May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A Call to Reform Testing and Define Success

By Lesley Hagelgans

The new Common Core State Standards and related assessments such as Smarter Balance have been commended for the depth of critical thinking required to show mastery. That level of achievement is a great goal for students with an IQ in the normal range, but it sets others up for failure. Asking a person with an IQ between 70-79 to answer an abstract question about literature or algebra on a test would be like asking a blind person to read a book that is not written in Braille. So why are the new state standards and the related assessments asking 7-14 percent of our students to perform this way?

Just because a person has a lower than average IQ doesn’t mean they can’t succeed in our world. Instead, we need to reconsider our definition of success. The Common Core State Standards, presented by The Governor’s Council, redefined academic standards. The implication is that if a student can master these Common Core State Standards, they will be christened as being successful. By default, a student who cannot master these standards is a failure. A significant portion of the population will not be able to master the Common Core State Standards due to limitations beyond anyone’s control, therefore a large segment of people will feel, “You are not good enough.” Why is it that only measures set by the Common Core State Standards determine whether or not individual students are successful?

Every educator can remember the informational charts from their child development classes. Physiologically, some people won’t develop the brain synapses necessary for critical thinking until their 20s. Other people won’t develop them at all. Yet, that cognitive ability is essential for demonstrating success according to the Common Core. When those students fail, they will feel like they are not good enough.  Their parents and teachers will feel like they did not do enough.

The answer is not a lowering of our standards and expectations. The answer lies in the process of testing itself. The field of education can learn a lot about learning from the field of neuropsychology. A person with a borderline functional intelligence may never grasp that y=mx+b, but if they were placed into a curriculum that supplied them with concrete real world experience, they could thrive. The key word here is concrete, because these kids are concrete thinkers.

Students in this category are often those same students who try desperately to succeed.  They may not become the next Warren Buffet or Steven Hawkings, but they can contribute in many positive ways to their community through trades-based professions – the backbone of the United States – given the right support. These students have to work two or three times harder than their peers and often demonstrate half the ability due to limitations nobody can control.

Issues like this often don’t show up until sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. Why?  That’s when the curriculum really starts to demand students to think abstractly. Once these adolescents consistently get the message they are not good enough, they shut down, disengage, or drop out completely.

What is the solution? That’s the challenge in education. We have to redefine success. Are we going to continue to tell these hard working kids they are not good enough because they cannot meet the demands of a rigorous curriculum? There are multiple measures that would identify the talents and limitations of students at an earlier age if cognitive diagnostic assessments were given to everyone. In a society that has become so data driven, we might be missing the most important data of all.

Rich data from cognitive diagnostic assessments would help educators to truly reach a child where they are and set them upon a path for lifelong success in various ways – gainfully employed, in any way, as a contributing, productive member of society.

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Mich. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

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February 4, 2013 By 1 Comment

Common Core: What We Have Here is a Learnable Moment

By Lesley Hagelgans

Within the district where I work, the Common Core State Standards were shared with Math and Science teachers in January 2011 – just six short months after the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices approved them.  The information provided by the administration within my district was complimented by research shared at the Gates Convene especially from groups like America Achieves.  My participation in the Gates Convene was an enriching opportunity to learn about what is going on in all aspects of education reform including the Common Core State Standards and related assessment consortiums.

As I was reacquainted with the Smarter Balance assessments last week, I was thinking about teachers who haven’t even seen the Common Core State Standards yet.  The Common Core State Standards were passed in Washington, D.C. in June of 2010, and many teachers will have their evaluations tied to assessments that evaluate student success with the Common Core in spring of 2014.  Why does information take years to trickle down through bureaucratic structures before it lands in the hands of the people it will arguably affect most – teachers?

As recently as last year, I have met teachers from across the country that are not familiar with the Common Core State Standards for various reasons.  I teach in a small school district with limited resources where much of the curriculum design lands in the capable hands of teachers.  I am aware that larger school districts with huge transient populations employ professionals to write assessments and units tied to the Common Core; this information is shared with staff at a convenient time for reforming curriculum whole scale.  Both limited resources and large bureaucratic structures have been cited as reasons for teachers lacking awareness.

