MeTA musings

After seven years and over 200 posts, this blog has moved to a new site as of August 29, 2015.

An article recently published in Washington ASCD's eJournal, Curriculum in Context, was an attempt in summarizing my district's professional learning journey during the past several years.

A special thanks goes out to the teachers and administrators on our district leadership team who have spearheaded and refined this vision.  I recall at least three times in which this team overhauled my draft professional learning agenda.  I count it a true blessing to work alongside a team with such a high level of trust.

We are doing some work with teachers on writing across the curriculum and I am with a group that includes a couple of CTE (career and technical education) teachers.  Conversation has gone to a discussion on projects that include a writing component, but has now focused on 21st Century Skills related to Iowa Core as another component of the project.   

Here is the question:  Collaboration is an important skill, and a 21st century skill.  With our philosophy of not grading behavior, and since collaboration is a behavior, under that presumption it would not be part of the grade.  However, it is a 21st century skill and if collaboration is an integral part of a project -- or series of projects -- couldn't it be a component of the grade?  Has the student learned how to collaborate?

Hey _____,
Good to hear from you.  As a general rule, we ask our teachers to think about the instruction and feedback provided to students when considering what goes into the grade book.  For example, your accounting teacher will likely know the exact days in which he/she taught, provided feedback, reviewed and assessed payroll withholdings.  This same teacher could quickly tell you when he/she taught, provided feedback, reviewed and assessed the ideas of sole proprietorships, corporations and partnerships.  The accounting teacher would also likely have a rubric for these big ideas to determine what a full and partial understanding of these standards looks like.   

Could he/she point to the time in which students were taught (for example) collaboration, provided feedback on their ability to collaborate and then assessed it?  Does he/she have a rubric in place for this 21st century skill?   In other words, if it's going to be reported and included in the final grade, it makes sense to formally teach and assess it like any content standard.  

Does any of this make sense?

Standards-based grading connects student grades to specific learning objectives, provides students with direct and specific information to guide their study, and often involves less grading time for the instructor than traditional methods do.

Five years ago, I made the transition from classroom teacher to district administrator.  Last year, I shared a four year reflection and it only seemed appropriate to share another annual reflection.

First, a summary of the action items I aspired to work towards last year around this time:

In no particular order...

Continue attending the quarterly area curriculum director meetings (Develop existing relationships and strengthen new ones)
I attended all four meetings this year in our area.  During the first meeting, a fellow curriculum director had a familiar facial expression...one that I knew very well: a desire to change the world in one year, but not knowing exactly how to maneuver the paperwork and wade through the acronyms well enough in order to stay ahead.  I invited this person to spend a few hours away from the office a few weeks later to share templates, ideas, success and struggles, and those other types of conversations about curriculum and assessment that curriculum directors get excited about!  A new professional relationship was gained and others were strengthened through these meetings.  My only regret is not following up with this rookie colleague more often to see how things are going on at her schools.

Seek out a leadership role in the area special education director meetings (Deeper learning in this area.  Consider finding an informal mentor)
I failed in finding an informal mentor, however I successfully co-facilitated an area special education director meeting this spring.  My co-facilitator and I have plans to continue these meetings next school year.  Dates are on the calendar!

Spend several hours observing and reflecting with district administrators in a similar role around Iowa.  (Establish a more formal learning community, face-to-face or virtual)
Major failure.  We have a Google+ Community setup around teacher leadership, but it didn't happen.  I appreciated the opportunities to network with district administrators around the state at the Iowa ASCD Curriculum Leadership Academy in April, however this was a one time event rather than an ongoing occurrence.  I plan to volunteer at the Iowa ASCD Summer Conference at the new curriculum directors' breakfast in order to meet fellow directors from around the state.

