Responses to Assessment Conference

Responses:

I loved reading those. The one that most hit home to me was 1-5 (or 1-7) grading/assessment system, rather than percentages. I just could not agree more that percentages alone mean absolutely nothing -- this is clearly a big thing that AP and IB get right.

I also think the emphasis on progress reports is huge --- while teaching, I found this to be the most draining (in terms of both energy and time) aspect of the job, but it's also the way to make the biggest difference. Reading your stuff really makes me long to be back in the classroom.

Another one:
Wow, I had the same thought as [the writer above] as I was reading (about wanting to be back in the classroom). I actually was afraid that he would walk into the office tomorrow and tell [his boss] he was done...

Really interesting stuff and I think the fact that you are posting these things (and I'm assuming making that available to other teachers) is absolutely an incredible way to communicate the stuff you took away from the conference to the staff. So much resonates.

I would definitely encourage you to not be shy about getting this in front of teachers. You know how busy people are. Send them the link 3 times or find some other way to do it. It is important.

Averaging and Zeroes

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=dbd43d54b1307129474f

This is a clip of Dr. Douglas Reeves speaking to a Canadian audience about what he calls "toxic" grading practices. Reeves is the author of more than 25 books and countless articles on education.

In the clip Reeves talks about zeroes and averaging. We showed this clip to our high school faculty and there were wide ranging responses:

• Students deserve the average because this helps differentiate the steady performing student from the student that does poorly all the time but well at the end.
• Students are a sum of all of their performances so the average is the correct score for them.
• Zeroes are an essential part of grading.
• I want students to see zeroes and I want them to be calculated in the grade.

Here I want to clarify and expand upon some of what Dr. Reeves was getting at. First in the case of the average.

While in the clip he states provocatively that all averaging must go, what he and other researchers have been preaching for the past decade is to end a mindless devotion to the average as the only way of evaluating students. In fact the average might be the right score for a given student. I, along with Reeves and other researchers, am arguing that the average is not the best evaluation for all students.

It comes back as always to a conversation about standards. Is our goal to get them to the standard (in our parlance competency)? If we work hard as teachers and students work hard at learning and understanding and they make it to the standard what should the grade represent? Why should it be the average in this case? If everyone can meet the standard at the end but then we average scores it not only hurts students but it hurts us. The scores are a poor representation of how we operated as teachers. Grading is always a subjective process. As professionals we strive to minimize the subjectivity but we cannot eliminate it. As professionally trained practitioners we should allow ourselves to award students the score, the evaluation, that most appropriately matches their ability.

As far as zeroes I have posted on this many times but take one more example.

• 100-40=A
• 39-30=B
• 29-20=C
• 19-10=D
• 9-0=F

When you present this example people say that is ridiculous! But this system is as mathematically unsound as the system where the top four categories are 10 or 11 points and the last category is 59 points. So this is the first argument against zeroes--it is simply mathematically unsound.

The second argument is that it does not increase motivation. And has been shown by Dr. Reeves to have a role in whether struggling students stay in school or leave. Zeroes motivate only one type of student--good ones, ones like teachers used to be when they were in the classroom. The students that we worry about the most are not motivated to do work by receiving a zero. To the contrary they are encouraged to give up because when zeros mount the combination of their extra mathematical weight and the increase in a feeling of hopelessness cause students to shut down.

I feel strongly that zeroes should not be used and the average should not be used in all cases. That said, if a teacher still wants to use zeroes and averages as the only way to go I would ask them to continue that practice only after reflecting on exactly why they want to do it that way. As professionals we will always evaluate in different ways--the question is: Is the way you reach the evaluation of a student the best representation of what they can do?

Now What?

OK--so I went to this great conference--see previous post from Nov. 1--now what do I do?

The conference on assessment either confirmed some ideas that I was trying to work on in my teaching or reminded me that there are things that I need to do better on.

Confirmed

• Zeroes--Doug Reeves calls assigning zeroes toxic. I now have more confidence than ever to continue not assigning zeroes.
• Averaging only--I will continue to look at progress and the most recent evidence to compute student scores. This is made more difficult by an electronic grade book that only averages but I will go back to paper if I have to.
• Formative assessment--the most important thing to focus on.