What we have here is a learnable and teachable moment.

  • On a systemic level, let’s look at the schools where the Common Core has been integrated and share what works and what does not.
  • As teachers, we need to use our time for sharing resources and strategies to meet the new literacy demands instead of simply lamenting them.
  • Both administrators and teachers need to find ways of replacing something they already do instead of feeling the drain of doing one more thing.
  • Everyone should use platforms like VIVA Teachers, America Achieves, and Hope Street Group to share and retrieve information that will help students be successful.

One last thing, I challenge the Department of Education to study where the Common Core thrives.  Do students excel when the Common Core State Standards land directly in the hands of those teachers who derive their own unit plans tied to common assessments linked to the Common Core or is success better nourished in those districts where teachers had less of a hand in the instructional design but a bounty of professional development to help them teach units and lessons designed by others?

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Michigan. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

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January 24, 2013 By 2 Comments

Why rely on Test Companies, Instead of Teachers, to Create Assessments?

By Jessica Choi

Joshua Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) which consistently ranks in U.S. News and World Report’s top 100 high schools, recently said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it.”

Why is this a revolutionary idea?

Teachers assess students every day. Why weren’t teachers the obvious choice to write the Common Core assessments? Don’t we trust teachers to create quality tests?

Teachers CAN Write Quality Tests
While teaching for MCPS, I was hired to help write the ESOL 4 semester exams. It was an honor.

Teachers from different backgrounds, different levels of teaching experience, and different teaching styles came together over the summer to create the end of semester exams. We were trained and had an advisor who kept us on track. We studied the standards and worked in teams to develop questions for each of the standards. The hardest part was developing questions that would be fair to students of different races, different socio-economic statuses, and students with special needs.  In our group, there were teachers who taught each of those populations, so we worked together to modify questions so that they would be fair for all of our students.

Revision is the Most Important Part
The test went through editing and a formal review process before it was given to students. After the first administration of the test, teachers were asked to send their students’ results for each question and any comments or suggestions they had to the test facilitator.

Maybe ESOL teachers are just super-awesome (as I have often suspected), but I think this would happen in other departments too: ESOL teachers loved giving feedback on the exams. That year and every year after, teachers offered lots of comments, corrections, and suggestions for new questions. Teachers felt empowered because they were not just being told what to do; their professional opinion was being respected.

Although the test writers had done everything we could have to make a fair and balanced test, when the test was administered teachers found questions that were not fair. Those questions were dismissed from the students’ final scores and they were revised for the following year’s test.

How do corporations revise their test questions each year? All the secrecy surrounding test creation means that teachers (the test administrators) are never asked what problems they observed or how they would revise the test for the following year. This seems like a missed opportunity for creating a truly fair and balanced assessment.

Crowd-sourcing Teachers
Teachers are essential to test revision. After every administration of the Common Core assessments, teachers should be asked for comments and corrections so that the questions can be revised appropriately.

Teachers could also be an indispensable part of test creation. Teachers could choose the best questions written by test companies for each standard or they could write their own questions for the assessments.

Giving teachers a voice in the tests they have to administer motivates them to take ownership of the assessments and of their outcomes.

Crowd-sourcing Students
Students could also create good questions for the Common Core assessments if given the right directions and incentives.

Teachers often ask students to write sample test questions to review for tests. Sometimes teachers use the questions students have written as the real test questions. I think students would create appropriate questions if awards were given for the best ones.

If students write the questions, then teachers could choose the best ones for each standard.

The Role of Test Companies
Test companies should serve as a facilitator. We need an outside company to manage the technology, analyze the data, choose the final questions and keep the final product a secret before the test.

But test companies currently operate in an academic utopia where they create assessments based on how students should interpret questions. Tests need to be written by teachers who have a better understanding of how students will interpret questions.