Pursue central office academic literature describing validated practices of central office administrators. 
Winner!  The longer I work in this role, the more I am realizing I need to pour into principals so that they can pour into their teaching staff. As I think about the Iowa educational context, I see others around me in a similar role: central office administrators in school districts with 1100 to 2500 students who may or may not have been principals themselves, trying their best to support principals' instructional leadership in a non-evaluative way. Through an early educational database search, I have read over twenty-five studies.  The urban central office administrators described in these studies typically play a dual role: supporting and evaluating site administrators. I have a hunch a gap may exist in the literature capturing the perspectives of folks like me: smaller district office administrators supporting principals' instructional leadership in a non-evaluative context.  It may turn into a dissertation topic!  Even if it doesn't, this academic literature exploration has been beneficial for me thus far.

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Finally, I wanted publicly state how much I am excited for the upcoming school year.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses and I'm grateful the administrative team has allowed me to grow during the past five years.  Our superintendent is moving to a larger organization and I'm excited to learn under a new leader.  I'm also jacked to work alongside our district's first instructional coach cadre.  I've often felt my reach in the central office is limited in some areas.  I believe the teachers a committee has selected for this cadre are all well qualified and eager to learn.  I anticipate they'll push my often cautious outlook on systems change and I believe I'll look back one year from now and realize how little I really knew about instructional leadership.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I am thankful for a virtual friend of mine, Bill Ferriter, whose writing continually pushes me and most recently reminded me that blogging really does matter.  #whyblog

Nearly one year ago, I started a third graduate program.  During the past twelve months, I've completed eighteen (18) hours of coursework, a combination of research methodology at core doctoral classes.

A while back, I started a personal log of every standards-based grading article I read.  It has turned into a publicly available document growing each month as new articles and dissertations are discovered and published.

It feels like it could be a nice gift for any graduate students currently starting a literature review on standards-based grading.

Enjoy!


Static link: www.tinyurl.com/sbgliterature

Pi does deserve a celebration, but for reasons that are rarely mentioned. In high school, we all learned that pi is about circles. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference (the distance around the circle, represented by the letter C) to its diameter (the distance across the circle at its widest point, represented by the letter d). That ratio, which is about 3.14, also appears in the formula for the area inside the circle, A = πr2, where π is the Greek letter “pi” and r is the circle’s radius (the distance from center to rim). We memorized these and similar formulas for the S.A.T.s and then never again used them, unless we happened to go into a technical field, or until our own kids took geometry. (Emphasis mine)

NOTE: This content has been updated and is available here.

In my experience and observation, teachers and systems have used one of three systems when converting standards to letter grades in a standards-based grading environment.


In the video above, I suggested each standards to letter grades conversion method has its own limitations, however they also bring with them specific strengths.

Strengths and limitations when considering the Marzano Method

• Some student information systems or grade books may not allow teachers to average standard scores and in turn the teacher would need to do this calculation and override the final grade.
• One limitation of this method is that a student can have a poor understanding of a concept (standard), however it does not dramatically affect the overall letter grade and in turn a grades-driven student may not be driven to continue learning the concept.
• Although a broad scale was illustrated in the video (3.00 - 4.00), it could easily be further broken down to include plus and minus letter grades (i.e. 3.00 - 3.25 = A-).  The conversion scale parallels many schools' grade point average scale.  For some buildings/districts, this may be helpful in communication with parents while in others in may create additional confusion.

Experience it yourself:

1. Invite four teachers in a room to score 20 essays, math problems or lab reports using a 10 point scale. 
2. Look at the diversity of scores among the 20 essays, math problems or lab reports. 
3. Now, ask the same four teachers to score the same 20 student work samples using a *4-point scale.
4. Once again, examine the diversity of scores among the 20 essays, math problems or lab reports. 

Myth: High schools must adapt to the way higher education operates.

Reality: When high schools change the information they're willing to provide about their graduates, higher education will eventually adapt.

Case in point:

Applicants to University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa who graduate from high schools that do track class rank will continue to be assessed under the original formula. Only those students without class rank will assessed using the new model.
But that number is growing. About 31.6 percent of freshmen across the three regent schools in fall 2013 didn’t have a class rank.
The board charged its staff to create a standard alternate admission calculation for those without class rank because each university has developed a different approach for assessing those applicants

Eric and I have embarked upon a new project: a 12 episode video series communicating the most pressing standards-based grading topics we've encountered during our experiences as teachers and administrators.