Reminded

• Assess means to "sit beside." I need to work on giving even more timely feedback to my students. I will work on making contact with each student at least once during a 90 minute period. During this contact I will try to really ascertain whether they are getting it or not.
• Randomization. Student participation needs to be random. This lets kids know that they can be called on at any time so they stay more involved. I will finally buy the Popsicle sticks that I have been meaning to get, and put each students name on one of them. This is how I will draw their names randomly.
• Hands down except to ask a question. No one can raise their hands. I will pull the Popsicle stick and call on them.
• Pass on a question. I have always allowed students a pass. But I will change this policy so that my response will be, "OK, but I'll come back to you at the end." This means that they need to stay engaged and listening to the others because I will come back to them and say, "What did you think was the best answer of those three and why?"
• Non-fiction writing. I knew that writing was important but I did not know of its profound effect on all subject areas. Thank you Doug Reeves for this one! Even in physics and math (and science) an increase in non-fiction writing about the subject increases student scores. I do a lot of non-fiction writing but I will improve upon what I do and make it more systematic. The first thing I am going to do is to have students write about the most important thing that they learned in our class during the first semester. They will post these on the wall outside of our room. We will do this on Monday. A second thing that I would like to work on is a blog of student work. This may begin as a paper newsletter but I hope I will be able to morph it into a publication at some point.
• Graphing of student performance. I do a little of this now but I need to improve what I do and make it, again, more systematic. I will create a one page sheet for each competency and begin having students graph their performance.

School Wide

• At the Beyond ABC conference in 2006 we were told that one thing that we should change immediately is progress reports. If they include a number they are not progress reports. Reports with a number are fine by the way--they just aren't progress reports. I will work harder than ever to finally make real progress reports a reality again at Concord High School. I have great respect for the progress report committee of last year (I have to my wife was on it) but their findings are in opposition to the research. I feel that we do not need to discuss this one. A leader should simply explain the following: 1. We give students an achievement report every day through our online system Parent Connect, 2. This means that we do not need to print off a special "paper" achievement report at a given time, 3. What we do need is an official day where teachers are encouraged to sit beside students and discuss progress. NOT the grade, but progress. How is the student doing in relation to meeting the competencies? How is the student doing in relation to the Habits of Mind?, 4. We value this progress conversation so much that we are setting aside 4 days per year and we want you to use these days to sit and converse with students about how they are doing.
• 101 point grading system. I will work to continue to educate teachers, students and parents about the fallacy of the reliability of the 101 point system. If the AP board thinks that 5 levels are OK then we don't need to continue to do 101.
• 1-5 scale. I will work to continue to educate people on the logic and the reduced subjectivity of the 1-5 scale.

I should have this all accomplished by the end of the week. Maybe 2 weeks.

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

More on zeros

After a post on not using zeros in grading a reader questioned:

Just wondering if you've made any inroads with the administration or other teachers on this topic--particularly with regard to the after school policy.

Nearly 3 years after bringing the research on zeros to teachers there has a been a very good response to the idea. I wouldn't say that there has been a halt to the use of zeros but teachers are more conscious of why they might still give them.

The biggest progress has been made in the area of grading behavior. Teachers have quickly understood that there can be a difference between grading behavior and grading achievement v. a standard. The idea of not grading behavior or at least making it a separate grade has gained a lot of traction.

As far as the idea of a unified policy on staying after school for not turning in work--there is little progress. We are working so much on the things that come before a grading policy that we can all agree on that we won't be at this point for a while.

McCain on Education

John McCain believes American education must be worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves. He understands that we are a nation committed to equal opportunity, and there is no equal opportunity without equal access to excellent education.


From: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm


Again as in the last post, everything in grey or black is from the site. The comments in green are mine.


No Child Left Behind has focused our attention on the realities of how students perform against a common standard. John McCain believes that we can no longer accept low standards for some students and high standards for others. In this age of honest reporting, we finally see what is happening to students who were previously invisible. While that is progress all its own, it compels us to seek and find solutions to the dismal facts before us.


I agree with this. As Collins says, "we must confront the brutal reality." I am more concerned by what the site goes on to say.


There is no shortage of federal programs targeted at early child care and preschool. State and federal funding for early childhood care and education programs is over $25 billion each year. The list of programs includes Head Start, Title I preschool programs, Early Head Start, Even Start, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Early Reading First, the Social Services Block Grant, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. There is much to be achieved by leveraging and better coordinating these programs to increase availability of high quality programs. When used effectively this approach has had a tremendous impact on the wellbeing and educational outcomes of children.