What do you think? Could students and teachers create better assessments than corporations?

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January 14, 2013 By 8 Comments

Common Core in 2013: Facts from Fiction

By Beth Hillerns

The Common Core Standards are making their way into more and more schools and classrooms, and their implementation seem to be causing nearly as much controversy as their adoption. One of those controversies is the requirement that by 12th grade, students should be reading 70 percent nonfiction and 30 percent fiction.

This surprises me — not the requirement, but the controversy. The goal of the Common Core is to have students be college and career ready by graduation. Most of the reading I did in college and now do for my career is nonfiction, so the percentages don’t seem out of line with the goal. Apparently, though, some people have interpreted the nonfiction/fiction split to represent what should be taking place in the English classroom and not across the school day. I think this interpretation is a serious mistake.

There is a lot that could be controversial in the Common Core, but the nonfiction/fiction split should not be. Instead I think this issue highlights some serious organizational problems in our schools.

Problem #1 – Our teachers are isolated. Often the only interaction teachers have with their peers is in the staff lounge or parking lot.

Problem #2 – Reading skills across the content areas are not adequately supported. Although the Common Core specifically addresses reading in the content areas (social studies and science in particular), many teachers still view them as just language arts and math standards – the domain of those teachers.

Problem #3 – There is a misunderstanding of textbooks as curriculum. Textbooks should be one resource for teachers, but other sources should be included and other texts read by students. Too often, teachers have to find resources on their own, with their own time and money, if they choose. This leads to dry, uninspiring reading.

As long as these problems persist, teachers will find it challenging to implement the Common Core reading requirements across the school day. To address these problems, school districts can do three things:

Solution #1 – Facilitate peer observations as an integral part of our profession. Teachers in one another’s classrooms should be commonplace. This will help teachers learn from one another and know more about how to work together to implement standards that are integrated, not isolated.

Solution #2 – Employ literacy coaches. Literacy coaches can provide knowledge and demonstration of reading strategies and instruction to teachers who are already experts in their content area. They can also provide opportunities for effective peer observation.

Solution #3 – Use texts in addition to textbooks. Give teachers (individually or through a curriculum committee) the time to find texts that address their standards and the resources to provide these texts to students. A literacy coach can facilitate this process.

As our world becomes more integrated, we cannot afford to let our schools remain places of isolation. We’ve got to pay attention to the big picture first. The fact is, teachers can work together to implement standards across the curriculum.

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October 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

VIVA Teachers leader Freeda Pirillis in the New York Times

Fresh off being featured in our blog, Freeda Pirillis makes it into the New York Times, in quote and image:

 “You can continue to say you’re accountable for x, y and z,” said Freeda Pirillis, a first-grade teacher at Agassiz Elementary School in Chicago. “But if you don’t support teachers and students in that work, then that’s just an empty sort of thing.” She noted, for example, that “we continue to have textbooks in our school that show that Bill Clinton was our last president.”

Read the full article here.

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October 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

NBC Teacher Town Hall, a Meeting of Convergent Volume

 by Wade Sutton

“…And thus the Native hue of Resolution

Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard their Currents turn awry,

And lose the name of Action.”

- Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1)

You would expect a national Teacher Town Hall to ask for change and action. You would think it would encourage divergent thinking. You would be wrong.

If MSNBC’s Education Nation had been honed to actually get 300 teachers to talk substance and seek resolution, here is the script I would have handed to Brian Williams:

Is it the place of the public school system to provide “wraparound services” that include medical care and breakfast? How does this really serve parents? Does it take away from the mission of schools? Are we creating dependence by filling these voids? Discuss.

Will structuring our teaching to a Common Core drive us further into a box and force us to teach to a test? What are other options that keep power at the state level? Discuss.

Why are universities failing to train educators fully? What needs to change? Should teachers only graduate and be licensed after at least three years’ experience in the classroom? Discuss.

Only master teachers with at least 10 years classroom experience should be allowed to begin an administrative degree program. How can we narrow the field to only accept the best as our instructional leaders? Discuss.

