 2012
Shawn Blankenship -- a building principal buddy of mine who goes by @dms_principal on Twitter -- reached out this week with a really interesting question about professional learning communities.
He wrote:
I would love to hear any advice, successes, and/or failures you have experienced regarding the building of a strong professional learning community.
Turns out that Shawn is starting a brand new middle school next year and he really wants to build a solid foundation for his new collaborative community.
Having started a brand new middle school as a professional learning community myself almost a decade ago, I've got some pretty strong opinions about the kinds of first steps that are worth taking. Heck, I wrote a book about it!
The most important suggestion, though, is to take the time to write -- and then commit to -- clear sets of vision and values statements that describe what your learning teams would actually be DOING if they were meeting your core mission.
In Learning by Doing, Rick DuFour -- perhaps the foremost expert on PLC implementation -- and his co-authors define vision and values statements like this:
A vision is a realistic, credible, attractive future for an organization. Vision answers the question, What do we hope to become at some point in the future?
Collective commitments (or values) represent the promises made among and between all stakeholders that answer the question, What must we do to become the organization we have agreed we hope to become?
Even though my school worked through a powerful process to write a shared mission statement, we never articulated our vision and values when setting up our PLC -- and the results were disastrous.
You see, our mission statement -- like most school mission statements -- includes relatively vague terms and phrases. It states that our school:
Individually, those kinds of statements are things that most teachers can agree to. They are also the kinds of statements that really do define the core beliefs of professional learning communities.
The problem, though, is that there is a TON of room for individual interpretation in those statements -- and that interpretation can cause teachers and teams to THINK they are walking in a shared direction when in reality, there is little consensus around the kinds of actions and behaviors that a faculty believes in.
Here are some examples:
The team that meets once a month to plan shared field trips AND the team that meets every week to look at student learning results -- two very different purposes for meetings -- can both argue that they are "a collaborative community."
The team that gives zeros for every missing assignment AND the team that allows students to rework everything for full credit -- two very different grading policies -- can both argue that they are "ensuring high student achievement."
The team that develops one student choice activity during the course of the school year AND the team that uses pretests to determine the lessons that individual students will be exposed to during the course of every unit -- two very different approaches to planning instruction -- can both argue that they are "valuing the unique needs of every learner."
Vision and values statements force schools to provide clarity and definition to the vague statements spelled out in their shared mission -- and that clarity and definition is remarkably important for pushing schools forward together.
They can be hard to write simply because they force teachers and schools to wrestle with issues that we've comfortably avoided talking about for years, but once they are written, they give EVERY team a set of specific steps that they should be taking at some point in their collective development.
Over the past few weeks, our school has started to craft a set of vision and values statements -- which we are calling collective commitments and action steps -- to define the behaviors that we hope every team will master in the next 3-5 years.
You can check them out here:
Download Handout_CollectiveCommitments
The first document defines our vision statements -- the ideal future that we are working towards together -- which are drawn directly from Learning by Doing . The second outlines a set of specific tasks that teams would take if they were meeting our vision. The remaining documents are planning tools that teams will use to guide their work.
What I like the best about all of this work are the action steps that we've developed for teams. They are tangible -- which will help struggling teams to understand exactly what they're supposed to be working on -- but there is room for experimentation that accomplished teams will appreciate.
While these steps will essentially define the core behaviors of collaborative teams in our building, teams may come up with different solutions to the same core behaviors. What's more, teams will have the flexibility to choose the specific core behaviors that they are ready to work on in a given year.
That's what DuFour likes to call "loose-tight leadership," y'all. Our action steps provide just enough definition to ensure that our teams are moving in the same direction and just enough flexibility to allow teams to innovate and experiment with new solutions.
Once our faculty signs off on our vision and values statements -- something that will happen only after teams look at the statements individually and the whole faculty has the opportunity to suggest revisions, additions and deletions -- they will become THE most important documents in our school.
They will be used by teams to plan their upcoming collaborative work. They will be used by administrators to plan professional development days. They will be used by our hiring committee to find candidates best suited for adding to our building. They will inform our purchasing decisions.
Does this make sense?
Essentially, my suggestion to Shawn -- and to any principal who wants to get their PLCs off on the right foot -- is to collectively define the kinds of things that teams and teachers would be doing in the next 3-5 years if they REALLY believed in your building's core mission.
Doing so will help to ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction -- and moving in the same direction can be incredibly difficult in a profession where closing classroom doors has always been the preferred method for coming to consensus.
_____________________________________
Related Radical Reads:
The Vision-less Learning Community
The Importance of a Clear Vision
I was feeling a bit creative today, so I decided to whip up a slide designed to challenge the notion that organizations can make huge strides in short periods of time:
(click to enlarge)
Hope it makes you think about the change efforts underway in your own buildings -- and that you can use it somewhere in your work.
_____________________
Related Radical Reads:
Our Compulsive Obsession with the Impossible Sexy
Evolutionary Lessons for the Principals of PLCs
Original Image Credit: Bodies in Motion by Paul Stevenson
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on May 1, 2012