The first episode (embedded below) describes standards-based grading and provides an overview of the series.


In the second episode, we do our best to flesh out the similarities and differences between competency-based education and standards-based grading.  We will be posting the rest of the videos as soon as they're recorded!

A big thanks goes out to Iowa ASCD for publicizing this video series.

Prior to the beginning of the school year, I publicly reflected on my past four years as a district administrator.  In addition, I established several goals for the 2014-15 academic year.  In no particular order, they were...

• Continue attending the quarterly area curriculum director meetings (Develop existing relationships and strengthen new ones)
• Seek out a leadership role in the area special education director meetings (Deeper learning in this area.  Consider finding an informal mentor)
• Spend several hours observing and reflecting with district administrators in a similar role around Iowa.  (Establish a more formal learning community, face-to-face or virtual)
• Pursue central office academic literature describing validated practices of central office administrators.

Members of the Iowa Department of Education’s Assessment Task Force have recommended that Iowa lawmakers adopt the Smarter Balanced Assessments as Iowa’s new state test for public and accredited nonpublic schools starting with the 2016-17 school year.  Iowa students are currently required to complete Iowa Assessments in grades 3-8 and 11 in math and reading to meet state and federal accountability laws. The Iowa Assessments (formerly Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and Iowa Tests of Educational Development) are developed by Iowa Testing Programs at the University of Iowa and used for various purposes in other states as well.

Why do we need new assessments?
"The Iowa Department of Education released a report in October 2013 that was commissioned in March 2013 to align the Iowa Assessments, Form E, to the Iowa Core/Common Core State Standards in Reading and Mathematics. The study compared Form E to a set of standards that were not used to develop Form E." (Source: Iowa Testing Programs)  Yes, you read that right: Our current state standards were not used to develop our current state accountability assessment!  The Iowa Department of Education commissioned a study to "determine the level of alignment between our Iowa Core standards and the reading and math portions of the Iowa Assessments in grades 3-8, 10 and 11."  The nearly two hundred page report released in October 2013 suggests it varies greatly by grade level ranging from under 50% to 100%.  To be fair, Iowa Testing Programs' response questions the study's methodology while acknowledging Form E was not designed to assess our current state standards.  In summary, Iowa school districts are currently in a predicament: we are required to teach state standards while being held accountable via assessments that were not designed to accurately measure the required standards.  

What are the Smarter Balanced Assessments? 
The Smarter Balanced Assessment system, initially designed to align with the Common Core ELA and math standards in grades 3-8 and 11—"includes both summative assessments for accountability purposes and optional interim assessments for instructional use—will use computer adaptive testing technologies to the greatest extent possible to provide meaningful feedback and actionable data that teachers and other educators can use to help students succeed." Smarter Balanced is one of two national assessments being developed to assess students on the common core. (The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is the competing assessment group some states have voluntarily joined.)  In addition to selected response (multiple choice) items, students will complete technology-enhanced items, constructed response items (non-multiple choice), and performance tasks.  Sample Smarter Balanced items and performance tasks are available online and the first operational testing in other states will begin in Spring 2015.

Nostalgia and economic impact: my first reaction
When I first read about the task force's recommendation I was a bit surprised.  I remember taking the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills as a third grade student at South Elementary.  We had to put prop special folders up on our desk to ensure classmates in our pod would not be able to see our answers.  We were required to use #2 pencils and to do our best filling in the bubbles as neatly as possible.  In a way, the Iowa Tests are as much a part of our state as attending the Iowa State Fair or picking up sweet corn in August along the road from a local farmer.   The Iowa Assessments are written by Iowans and administered to Iowa students annually.  Without a doubt, losing this contract would be a negative blow to Iowa Testing Programs at the University of Iowa and an economic hit to Iowa's Creative Corridor.  Like the Iowa Assessments or not, it may be hard for some Iowa educators to imagine administering an assessment that does not include the infamous introduction,

"You are now going to take a vocabulary test. Please find the section for Vocabulary on
page 3 of your answer document. (Pause). Now turn to page 1 in your test booklet. Please read the directions for this test silently while I read them aloud."