Read--no more money for early childhood education. While coordination will absolutely improve these programs what is needed is a cultural change in the education of 0-3 year old children. It does not seem like this is what McCain is talking about.


State-level preschool and early care programs have created greater access for very young children whose families could not otherwise afford high quality programs. Several states such as Minnesota have launched new, high quality pre-K programs with a commitment to study their outcomes. Estimates are that 70-85 percent of children from low-income families have access to early care and/or preschool, and that nearly 90 percent of children younger than five with employed mothers are in a regular child care arrangement. However, due to complicated formulas and budgetary constraints, not every low-income child is getting access to high quality care and education on a consistent basis. Federal dollars can do far more to broaden access to high quality programs.



I agee with some parts of this but there are also some questionable ideas. Seventy - 85 % have access to early care? 1) If true it can't be the kind of educational early care that will affect learning, 2) 90% in regular child care--I have no doubt--but since their is no correlation with scores or achievement it can't be working.

The Big Future of Education

“I don't want to send another generation of American children to failing schools. I don't want that future for my daughters. I don't want that future for your sons. I do not want that future for America.”
— Barack Obama, Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, 2007

Some selections that I found interesting and related to the Concord School District. Everything in black or grey is from Obama's website. My comments, if any, are in green.

The whole K-12 plan is at:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf

Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.

This agrees with earlier posts about the emphasis on early education. 0-5 is a critically important time and it will require a cultural shift to accomplish this goal. Geoffrey Canada says that we know how to educate young childern--it happens all the time in the suburbs. We just need to translate what middle and upper class parents have learned to the parents of poor children. Just as visiting nurses that come to all families just after a child is born, we need to provide information and education for all young children.

Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

This is further evidence that the illusion that NCLB will go away is just that an illusion. They are right that the initiative has the right goal but there will still be high stakes tests and they will still be incredibly important.

Make Math and Science Education a National Priority: Obama and Biden will recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession and will support efforts to help these teachers learn from professionals in the field. They will also work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels.

Recruit, Prepare, Retain, and Reward America's Teachers

Recruit Teachers: Obama and Biden will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location.

Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.

Retain Teachers: To support our teachers, the Obama-Biden plan will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced teachers with new recruits. They will also provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.

Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as a mentor to new teachers with a salary increase. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.

In Concord we are fortunate that we do this work well already. We need to continue to do this well and to continue our new tradition of sharing what veteran teachers know with younger teachers.

Whatever It Takes

Whatever It Takes—the Story of Geoffrey Canada
Paraphrased by Tom Crumrine from the book of same name and from the most recent episode of This American Life

Geoffrey Canada had a son when he was in his teens and always thought he had been a good dad to him. It wasn’t until his forties when he had another son, this time while living in the suburbs rather than the inner city that he realized how much he had not done with the first one. Everyone in his neighborhood was so concerned with the brain development of their infants. They talked to them and read to them all the time and when they got older they received “time outs” for bad behavior rather than corporal punishment. At the time Canada was working with the young people of Harlem to help them with their educations. Not long after his realization he went to his board and told them that everything must change.

Canada realized that the biggest difference between middle and upper class children and poor children was what happened to them between the ages of 0-3. The result of his revelation eventually became Baby College. For nine Saturday mornings new parents come to ½ day meetings to learn how they can be better parents. They are not scolded and told what they are doing is wrong, they are shown the evidence and through experiential learning and conversation they are convinced that there is a better way. It goes without saying that this can be a touchy issue but the evidence for intervention like Baby College and the results from it are pretty clear.

Results:

• Reading level was greater than the NYC average
• Math level was greater than the NYC average
• 95% were on grade level
  

Pretty great progress and these are the students from year one of the program. The ones that were zero when the program began and who are 3rd graders now. Mr. Canada is hopeful that the students in subsequent years will do even better.

Class Rank and Why Not

I think my role, aside from being a teacher at CHS, is serving as the chair of the committee that is in charge of ensuring that we are focused on the big goals that we have set as a school. Part of that role is, as a newspaper’s ombudsman might, to point out when stated goals and practice might be at odds with one another. It is someone else’s role, in case you are wondering, to determine how many parenthetical sentences is too many when beginning a piece.

