Ahead of the Curve Conference Report

Teaching is the most cognitively difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Compared to classroom teaching, running a university is easy.

-Dylan Wiliam—Interim President University of London, and author of more than 250 books and articles on education.

Last week I was honored to be sent to a conference called Ahead of the Curve. This conference brought together many of the best minds and greatest researchers in the field of education. The list: Tom Guskey, Bob Marzano, Anne Davies, Stephen White, Dylan Wiliam, Ken O’Connor and Rick Stiggins presented on a wide range of assessment issues. From nearly 20 hours of presentations and conversations with colleagues from around the country I have culled the top 13 things that I have learned or had reinforced for me as a result of this experience. All 13 are based on, not one or two studies but dozens and in cases hundreds of researched studies. The 13 items do not represent fringe ideas or controversial issues—they are as close as we get in this business to accepted ideas.

Top 13 (It is Halloween Weekend) and they are in no particular order
1. Whatever the test, the scores should mean the same thing.
2. Never rely on a single assessment to determine a student score.
3. Graphing results of student performance. Has a big effect size. Need to be doing this.
4. Explaining what stays and what does not is critical.
5. Standards were created in part to reject the bell curve. If we are doing standards we should not see a bell curve at the end.
6. Format doesn’t matter.
7. Impact of the Jills.
8. Feedback should be like PE and band and sports.
9. Dropout prevention.
10. The myth of the 101 point system.
11. Progress Reports.
12. Teachers work differently, students work harder.
13. Minute by minute corrections.

From Bob Marzano
1. Whatever the test, the scores should mean the same thing.
When a student takes a test in any area they should know that the score in one class means the same thing as a score in another class. This means that an A in one class should mean the same thing as an A in another class. Or for our world—we should agree that 3 means competent and 2 means nearly there no matter what the class. Even though I have been a leading advocate of a point system with fewer categories I would even settle for A, B, C, D and F as long as we refocused it to have a standards based meaning rather than a norm based meaning.

2. Never rely on a single assessment to determine a student score.
Statistics show that even the very best single classroom assessment cannot measure a student’s true ability accurately. It will give a score but fairly simple statistics show that the student’s true score (true ability) can be plus or minus 15 percentage points of that value. To combat this teachers need to base a student grade on many pieces of evidence.

3. Graphing results of student performance. Has a big effect size. Need to be doing this.
Students need to be creating graphs of their learning. The research shows that this has an incredible effect on student learning. So much so that Marzano said that if we aren’t doing it we should start immediately.



From Doug Reeves
4. Explaining what stays and what does not is critical.
It is crucial to explain to teachers, students and parents what will not change. For example in our current work—teacher autonomy will not change, it never will, it can’t. The competencies will be the same and the assessments will be common but how you teach the material will be up to you. This is an area I am going to improve upon as we move forward with our work together.

5. Standards were created in part to reject the bell curve. If we are doing standards we should not see a bell curve at the end.
Benjamin Bloom said, “There is nothing sacred about the normal curve. It is the distribution most appropriate to chance and random activity. Education is a purposeful activity, and we seek to have students learn what we have to teach. If we are effective in our instruction, the distribution of achievement should be very different from a normal curve. In fact we may even insist that our educational efforts have been unsuccessful to the extent that the distribution of achievement approximates the normal distribution.” I won’t pretend to think that I can better Bloom’s quote but I will add that it is from 1981.

6. Format doesn’t matter.
Doug Reeves actually did a study on this. He looked at plans that he deemed ugly and plans that he deemed pretty. (He is a great researcher so he did have parameters but this is about how he explained it.) Do not focus on creating a beautiful binder that sits on a shelf. Focus on the work and creating something that will work in class and with students. The simple competency template, for example, was just a guide—it works for some it does not for others—awesome. Some folks are using the traditional UbD template, others are coming up with something new—do what works for you within the bounds of goal, assessment, learning plan.

7. Impact of the Jills.
“Jill” is the awesome teacher in the classroom next door. More than any other person (like an assessment coordinator, for example) this teacher leader is the key person and the most influential person on practice. We need to go out and see the good things that other teachers are doing. In our district we are lucky to have many of these—find them and go see what they are doing. And aspire to become more of one yourself. Corollary to Impact of the Jills: We have learned from copious studies and the experience right in front of our faces that students need to learn by doing. Teachers need to learn by doing as well. Seeing what Jill is doing and then trying it out is good practice.

8. Feedback should be like PE and band and sports.
The goalie in a soccer game comes too far out of the net and the opposing team kicks the ball in a loop over his head for an easy score. In order to correct this, the coach makes a note with a red pen in an improvement journal and when the season is over lets the goalie know that he should only come that far out of the goal in certain situations. Sound right? NO. Give lots of accurate and useful feedback—feedback that students can use to correct what they are doing right now. Think about how much feedback an orchestra conductor or a PE teacher give while a lesson is going on. It isn’t always easy but we need to try to emulate these examples in other areas of teaching too.