How does nurturing the culture of antagonism between teachers’ unions and administration harm our school system and our students? How can this vicious cycle be stopped? Discuss.

Why do teachers see unions as the strongest advocates for education instead of parents? Parents are the strongest advocates for their children, why the disconnect? Discuss.

But these questions demand time. These questions require careful thought and want divergent thinking. These questions depend on quiet contemplation and creativity. None of these powerful, progressive skills were in evidence at Education Nation. Instead, volume ruled the day.

The Pale Cast of Thought

Sitting in front of me were four teachers I thought cloned from one another. They exemplified the tone in the room: filled with what Yeats would describe as “passionate intensity,” the loudest and worst of the consensus, sadly more loyal to their union than to the art of education. They yelled and booed and cheered, entitled to be heard. One spoke to the camera and refused to stop. She solved nothing with her volume. The tone from the audience was not to hear and discuss, it was to display a unified direction. And to shout down dissent with “sound and fury signifying nothing” near to a solution. Good educators know that the loudest may not be the most dynamic. Their filibuster flares quickly and dies while we crave the silent solutions and strength that is caste in a slow hot fire.

And Lose the Name of Action?

This is why I walked away inspired to act with a consistent, powerful force in my own community to inspire change at the local level. I hope in the future that the national stage will mature to seek real solutions and next year I look forward to representing rural schools again. It is a game with a tone that limits our national dialogue on education. This must change. Progress cannot remain pressed aside in comfortable silence. Although quiet solutions were diminished and a real exchange was lost in the tempest, I am encouraged. It will be your unnoticed educator, the quiet and steady servant to parents, who will lead to change and actionable ideas.

Wade Sutton teaches 7-12 grade English at Indus School in Birchdale, Minnesota. He has taught in private and in public school and was a member of the VIVA Minnesota Teachers Writing Collaborative that produced the report called 360 Degree Leadership: Evaluating Minnesota Principals.
 

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June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

VIVA Arizona Teacher leaders in the News

From Arizona Sun’s Classroom Daily Briefs

Heritage Elementary School’s Williams campus principal Kaytie Thies was among a select group of charter school teachers chosen to present an action plan for implementing new Common Core Standards for education to Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal and Arizona State Board of Education President Jaime Molera.

The action plan is based on a collection of ideas submitted by nearly 200 Arizona teachers during Phase I of the three-part VIVA Arizona Charter Teachers Idea Exchange.

The exchange is a collaboration between the Arizona Charter Schools Association and the online teacher’s forum The VIVA Project (VIVA stands for Voices, Ideas, Vision, Action). Its goal is to help Arizona charter school teachers collaborate on the new Common Core Standards, a state-led effort to establish shared academic standards in K-12 English/language arts and mathematics.

Thies and six other teachers who participated in Phase I were invited to continue on to Phase II and III of the program. During Phase II, they summarized and synthesized the ideas presented during Phase I into 36 distinct, workable recommendations for implementing Common Core Standards in a way most likely to result in improved student learning.

Phase III took place on June 13, when Thies and the others presented the action plan in a meeting with Huppenthal and Molera.

Click here to read more

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June 13, 2012 By 1 Comment

How to Successfully Implement Common Core

Source: AZ Charter Teachers’ Association

In a meeting with Arizona Superintendent John Huppenthal and State Board President Jaime Molera, VIVA Teacher Leaders offered their advice for smoothing the transition to Common Core State Standards for all schools in Arizona.

Two hundred VIVA Teachers who teach in Arizona’s charter schools, where they already are implementing the new, higher Common Core State Standards in their classrooms, participated in the first phase of the VIVA Arizona Charter Teachers Idea Exchange, from April 16-May 13, 2012. They shared 50 ideas for ways to ensure the transition to Common Core. Then, seven of those teachers distilled the ideas into the 36 recommendations they delivered to Huppenthal and Molera on June 13, 2012.