A colleague came to me yesterday and asked me if I knew that class rank showed up when students logged in to Parent Connect. I did not. We went and looked at her son’s page and there it was as one of the five pieces of information that appear on the home screen. The colleague went on to tell me that her son and his friends were checking their rank many times per day to see if they could move it as high as possible. One parent even baked her child a pie when he rose to 45th.

At this point if you are thinking—this is not a big deal, it is just a harmless feature—let me try to explain why it is a big deal. In the goals that we have written we hope to teach students to write well, think critically and be well rounded, educated people. In our classes every day we are saying, “These are the competencies—everyone can attain these standards if you work towards them.” While it is unlikely, we are saying to students that they all have the opportunity to meet the competencies at a level 5—they all can get to the mountain top staying with the example I often use.

Class rank is directly at odds with this. In the classroom we are talking to them about a criterion-referenced system. “Students you can all meet the standards.” While in Parent Connect we are showing them where they are in a norm-referenced way. The class rank compares them, not to the standards or the competencies or the graduation expectations, but to each other. This is the very type of comparison that competencies are designed to work against.

In addition to that issue, displaying class rank as one of the five pieces of information most deserving to be on the login screen tacitly says to students—“We feel this is important.” It lets them know that this is something that we want them to look at every day. Why else would we put it so prominently on their home screens? And they are checking it every day or in some cases multiple times per day.

I bring this to your attention because it is something that we need to discuss immediately. Parent Connect is a great tool and students are making great use of it but does showing them class rank every time they log in really fit with the goals of our school?

One argument for keeping it is that students and parents like it. That may be true but students like iPods and cell phones and eating in class. We explain to them that those things are not good for their education and we forcefully stand behind those guidelines. We can do the same thing with class rank. We could say, “Yes, class rank is occasionally needed but it is not something we want you to look at every day. We want you to focus on meeting the competencies in each class and on meeting the graduation expectations and habits of mind.” The same conversation could be had with parents letting them know that class rank is still available it just is not something that students should be concerned with on a daily basis.[1]

Fitting more with our goals and deserving of much more conversation is a movement away from ranking altogether. I find it interesting that we already have such a system when it comes to the honor role. Anyone reaching a certain percentage can be on honor role. Theoretically everyone could be on honor role if they met the standards that we had set for them. And think how exciting it would be to track how the number of students on honor role keep increasing and increasing as we become better at teaching competencies.

Educational and grading expert Tom Guskey goes a step further. Why do you have to have just one valedictorian? What if we said that anyone meeting the prestigious place of maintaining a 98.5 or above for 4 years could be valedictorian. There are schools that do this while the students and parents remain content and colleges accept their method. Continuing the thought a Latin honors system would fit much better with the goals and the way we are trying to teach each student. Summa cum laude could be everyone over 95%, magna cum laude could be everyone over 90% and cum laude could be everyone over 85%. What this does is allow for any number of students to reach points that our community values. Since it is criterion referenced it also gives students more reassurance that they are not competing with each other—they are all working toward a goal of making it to the set standards.[2]

I hope that I have laid out clearly enough what I would do if it were my choice. But it is not my choice to make. I ask that you seriously consider at least these questions:

What is the purpose in having students look at class rank every day?
What is the purpose in terms of student morale?
How does it fit with our mission, graduation expectations and competencies?

Upon sober inspection I’m confident that you will come to the conclusion that there is a better way than class rank.




[1] Consider also the student who is ranked 326th but is trying very hard each day. What does the constant message that they are in the 300s do to their motivation to succeed?
[2] From Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning by Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey, Corwin Press, 2001.

Jargon--why don't we say what we mean?

4 March 2008

I was working today with some science teachers and they were working with some terms that had come from the state of NH. They were talking about GSEs, GLEs, and frameworks. Unless you are a NH educator I will assume that you do not know what these terms/abbreviations are.

Here are the terms decoded:
GSE means: standards for a range of grades (k-2 for example) (It stands for Grade Span Expectations)
GLE means: standards for a grade (It stands for Grade Level Expectations)
Frameworks means: standards.

There were very smart science teachers that did not know the meaning of any of the terms. When the terms were decoded for them they were able to continue the work.

My point is that there is no need to obfuscate what we are doing. We are talking about the big goals and the assessments for those goals. Especially at the early stages we need to keep the process accessible so all involved can participate. When it becomes necessary to introduce specific terms we will have them. But at the beginning we just want to bring everyone into the process so they can begin thinking about goals and assessments.