• What assessments will students in grades 5, 8 and 11 complete in order to meet Iowa's statewide science assessment requirement? (Will we continue with the Iowa Assessments?  What about social studies, even though it is not required?)
• How will student "growth" be measured using the Iowa Assessments (past) and Smarter Balanced Assessments (future)?  We will be transitioning from "Not Proficient, Proficient and Highly Proficient" to Smarter Balanced Assessments' four achievement levels. (H/T Karen W.)
• Because the Smarter Balanced Assessments will all be eventually be administered online, what type of technology infrastructure (number of devices, bandwidth, etc.) will be needed?
• Will adequate funding be appropriated to school districts to purchase the Smarter Balanced Assessments?  The full suite of summative and interim assessments and the Digital Library on formative assessment is estimated to cost $27.30 per student.  This is compared to less than $10.00 per Iowa student for the Iowa Assessments.
• Because the Smarter Balanced Assessments must be administered during a twelve week window at the end of the school year, how will this impact schools who are used to administering the Iowa Assessments during the fall or midyear?
• How will schools realistically plan test schedules when the assessment is untimed? (Source pdf)
• Given the Smarter Balanced Assessments only measure the Common Core Standards and Iowa has added several additional standards to create the Iowa Core Essential Concepts and Skills, would this transition de-value our state's added standards? 
• How might any changes recommended by state standards task forces during the next several years align (or not) with the required state assessments? 

I subscribe to the Iowa Department of Education's YouTube channel and after listening to the November 2014 edition, I am thankful to have watched this episode.

Under Governor Branstand's Executive Order 83, Iowa will begin this fall regularly reviewing its state K-12 standards:

The review of science standards will be followed by reviews of the other parts of Iowa’s statewide standards, which cover social studies, mathematics, English language arts and 21st century skills. Each review will follow a similar format.

• What impact might this science review have on Iowa's adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards?
  
• One of the selling points to Iowa educators after adopting state standards for the first time in 2008 (and later modifying math and ELA in 2010 to align with the Common Core) was that districts would be spending less time chasing standards documents and more time focusing on quality instruction.  If any of the content standards significantly change in the near future, school leaders around the state can expect to hear an outcry from classroom teachers...and rightly so, in my opinion.  How much will the standards change, if at all?
  
• Will this be an opportunity for our state's science, social studies and 21st century skills to move towards grade-level rather than grade-span standards?
  
• How might this review process (positively or negatively) influence the movement to create state fine arts standards? 

• What will the review process look like and what type of timeline will there be for each content area? (This question will likely be answered in the near future)
  
• How might this process influence the state's assessment task force charged in 2013 to "study the state’s assessment needs and to recommend a new state assessment for public and accredited nonpublic schools"? 
  
• ...and a likely political hot topic: How might this review process impact Iowa's current involvement with the Common Core State Standards?  Presumably, any significant changes to the Iowa's math and/or English Language Arts standards that come out of the review process would require Iowa to change its status as a Common Core state.  Why?  "To allow for some state-level customization, a provision in the voluntary adoption guidelines allows states to supplement the common core standards with state-specific standards, up to an additional 15 percent," however removing standards is not allows. (Source)

If you're active in social media, you've likely seen something along the lines of...

"Fluently add and subtract within 1000 using strategies and algorithms based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction." (Source) 

In my work with our district and in consulting with several others over the years on the topics of professional learning communities and standards-based grading/reporting, the topic of aligning standards horizontally and vertically frequently comes up.  Before I share a sample process of this alignment work, I thought it might be helpful to answer two frequently asked questions:

Who should be involved in writing, creating, revising the standards we will report to students and parents?
My first response is almost always, "teachers!"  Teachers are the professionals closest to this work and I believe they should play a large role in this decision-making process.  While the district office can provide protocols and templates, we're not teaching these skills and concepts, so it doesn't make sense for us to mandate an arbitrary list without significant teacher input.

