Improving Assessment Literacy School-wide

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Improving Assessment Literacy School-wide
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School and System Improvement

• Improvement by Contract
• -external threats and rewards
• Improvement by Culture
• -partnerships, collaboration, teamwork,
  community
• Caring is as important as learning

Hargreaves, 2003
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School and System Improvement

• Professional learning communities use evidence
  and intuition in order to work and talk together
  to review their practices and to increase their
  successIn a professional learning community, the
  culture changes everyone sees the big picture
  and works for the good of the whole community.
  Professional learning communities bring together
  culture and contract. They value both excellence
  and enjoyment.
• Hargreaves, 2004

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The Big Ideas of Professional Learning Communities

• Ensuring that students learn
• A Culture of Collaboration
• A Focus on Results
• DuFour, 2004

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The Big Ideas of Professional Learning Communities

• Ensuring that students learn
• -Focus on learning
• -What do we want each student to learn?
• -How will we know when each student has learned
  it?
• -How will we respond when a student experiences
  difficulty in learning?

DuFour, 2004
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The Big Ideas of Professional Learning Communities

• A Culture of Collaboration
• -partnerships
• -sharing knowledge and learning
• -team work
• -community
• -conversations

DuFour, 2004
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The Big Ideas of Professional Learning Communities

• A Focus on Results
• -establish baseline data
• -set improvement goals
• -work together to achieve goals
• -gather frequent evidence of progress
• -identify strategies that lead to the greatest
  gains
• -share these with colleagues

DuFour, 2004
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Teacher Learning What Matters (Linda
Darling-Hammond, 2009)

• Centred on student learning
• Integrated with school improvement
• Active, sustained learning

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Principal Leadership(DuFour and Marzano, 2009)

• Create schedules so teams meet at least one hour
  per week
• Create collaborative structures for teams to
  focus on issues that directly affect student
  learning
• Provide teams with training, support, and
  resources to implement new approaches
• Monitor progress through tangible products and
  dialogue

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Time to Talk

• Discuss the comments from Hargreaves, DuFour,
  Darling-Hammond, and Marzano
• To what extent does your schools current
  approach to improvement reflect their
  recommendations?
• Which of their recommendations require your
  attention?

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School Improvement through Assessment Reform
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A Vision is Essential!
Attaining any vision of assessment excellence
requires that certain conditions be in place.
Those conditions include well-defined learning
targets for students, supportive school and
district policies, clear communication systems,
and most important, assessment-literate teachers
and administrators. Rick Stiggins
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Improving Assessment Literacy Essential
Elements - Cooper

• Clear mission and vision
• Alignment of curriculum, assessment, and
  communication systems
• Clear and coherent curriculum map,
• K-12
• High-quality, backward-designed units
• High-quality assessments and tools

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Improving Assessment Literacy Essential
Elements - Cooper

• Assessment and grading policy to guide and
  support practice
• School-wide assessment literacy
• Students empowered to self and peer assess and to
  act as instructional support for each other
• Well-informed parents who support initiatives
• Ongoing process to monitor project

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Dare to Dream!
Its June, 2012. You are conducting a Walkabout
on your campus. Use your creativity to
communicate to your colleagues what you see and
hear during your Walkabout.
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Reality Check!

• What are the major obstacles to realizing this
  vision in your school?

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To realize our vision, we need a plan ...
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Four Conditions for Sustainable Improvement

• Focus
• Pressure and support
• Collaboration
• Stay the course

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The Big Ideas of Classroom Assessment

• Assessment serves different purposes at different
  times it may be used to find out what students
  already know and can do it may be used to help
  students improve their learning or it may be
  used to let students, and their parents, know how
  much they have learned within a prescribed period
  of time.
• Assessment must be planned and purposeful.
• Assessment must be balanced, including oral and
  performance as well as written tasks, and be
  flexible in order to improve learning for all
  students.