I do not understand why the trend in education has always been to create new terms new pieces of jargon every few years. I fear that it is all because people are trying to sell new books. The bottom line is that we should focus on plain language that allows everyone to participate in the discussion.

Consider a converation that I had with my friend who goes to Dartmouth Business School. He is a smart man who, before going to business school, taught 6th grade. When I talked with him I had a very good conversation about the goals related to entire schools and to courses. But we never used any of the coded terms that are so often seen in teacher only discussions. We were able to talk about what students need to know and what they should be able to do. We were able to talk about this in a very in depth way. And we never used any jargon in our conversations.

Of course when it actually does get to the level of teachers talking about designing curriculum there will be a need to use some terms and scaffolds. But there is no need to mask what the real conversation is about.

MSU Essay

Master of Science in Science Education Essay
Tom Crumrine

After I graduated from college I unintentionally took four years off. During that time I had 17 different jobs as I moved around the country. I lived as close to home as my parent’s Ohio basement and as far from home as the docks of Portland, Maine and the hills of North Carolina. I was a concrete technician, a phlebotomist, a carpenter and for one day a worker in a Nissan auto parts plant. At the auto plant I was led to a bin of identical metal parts. They were all shaped like boomerangs and I was told to use a grinder to “sand” the inside of them. I did this for eight straight hours. The next day I returned and there was nowhere to park—I left. I had loved my experience at Denison University and I had loved studying biology there, but I was not sure what to do with it. Denison truly was a liberal arts experience and I enjoyed almost every class that I took. But they did not spend a lot of time instructing us on what we might actually do with our degrees.

So I wandered. During that time there were highs and lows. Looking back on that time it does not seem like such a bad idea. I have told friends that I would encourage my own future children to do the same as long as they cut it down to two years rather than four. When I turned 25 I broke my hand and had to quit my phlebotomy[1] job because it required injecting people with needles. Working at a plasma donation center had been hard enough, I did not want to go through the learning process again with my other hand. I moved home to Tiffin, Ohio and began a teacher certification program at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. I drove the 50 miles three days a week to attend classes. In the flattest farm country of Ohio this 50 mile trip only had one turn. I drove 18 miles on a perfectly straight road, passing corn and soybeans the whole way, turned left and drove the rest of the way right into Bowling Green. I always had to park far from campus near the hockey stadium but because of the table-like quality of the landscape I could see a mile all the way to the tall campus buildings.

Every day I walked that walk, every day hating it. I so remember the wind on that campus. It is flat from Bowling Green all the way west to about the Rocky Mountains so the wind has a chance to pick up and on the campus it was very constant. I have never enjoyed wind and it would cut into me every day as I walked to class. Wind has that way of finding its way to the spot where your shirt is just a bit un-tucked and it flies up your shirt chilling your whole body. The school and the campus were actually quite nice. I just hated the wind.

For some reason writing about the wind brings to mind one of the most interesting dating experiences of my life. It happened at Bowling Green and had something to do with wind, because it had something to do with tennis, which is a sport that is often affected by the wind. During the two years that I attended Bowling Green I had several classes with a woman named Karen. I do not at this point remember her last name but it also began with a K. She had a slightly out of date bob of dirty blond hair and we had had a lot of fun talking and working together. I have always been shy when it comes to asking girls out but I figured--what do I have to loose?[2] So I was walking with Karen one day after class and I asked her if she would like to go play tennis with me sometime. I knew from previous conversations that she played tennis so I thought this was a good start. It was clear that I was asking her on a date and she immediately blanched and told me that she had a boyfriend. I scrambled and apologized hoping that I had not embarrassed her. And then she did the strangest thing, she said that we could still play tennis if her boyfriend came along too. Dear reader, whether you are conversant with the rules of tennis or not I am sure that you realize that tennis is either a 2 person game or a 4 person game. I know that she was just trying to be nice but I have always remembered that as one of the peculiar rejections I have ever been a party to.

Wasn’t this essay supposed to be something about education? Let me get back to that. After working at mostly manual labor jobs for 4 years going back to school was easy. The professors lectured, you took notes; the professors gave homework, you did it. Maybe easy isn’t the right word but having what you had to do laid out for you certainly was easier than trying to make ends meet with an hourly salary. I had always done well in school but I had never thought that it would be easier than something else. Given the perspective of trying to make ends meet in the real world, taking classes again was simple. There were many experiences at Bowling Green that shaped my later thinking but one in particular has always stood out in my mind.