Read an executive summary of the report, or download the full 32-page report, “Arizona Charter Teachers’ Guide to Common Core Implementation: Advice from the Classroom,” here.

Read the press release here.

 

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June 13, 2012 By 2 Comments

VIVA Arizona Project – Arizona Charter Teachers’ Guide to Common Core Implementation: Advice From the Classroom

On Wednesday, June 13, members of the VIVA Arizona Charter Teachers Idea Exchange Writing Collaborative delivered their report, Arizona Charter Teachers Guide to Common Core Implementation: Advice from the Classroom, to Arizona Superintendent John Huppenthal and State Board President Jaime Molera.

Teachers are significant stakeholders in the implementation of Common Core Standards and should be key players in the process. These recommendations will foster the environment necessary to ensure successful implementation of Common Core Standards, promote the development of professional knowledge and expertise of teachers, and maintain high expectations and academic achievement on the part of Arizona’s students.

Download the full report as a PDF

Click here to read the executive summary and recommendations

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June 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

VIVA Arizona Press Release

Contact: Megan Gilbertson
O: 602.944.0644 ext. 312
C:  602.688.9435
E: megan@azcharters.org

 

Charter Teachers Share Thoughts on Implementing New Standards

Arizona teachers need more training, parents need a heads up

 

VIVA Arizona Press Release

Download as a PDF

Phoenix, Ariz. (June 8, 2012) – In order to ensure a successful transition to new, more rigorous K-12 curriculum standards, Arizona must provide additional training and tools to educators, launch a public awareness campaign about the new student achievement standards, and ease the transition to new tests, according to a report prepared by Arizona charter school teachers.

In a first of its kind online collaboration in Arizona, nearly 200 charter teachers across the state spent four weeks exchanging ideas about what teachers and schools need to ensure a successful transition to the Common Core State Standards, the new mandated standards all public schools — district and charter — must meet beginning in the 2013-2014 school year.

A group of seven teachers from the initial phase of the VIVA Idea Exchange worked to summarize and synthesize the ideas, and developed a report with 36 specific action steps for Arizona to use when implementing the Common Core State Standards. The teachers will present their ideas to Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal and Arizona State Board of Education President Jaime Molera on June 13.

“Our teachers want to see their students succeed, and this report provides policy makers an in-depth look at what all public schools need to make the transition to the new standards successful,” said Association President Eileen B. Sigmund. “Although charter teachers are innovative and creative, they face the same challenges as all public school teachers are facing in Arizona and across the country.”

The Arizona Charter Schools Association partnered with New Voice Strategies’ VIVA Teachers Project to engage Arizona charter schools teachers in an effective conversation about the new standards.

Find out more about the project and Common Core State Standards at https://azcharters.org/viva-teachers-project. Please contact Megan Gilbertson for a copy of the embargoed report.

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About The Arizona Charter Schools Association

The Arizona Charter Schools Association is a non-profit membership and professional organization that serves more than 80 percent of the 524 charter schools in Arizona that enroll 133,890 students. Fully 25 percent of the state’s public schools are charter schools, and 12 percent of all public-school students are enrolled in charter schools—the highest percentage for any state, and second only to Washington D.C. With a common goal of providing the best in free, public education for Arizona’s children, the Association works alongside schools, parents, policymakers and the media, continuously advocating for high quality schools, student equity, and charter school autonomy. We are dedicated to high student achievement and aggressively seek to provide the best in comprehensive support and services to Arizona’s charter schools. For more information, visit www.azcharters.org or call 602.944.0644.

About VIVA Teachers

VIVA Teachers (VIVA stands for Voice, Ideas, Vision, Action) uses an innovative online platform to empower them to share their professional wisdom with each other and connects them directly to the people who have the power to enact change. Already, VIVA Teachers have submitted their recommendations for change to government officials in Washington, D.C. Chicago IL, Albany NY, and St. Paul MN. For more information on how VIVA elevates the voices of teachers, from the front lines to the bottom line, visit www.vivateachers.org.

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