9. Dropout prevention. Again these aren’t random suggestions they are research based statements from Doug Reeves. He said that these are the things that he would do immediately to combat dropouts.
Literacy—double time—everyone gets double the literacy time—reading is that statistically important
Time management assignment notebook—need to teach all students what they need to do organizationally to be successful.
Immediate intervention—before failure
Engagement—extracurricular policy
o 3-4 is the ideal—this is the range of extras that have a positive effect on learning.
o Need to work on kids who have zero
o Evidence says that if they are more engaged they have better attendance and
o Private schools are always in extracurriculars even when students are not doing well.
o There are consequences but the consequences are not removing them from extras.
Price of freedom is proficiency
Homework may not be about home
Outlaw zeroes--
Early final exam—do early final exams
o Give exam 2 weeks early. Those who are competent are done.
o Those who are not stay and work more.
o A district that did this went to 90% passing.
Credit recovery—ID reason for F and figure out what to do.

10. The myth of the 101 point system.
We have been fooling ourselves. With the advent of calculators and then computers and then computer grading programs teachers moved from A, B, C grading to percentage grading. While crunching numbers into an average does yield a percentage it clouds what the student actually knows and provides little information about what, specifically, needs to be done to improve. It is not a reliable measure. While one teacher may claim to be able to tell the difference, with her students, between a 71 and a 72, there is no way that separate teachers evaluating independently would ever come to this fine of a separation. Corollary myth—the public expects percentages (parents, colleges, students). In truth parents already clamor for and colleges love AP classes which in their end result award one of 5 categories. (The International Baccalaureate offers 7.) If a student takes a practice AP test and scores a 3 they know in very specific terms what they need to work on to move up to the 4 category. This type of conversation can happened with percentages—it is just not as easy. Why make communication harder for students?

From Ken O’Connor
11. Progress Reports.
A report with a grade is an achievement report not a progress report. At the high school Parent Connect now allows parents and students to see a daily achievement report. The need for us to print out one more at a specific point in time is now zero. The high school now has no official progress report and in light of competencies and the needs of students it would be good if one was reincorporated. Since the students now have constant access to their achievement level what is needed more than ever is a conversation about progress. Ok Sweta, you see that you have a C. Let’s talk about what that means and what we can do together to improve that grade over the next few weeks. Especially with competencies it might be appropriate to say, “A C is a perfect place to be right now—your progress thus far in the course is on target. We will of course work together to improve your understanding and thus your grade but right now you are progressing wonderfully.” Alternatively a conversation might happen this way, “Vesper, you have a C and at this point in the year that is evidence that you aren’t making sufficient progress. Let’s talk about what we can do together to improve your understanding.

From Anne Davies
12. Teachers work differently, students work harder.
The person who is tired and busy is the person who has done the learning. Teachers will continue to tire themselves outside of class but in class they should be the ones who are guiding not relearning the material they already know. Students should be stuck, confused and challenged—this is when they learn. One teacher that we heard about has a sign in their class that says, “Stuck? Good. It was worth coming in today.” There are many ways of doing this but the big idea is to put the onus on students to demonstrate what they can do.

From Dylan Wiliam
13. Minute by minute corrections.
There are many solutions that we as educators have tried. Most of those solutions have been superficial and easy to implement—the problem is they have not worked. Wiliam says that now is the time to get down to the difficult solutions. The number one effect on student learning is the teacher that they have. The number one strategy that affects learning is formative assessment. Formative assessment means assessing students on a minute by minute or second by second basis so that one can make changes in a nimble an effective way.

One more from Dylan Wiliam
Education is not an expense, it is an investment.
“If you achieve at a higher level, you live longer, are healthier, and earn more money…In addition, people who earn more money pay more taxes, are less likely to depend on Medicaid or welfare, and are less likely to be in prison. It has been calculated that if a student who dropes out of high school would stay to graduate, the benefit to society would be $209,000 (Leve, Belfield, Muenning, & Rousse, 2007). This sum is made up of $139,000 in extra tax revenue, $40,500 savings in public health cost, $26,600 savings in law-enforcement and prison costs and $3000 in welfare savings. Eric Hanushek (2004), a leading economist of education in the United States, has calculated that if we could raise each student’s achievement by one standard deviation (equivalent to raising a student from the 50th to the 84th percentile), over 30 years, the economy would grow by and additional 10%, and just the additional taxes being paid by everyone would more than pay for the whole of K-12 education.”


Want to learn more?

A little bit of everyone
Ahead of the Curve—edited by Doug Reeves—this book has a chapter written by each of the people I mentioned.

Bob Marzano
What Works in Schools
School Leadership that Works

Doug Reeves
Making Standards Work
The Learning Leader: How to Focus School Improvement for Better Results
Many articles online and in Educational Leadership

Tom Guskey
How’s My Kid Doing?
Designing Grading and Reporting Systems
Many articles available online and in Educational Leadership

Dylan Wiliam
Inside the Black Box—Phi Delta Kappan 1998 (Let me know and I’ll make you a copy.) This is the study that began the modern push for formative assessment.

Ken O’Connor
How to Grade for Learning

Anne Davies
Making Classroom Assessment Work