One of the unique classes there was Education in a Pluralistic Society. Entering the class I was not even sure what a pluralistic society was. I learned about pluralistic societies during the class but I also learned much more about what to teach and how to teach. One of my favorite lessons from the class was entitled, “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” In this lesson a guest lecturer challenged us to identify a mechanical device in a 20 questions type format. The device looked like a large bathroom plunger with metal at the end instead of rubber. Guesses ranged across the spectrum but none were correct. The guest then explained that the device was his washing machine. It was used before the days of electricity to plunge into tubs of clothing to mix them and wash them. He went on to explain that many people were awed by the fact that he still washed his clothes that way. In his family though, clothes washing was a family experience that they did together every Saturday morning. It was a needed chore but it was made into a fun family activity by doing it together. He went on to explain many other examples of different ways of thinking about the world. While I have continued to wash my clothes an electric washing machine I did take away his greater message that there are many ways of thinking about the world and the way that most people do it is not always the correct or the only way.

As I became a teacher this is one idea that has stuck with me. Not the idea of subversion but the idea that there are different ways to think about the world. Much of what I have done in teaching relates to opening the minds of students to new ways of thinking. I am most excited when I can help open up something that they did not know existed.

Working with biodiesel[3] has been one a way to practice this idea in my teaching. I have been making my own biodiesel since 2000 and have long been a proponent of at the very least taking a look at why we emit so much carbon and what that might be doing to our planet. In my chemistry classes we have changed a unit on organic chemistry into a unit on fuel. The same standards and goals are achieved but instead of some of the more mundane chemistry we focus on the real world application of chemistry into making fuels. Making and testing biodiesel is the final activity of the unit. As a class we obtain old deep fryer oil from a place like KFC and over a few days we turn that into a fuel. Then we actually put the fuel into an engine so the students can see it work. When I began doing this unit there were never any students who had heard of biodiesel. Now when we do it there are often some students that have not only heard of it but know its background and essentially how it is made.

In the ecology class that I teach I take students on field trips and try to show them unique ecosystems that were right in front of them all the time. I can show them a video about the Galapagos Islands or show them pictures of the interior of the Amazon but equally amazing ecosystems abound in their native New Hampshire. The best example of this is our trip to a bog at the beginning of the year. The students are all seniors and like all seniors have a feeling that they know it all and are ready for college. Smith bog, like all bogs, is a floating mass of peat on water. As the students walk on the surface it undulates like a water bed because it is literally a mass of peat moss floating on water. The bog has carnivorous plants and strange animals and the students always are in awe of what they find there. But this bog is just a few miles from the school and I have never had a student that had been there previously.

As those examples illustrate, passing along my excitement about the natural world to students is a big impetus for being a teacher. A final example where I have the chance to do this is a class called R.O.P.E. (Reaching Our Potential in Education). ROPE is an experiential education class where we take students on various trips where they learn by doing. There is a rock climbing trip, a 300 mile biking trip, fall camping trips and winter camping trips. My favorite is the winter camping trip. New Hampshire can have some harsh winters and leading a group of students on a 3 night winter camping trip has its challenges. Because the course is experiential education we teach the students everything they need to know about safe winter camping, cooking and hiking. But during the actual trip we allow them to “fail safely.” We would never let anything truly bad happen to anyone but if they make a poor winter shelter then they experience the consequences of that. One time a group of four forgot to bring their pot. As you might imagine it is difficult to cook without a pot. This group had to wait until other groups were finished cooking until they could cook their meals. Another time a group set up a tarp without a center ridgeline. It rained during the night and all the water collected in the center of the tarp making it sink down until it nearly touched their backs. They were safe just uncomfortable. They made a very good shelter on the second night.

These ROPE experiences are ones that many people in New Hampshire never have. I often tell the kids to be proud that they spent a weekend outside in the winter. I ask them to think about how many people in their entire lives have camped outside for a winter weekend. They have completed something that many life long New Hampshire residents have never done.