Wouldn't it be easier if we copied another district's report card or list of standards?
Sure, it might be easier in the short term.  When the standards are written in a way that doesn't make sense to those teaching them, it becomes easy to throw the standards under the bus.  When the reporting standards need revision and they were written locally, a solution becomes obvious: we can revise them!  It is also important to note that in all of the schools I have worked with, teachers report the most benefit from doing this work.  They learn more about the intent of the state/national standards.  Teachers dig deeper into the wording of the standards and pay closer attention to what a thorough understanding might look like as a result of the cognitive dissonance this process can create.

Now that we hopefully agree teachers should play a prominent role in drafting reporting standards, it only makes sense to share with you a process that seems to be gaining some traction.  It is far from perfect, but I hope it assists at least one person.  (If you find this literacy example beneficial, I'd love to hear from you in the comments).

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1. LOOK AT STATE STANDARDS

• Iowa Core Literacy Standards

2. IDENTIFY "NEED TO KNOW' STANDARDS

A possible protocol that can be used to discern the "need to know" power standards that will appear on the report card.  

i) For each standard, individually complete the following template

ii) Reach consensus on the Yes and No's through horizontal (i.e. all of the 2nd grade teachers) discussion.

iii) If a standard has 3-4 "Yes," it should strongly be considered in the "Need to Know" (Power Standard) category to be included on the report card.

iv) Depending on the number of 4s and perhaps 3s, the team will need to determine a reasonable number of standards that can be assessed and reporting in each reporting period.

v) After horizontal agreement, meet with at least one grade level above (i.e. second grade teachers meet with third grade teachers) and at least one grade level below (i.e. fourth grade teachers meet with third grade teachers) to reach vertical consensus on the list of "need to know" power standards proposed for the report card.

[IF NEEDED, RE-WRITE THESE STANDARDS INTO PARENT/STUDENT-FRIENDLY LANGUAGE]

• Example 6th grade reading parent/student-friendly language (from Waukee Middle School, Iowa)

3. IDENTIFY ASSESSMENTS THAT MATCH THE STANDARDS

• Look at the assessments you are already giving to students.  
• Match up prompts/questions that elicit students' understanding.

Sample rubric below (used with permission from Lori Davidson, Center Point - Urbana teacher)

You may find out your assessments are not as well aligned to the standards as you'd like.  This is an opportunity to revise assessments and/or create new ones that better align to the "need to know" standards. 

4. (TRY IT OUT!) GIVE STUDENTS SCORES BASED ON STANDARDS FOR ONE UNIT 

• Administer and score at least one of the assessments you identified in Step #3 to discern the coarse or fine grain-ness of the standards (see note below).

By completing the steps above, each horizontal team of teachers will begin to figure out the appropriate number of "need to know" standards for each reporting period.  When it is challenging to score the assessments based on the standards, the standards may be too vague.  When it becomes challenging to keep up with scoring and reassessments (or if it is challenging to write reassessments), the standards may be too specific.  Finally, the number of "need to know" standards must be viable enough for the majority of students to learn them in a given year.  It is more important for students to learn...than it is to merely cover the content!

A teacher from a local school district (perhaps in response to a local TV station's news story) emailed me with the following inquiry last week:

Matt,

I had a teacher make the following argument against SBG and I would like your thoughts so I can be as prepared as possible...

They said that some of the more prestigious schools of higher learning are not accepting students grades that went through a SBG system as accurate because of the opportunities to reassess. I believe the example he cited was the Naval Academy.   He indicated that a student was told they would need to attend the U of I for a year to prove themselves before their application would be considered.

Have you heard of this craziness?

Thanks,
[Name]

It is good to hear from you.  I had not heard about the Naval Academy or similar examples.  Here are a few things that may be worth sharing with this teacher and others as it comes up.

