Resolutions for a New Year

Let’s start with mindfulness: First-Quieting the intrusive thoughts and frequent distractions. Next- Focusing closely on what is most important. Here are some ideas I plan to act on this year.

Best Practice in Action

Utilize research-based practices rather than the loudest or most publicized packages that make uncorroborated promises. Make time for deep and thoughtful work that goes into developing high yield instruction and supports engaged and brain friendly teaching and learning. Advocate for best practice in teacher and student assessment.

Purposeful Technology

Consider technology’s highest and best service in supporting learning’s most valued outcomes. Avoid competition for the best Pinterest site or the most entertaining video. Rather, focus on tight alignment with instructional targets.

                       

Robust Professional Support

As PD has gone missing, supportive collaboration with teachers is needed now more than ever. Take time for rich and meaningful conversations that seek solutions to a range of pressing issues in education. Utilize PD as opportunities for mentoring and feedback.

           

21^st Century Skills

Teach beyond the standardized test content and embrace a range of essential life skills including creativity, global awareness, inquiry, and personal responsibility. Develop inquisitive learners with a growth mindset.

I know this is a late start to 2014 but with the right mindset and bucket of tools, as Riley says, “I can do it.” 

Non-Value Added Evaluations

Policymakers and school administrators have embraced value-added models of teacher effectiveness as tools for educational improvement. Value-added is a means to measure how much a teacher has contributed to a student’s improvement in test scores. Many validity questions arise from this premise: are the results stable year to year with different tests and different students? Is this the only indicator of teacher effectiveness or are their broader and more appropriate measures of a teaching quality? How is the data being interpreted and utilized; to improve learning or debase teachers with public displays of rankings?

In his article, Reliability and Validity of Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores  Edward Haertel at Stanford University, explores the meaning of test scores and their positive and negative effects especially in relation to high stakes decisions. 

MIT: Standardized Tests Don't Build the Right Skills

MIT neuroscientists found that schools with the highest gains on standardized test scores do not produce comparable gains in fluid intelligence such as information processing and problem solving. Instead, they show gains in crystalized intelligence: The knowledge and procedures that students are taught in the classroom.

Researchers reported that even though educators are working hard to raise test scores, the numbers are not accompanied by an increase in complex thinking. They found in Massachusetts, one of the highest performing states, “the greatest gains on test scores do not produce similar gains in ‘fluid intelligence’ – the ability to analyze abstract problems and think logically.”

John Gabrieli, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, explains that the study was designed to examine measures beyond standardized tests that can predict long term success. However, the researchers discovered that there are very measures of higher level cognitive abilities that relate to educational outcomes.

The study also noted that schools accounted for about 24 percent of the variation in standardized test scores but less than 3 percent of the variation in fluid intelligence. The researchers do not want their results to be used to criticize schools but rather to encourage schools to support programs that focus on improving executive function, reasoning, and analytical thinking all of which build fluid intelligence.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/even-when-test-scores-go-up-some-cognitive-abilities-dont-1211.html

Common Core Headlines

Catherine Gewertz writes about standards and assessment for Ed Week. Her insightful articles are informative and sometimes provocative as was her final one for 2013 (Dec. 24, 2013) entitled “Common-Core Headlines You Probably Won’t See in 2014”. Here are some from her list:

·         Breakthrough: Consortium Tests to Be Scored Entirely by Artificial Intelligence

·         PARCC and Smarter Balanced Complete Field-Testing Without a Single Computer Glitch

·         Texas Turnaround: Lone Star State Embraces PARCC Assessments

Here are a few of my own additions:

·         Teachers Unequivocally Support Teaching to the Common Core

·         The Common Core Replaces 21^st Century Skills Such As Creativity and Digital Literacy

·         States Agree That the Price of Testing (Over $1 Billion) Will Be Well Worth It

·         Lexile increases of up to two grade levels prove that by 11^th grade all students will be able to apply the ideas in “Working Knowledge of Electronic Stability Control”, evaluate “Health Care Costs”, analyze the work of De Tocqueville, and interpret Chaucer, Dostoevsky, and Moliere. (CCSS Appendix B)

Feel free to add yours