I remain excited about my own learning. The MSSE program is a very exciting part of formally continuing my education. I have taken 4 classes so far and have enjoyed them all. The camaraderie of the teachers that take the classes and the flexibility of instruction are a perfect fit for my busy life. I can imagine nothing better than logging in to the online library and researching microbiology at 5am on a Saturday morning. Coffee cup at my side I peruse the journals and continue educational journeys that I might never have begun without the guidance of MSU professors.

Montana State is a very important piece of my future in education. Over the years I have become interested not only in the education of students but in sharing what I have learned about teaching with other teachers. I have become particularly interested in the use of formative assessment in education. For the last 4 years I have been a member of a study group that meets weekly to discuss formative assessment. My first stab at sharing this work was to publish an article with my colleague Chris Demers on the work that the school has done with formative assessment. Another closely related area that I have been working with is grading reform. This work asks teachers to consider what they want to grade, how they grade and what they want grades to convey to students and parents. As a school district we have worked on making report cards easier to understand for parents and students. Both formative assessment and report cards come together because they are both about improved communication with students. Formative assessment helps both teacher and student understand where a student is and where they need to go. Informative report cards do the same thing and allow everyone involved to see what needs to be done.

I plan to use what I learn in the MSSE program to continue my own education, the education of my students and the education of other teachers. I saw in a recent article that when Korean and Japanese teachers retire they leave a legacy of documents about their teaching and learning. In contrast American teachers tend to leave nothing, taking all of their knowledge with them when they leave. I hope to be part of a new generation of teachers that gains knowledge over their teaching career yet spends equal energy in making sure that what they learn is passed on to less experienced teachers.


[1] A phlebotomist is a person who draws blood from people and then uses a machine to separate the blood and the plasma. The red blood cells are then returned to the patient and the plasma is used in medical research and other health fields. Phlebotomy attracts an interesting group of people because it can be done up to two times a week and it often offers a monetary inducement.
[2] A corollary to this whole tale and a subject for another essay is that guys who are always successful with women are constantly telling guys that aren’t, “What do you have to loose?” It is so unfair because it is easy to say that when women never turn you down.
[3] Biodiesel is a biofuel that has been frequently in the news in recent years. It is easily made by combining vegetable oil, methanol and a base. As its name implies it can be substituted directly for diesel fuel in any diesel engine. The simple chemistry of its construction makes it a natural choice for chemistry labs.

Competencies First? NO!

Groundhog Day 2008

The other day someone asked me why we haven't done the competencies first this year. While a tempting suggestion, I'd like to try to explain why that easy path isn't also the best path.

The plan that we have laid out this year is:

• District Goals
• High School Goals (Graduation Expectations)
• K-12 Curriculum Goals
• Department Goals
• Course Goals (Competencies)

And we have proceeded through this list from top to bottom. Always going back to the biggest of the goals before proceeding to the ones below.

It is tempting to want to start at the competency level and work the other direction, or to work from many directions at once. The reason that this is tempting is because the material and the ideas at the competency level is the material that is closest to the hearts of individual teachers. We are always going to be more comfortable talking about what we know--so it makes sense to begin with competencies-the big goals for our individual courses.

From my perspective as a chemistry teacher I know that it would be a lot easier for me to talk with intelligence about the goals of my class than to discuss the goals of the whole school, or even my department. I studied science for 6 years in college and graduate school so I am pretty sure that I know what needs to be taught in the class. So I could quite easily sit down and determine a plan of events that would cover the most important aspects of the field of chemistry.

While any teacher taking this approach would be likely to come up with a fine course of studies, it would also be likely that it would be different in some ways from another teachers. Those differences might be small, like a different lab to teach the same thing, or they might be big, one course preparing a student to take college courses in the subject, one course teaching students to gain jobs immediately in that subject. Beginning at the competency level causes this to happen.

If we spread to other courses, again with the bottom up example, we might find that the science department courses mainly teach students to go to college. They teach other things but are designed for college readiness. The math department might, at the same time, be teaching students for life skills in math--problem solving, everyday math, etc. They still prepare students for college but their main focus is on the everyday use of math. Well, this dichotomy leads to questions about the goal of the entire school and how those goals are set out. Without talking about the bigger goals of the school departments never can be quite sure of what their existing courses should be like and moreover, what new kinds of classes they should offer in the future.

In a small district with one high school it may be hard to imagine how this could be a problem. But imagine a district with 13 high schools like many in big cities. How does each high school know what departments they should have and what types of classes they should offer? How do they know if they should focus on science and technology or if they should be more traditional schools? Without some kind of overarching goal structure these many high schools would not know what kind of high school experience they should give.