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The Big Ideas of Classroom Assessment
4. Assessment and instruction are inseparable
because effective assessment informs learning. 5.
For assessment to be helpful to students, it
must inform them in words, not numerical scores
or letter grades, what they have done well, what
they have done poorly, and what they need to do
next in order to improve. 6. Assessment is a
collaborative process that is most effective when
it involves self, peer, and teacher assessment.
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The Big Ideas of Classroom Assessment

• 7. Performance standards are an essential
  component of effective assessment.
• 8. Grading and reporting student achievement
  is a caring, sensitive process that requires
  teachers professional judgement.

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Four Conditions Focus

• Identify areas of greatest need
• -human bar graph
• -survey data
• -observation
• School-wide focus
• Embed within other initiatives

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Case Study Walkden High School

• 3-Year Assessment for Learning Project
• Year 1 focus on specific, descriptive oral and
  written feedback to students
• Year 2 strategies for self and peer assessment
• Year 3 Lesson Design

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Time to Talk about Focus

• How focussed is our schools improvement plan?
• Do we need to sharpen the focus to improve our
  plan?

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Time to Talk about Focus

• What sources of data are identifying our focus
  for improvement?
• Are these data sufficient?
• If not, what further data do we need to
  gather?

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Pressure Support Walkden High School

• Head and Assistant both teach a class
• 8 AFL Key Teachers who work across departments to
  model and coach best practice
• They have half day per week outside of school to
  do research
• Every committee and meeting must have an AFL
  component

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Four Conditions Pressure ...

• Teachers submit tangible evidence of their
  collaborative work e.g. Units of study, common
  assessments, etc.
• Annual improvement plans for all teachers include
  the initiative
• Struggling teachers teamed with those who have
  mastered the desired skills

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Time to Talk about Pressure

• How are teachers held accountable for improving
  their practice?
• How do we move from pockets of improvement to a
  critical mass?

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Four Conditions ... and Support

• Common resources to communicate best practice,
  etc. (print resources, handbook, on-line
  resources, etc.)
• PD events to communicate the message
• Key teachers to lead the charge and provide
  training

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Time to Talk about Support

• What professional learning resources are
  available to leaders and teachers to inform this
  improvement initiative?
• What professional learning opportunities are
  available to teachers during this
  project?

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Four Conditions Collaboration

• Within grade or course teams (unit design)
• Between grade or course teams (program design)
• System-wide e.g. efficient use of technology to
  create banks of units, assessments, tools, etc.
• Coaching and mentoring within grade or course
  teams
• Key Teachers provide training across the school

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Unit Planning
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Time to Talk about Collaboration

• What collaborative structures exist in our school
  that facilitate improvement?
• Are these structures sufficient?
• If not, what needs to change?

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Time to Talk about Collaboration

• Is peer coaching part of our improvement
  initiative?
• If not, could it be?
• If it is, how well is it working?
• How might it be improved or expanded?
• What PLC or similar approach is being used to
  facilitate our improvement initiative?

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Four Conditions Staying the Course

• Minimum 3-Year, design down from desired
  state plan
• Frequent monitoring of progress
• Adjust plan according to data
• Integrate with other initiatives as they occur
• Celebrate success as it occurs
• Plan for sustainability

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Time to Talk about Staying the Course

• How are we monitoring our improvement initiative
• - teacher self-monitoring?
• (e.g. reflective journals)
• - teacher peer-monitoring?
• - administrative monitoring?

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Some final thoughts...

• Change is a process, not an event
• beware the implementation dip. (Fullan)
• Teachers must not work alone. Collaboration will
  help them problem solve and will improve the
  quality of your schools initiatives.
• Be proactive - communicate with parents and
  students before changing practices and procedures.

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Commitment to Action

• Spend a few moments reflecting on your learning
  today.
• What was your most significant learning?
• What specific actions do you plan to take
  immediately and/or between now and June 2010?
• Who will be involved?
• What results would you like to see from these
  actions?
• How will you assess the effectiveness of these
  actions?

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