Developing Consensus on Ways to Know Whether Goals are Achieved
At the same time that schools seek to identify common goals for students—and this is crucial—successful schools also develop agreement on what counts as learning and how this is to be assessed. Here, the complexities come in several varieties. One concern is just how specific and detailed must be the learning objectives. The standard today generally has pushed toward greater specification among learning objectives as coordinated across grade levels. For example, third grade teachers need to know what to expect from second grade teachers and in turn what they must accomplish for the fourth grade teacher.
Goals that are not anchored in evidence of accomplishment cannot serve to guide improvement. So schools must reach agreement on the characteristics of such evidence, with how to use it in public ways. Each of these qualifications requires further description.
Today, schools are held accountable to external assessments of various kinds. Taken alone, however, such assessments do not provide a solid base of evidence around which to develop instructional improvements. The timing of the assessments, the feedback provided, and the lack of information on untested aspects of the curriculum call for schools to supplement such evidence with additional assessments that supply formative feedback, that are “curriculum-embedded,” and that complement quantitative evidence with qualitative information. Schools then face the crucial task of developing such complementary forms of assessment even as they attend to external, mandated testing. In effect, then, the new standard is that schools have worked out a proper balance between external, high stakes accountability and the internal assessments useful to improved teaching and learning.
While teachers have always developed their own practical means for gauging student learning within their own classrooms, the new requirement is that such assessments become part of the public, objective, and collective practice of the school rather than being private, subjective, and idiosyncratic. In effect, this commitment makes good on the aphorism that, “it takes a school to educate a child,” meaning that each student’s progress through school is not simply the serial responsibility of first this teacher, then that one, but rather of the collective. This requires a new social and technical practice in the school. The technical aspect concerns the assessment methods that are adopted—how student work is judged according to rubrics, for example. The social aspect concerns how teachers come together to work out common assessment practice, then to engage in assessment in public forums, where teachers display student work and other evidence of learning for their colleagues to consider and to evaluate. In successful schools, leaders effectively manage the transition from private, individual assessment to public, collective assessment, and this is a significant aspect of school re-culturing for it alters some of the most basic norms that typically regulate the practice of teaching.
Agreement on goals and assessments must be accompanied by a shared instructional vision that includes guidance on the evidence that the school will routinely collect and use in efforts to make a range of improvements. Such evidence must supply a well rounded picture of how the school is doing. Consequently, the school community must consider carefully what this evidence consists of, from among a potentially large set of indicators. For example, in many schools relevant evidence might include such matters as daily attendance figures; rates of student mobility; course-taking patterns of students, including advanced placement and honors courses; graduation rates; rates of grade retention; and evidence of non-academic outcomes concerning the general health and well-being of students.
To learn more about modes of assessing goals for student learning and development, CLICK HERE.[link 3z]
Goals that are not anchored in evidence of accomplishment cannot serve to guide improvement. So schools must reach agreement on the characteristics of such evidence, with how to use it in public ways. Each of these qualifications requires further description.
Today, schools are held accountable to external assessments of various kinds. Taken alone, however, such assessments do not provide a solid base of evidence around which to develop instructional improvements. The timing of the assessments, the feedback provided, and the lack of information on untested aspects of the curriculum call for schools to supplement such evidence with additional assessments that supply formative feedback, that are “curriculum-embedded,” and that complement quantitative evidence with qualitative information. Schools then face the crucial task of developing such complementary forms of assessment even as they attend to external, mandated testing. In effect, then, the new standard is that schools have worked out a proper balance between external, high stakes accountability and the internal assessments useful to improved teaching and learning.
While teachers have always developed their own practical means for gauging student learning within their own classrooms, the new requirement is that such assessments become part of the public, objective, and collective practice of the school rather than being private, subjective, and idiosyncratic. In effect, this commitment makes good on the aphorism that, “it takes a school to educate a child,” meaning that each student’s progress through school is not simply the serial responsibility of first this teacher, then that one, but rather of the collective. This requires a new social and technical practice in the school. The technical aspect concerns the assessment methods that are adopted—how student work is judged according to rubrics, for example. The social aspect concerns how teachers come together to work out common assessment practice, then to engage in assessment in public forums, where teachers display student work and other evidence of learning for their colleagues to consider and to evaluate. In successful schools, leaders effectively manage the transition from private, individual assessment to public, collective assessment, and this is a significant aspect of school re-culturing for it alters some of the most basic norms that typically regulate the practice of teaching.
Agreement on goals and assessments must be accompanied by a shared instructional vision that includes guidance on the evidence that the school will routinely collect and use in efforts to make a range of improvements. Such evidence must supply a well rounded picture of how the school is doing. Consequently, the school community must consider carefully what this evidence consists of, from among a potentially large set of indicators. For example, in many schools relevant evidence might include such matters as daily attendance figures; rates of student mobility; course-taking patterns of students, including advanced placement and honors courses; graduation rates; rates of grade retention; and evidence of non-academic outcomes concerning the general health and well-being of students.
To learn more about modes of assessing goals for student learning and development, CLICK HERE.[link 3z]