• Our high school transcript has not changed, therefore unless college/university admissions offices treat our students just as they have prior to standards-based grading (in other words, the information teachers use to generate a grade for a class has changed to more accurate reflect learning, however a letter grade still exists and is reported)

• While many institutions of higher learning continue to grade the same way they've been doing it for many years, some are slowly evolving.  MIT, for example, freshmen are graded pass/no-pass during the first semester. 

• We know that some students who are homeschooled do not receive letter grades, however they are admitted to colleges and universities across the country based on their evidence of learning such as academic portfolios, ACT or SAT scores, etc.  

In summary, I cannot believe this Naval Academy example is true.  The college admissions representatives and administrators I've talked with over the years readily admit the rigor or grades varies from school to school and that the changes we've made in our district will not negatively impact our students. 

This year will mark my eleventh in education, fifth as a school administrator.  I have spent five of the past ten years simultaneously completing graduate coursework and a working full-time job.  This summer, I embarked on yet another academic journey: I completed the first semester of an Ed.D. program.  I couldn't be happier with my decision to enroll at the University of West Georgia (UWG).  Before I share a little bit about the coursework so far, I thought it might be helpful to explain why a doctorate and why UWG's school improvement program.

Why an Ed.D.?
When I completed my first graduate program at a research one institution in 2009, my advisor took me aside less than an hour after oral comps and asked me if I'd ever considered continuing on for a Ph.D.  At the time, I was a math teacher and was looking forward to an increase in pay due to the newly acquired degree in curriculum and instructional technology, so it should come as no surprise that a possible assistantship covering tuition and a small stipend did not appear to add up!  I couldn't see myself giving up a full-time job and going back to school full-time for three to five years.  Neither could my wife...and that was before we had our son.  When I went back to graduate school a second time for administration while continuing to work full-time, it was with the idea of the coursework being one last cognitive hurrah.  At the time, attaining a terminal degree felt like a distant and dreamy aspiration.

Fast forward to about a year ago, only one year after finishing the second program.  I was at a meeting with a number of other central office administrators.  In conversation with a fellow curriculum director, I learned about his journey: masters degree in education and additional coursework in administration (sound familiar?).  He shared about transferring some of his additional coursework into the doctoral program at one of our state universities while still maintaining a full-time job.  It seemed too good to be true, so over the next several months, I contacted department chairs and several trusted faculty friends.  They all confirmed a doctoral degree would require a great amount of persistence, but it would not be uncommon to transfer in a few post-masters hours, as long as I did it now to meet credit recency requirements.  All of a sudden, a terminal degree came back into the picture.  I was told it would be a challenge to prioritize time, make it work financially, and persevere through a dissertation, but that it could be done.  Could I finally act on this distant and dreamy aspiration of researching and writing about a narrow topic in the field of education while working full-time?  Thankfully, my lovely wife supported me fully moving forward, knowing the cost would only increase in the future and our time together as a family would be impacted to a smaller degree now when compared to the years ahead of us.

Why the University of West Georgia?
I eagerly updated my resume, requested letters of recommendation and completed the application for summer/fall 2014 admission consideration.  To make a long story short, I decided to apply at one of the three Iowa public universities, but then, the harsh Iowa winter of 2013-14 hit.  We had a fair amount of snowfall and record low temperatures. Driving over sixty miles each way at least once per week for class was out of the picture.  Around the same time, I learned about the University of West Georgia's Ed.D. in school improvement through Google searches.  It seemed too good to be true:

• NCATE accredited public brick-and-mortar university
• program with over ten face-to-face cohorts and three hybrid cohorts preceding me
• hybrid coursework primarily completed online from home with several spring/summer visits to campus in Carrollton, Georgia
• interdisciplinary school improvement focus marrying my curriculum and educational leadership coursework and experience
• ...and let's be real, in-state tuition for out-of-state students enrolling in the program (cheaper than in-state Iowa tuition) didn't hurt either.