Consider too the elementary schools in Concord. With 7 schools in many parts of the city they need to coordinate so students are receiving similar kinds of educations. Especially since they will all be joined together at the middle and high schools later in their careers. How could they know what to do without articulated district and school goals?

So the path that we have chosen for CHS this year is one where we look a the big goals of the district and of the school and then decide our other goals from that point. Once we know what the goals of the school are then we can decide how we will give our departments support to meet those goals. Once departments know their goals, stemming from the goals of the school, they can determine what types of courses they will have to meet those goals. They might also decide that they need to change existing courses or add new ones to meet the stated goals. Once course teachers know all of the goals they can use that information to determine what exactly goes into their course.

Choosing lesson plans first and then determining where they fit is something that young teachers often do. They are scrambling hard to just keep the kids in seats and they are literaly just trying to have something to do that day. As they progresss in their careers they begin to see where the lessons actually fit within bigger goals and they begin to implement them more purposefully. They begin to really use lessons to get to the point of the unit they are trying to teach. This is a hardscrable way to go through the first few years of teaching. And in Concord we have stopped making teachers do this. Rather than turn them loose in a room with a text book we tell them the units, and the goals and we tell them where the lessons should be used and why.

The point here is that building from competencies up is the blind and hardscrable way to do it. The purposeful way to go about building a high school is to consider the big goals first and then use the lessons that still fit. It is not a process of creating more lessons but a process of using existing lessons in a more purposeful way.

Conversation with Grant Wiggins

11 January 2008

On Friday we had a videoconference with Grant Wiggins of Understanding by Design fame.

He was advising us on our work with the Graduation Expectations as the high school. This year we have worked with our mission statement and defined what the graduation expectations would be.

A couple of the things that Dr. Wiggins talked about that I thought were worthy to record:

1. We don't do a good enough job of explaining to kids the consequences of not being able to do our graduation expectations. Or even explaining why they need to do certain things.

2. Good getting better. Dr. Wiggins did an excellent job of describing why a good institution needs to always strive to get better. His example was the Red Sox. The Red Sox won the World Championship this year but they are still working to get better this off season. They are trying to acquire Johann Santanna and are trying to make sure their middle relief is better than it was last year. The same goes for a team like the NE Patriots. Suppose that they go 19-0. Will they return the same team next year? No. they will do whatever they can to make it all happen again.

All of the talk radio shows this week have been talking  not about the Patriots possible victory but what might happen in terms of their dynasty.  What makes a dynasty, etc.   And the thing is, all of the teams that have won one Superbowl are not even in the conversation.  We are talking about teams that have won many times in an era.  Many times with the same crew.  

Obviously we are not trying to develop a sports team at CHS but parts of the analogy does fit in some ways.  We should not be happy with temporary acknowledgement of success, we should continue to endeavor to become better.

More on what a zero does to a grade

December 2007

A friend emailed me a PowerPoint created by Rick Wormeli that included some interesting ways of thinking about assigning zeroes. I've been discussing it for more than a year now but I really liked these two new (to me) takes on it.

The first one he called Imagine the Reverse. What if you did for A's what is currently done for F's.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

Just look at it--no one in the world would go for it. Because we know what it would do to students--especially high achieving students. If we sent home report cards where everyone had an A and there were just a few F's parents would be outraged. (This brings up another post issue related to the Bell curve and students being trained by us to want to be separated into groups--the winners and the losers if you will--but that isn't for today.)

Another way of thinking about it would be to compare rubric scores to a 100 point scale. (Also from Rick Wormeli via Doug Reeves.)

4=100
3=90
2=80
1=70
0=60

There may be some disagreement on how these are assigned but it seems that thoughtful educators could agree that it at least makes logical sense. What if we continue the transition down to zero.

-1=50
-2=40
-3=30
-4=20
-5=10
-6=0

Wormeli, who I assume was paraphrasing Reeves, argues why would a teacher want to assigning such a low score for a zero. Doesn't zero mean that one is 6 times worse than the 60?

Yet another argument for thinking about the assignment of a zero for a grade. If it can be defended I suppose it can still be used, it just seems that the case for zero is getting weaker and weaker. Especially if the zero is being used as a punishment. Not turning in homework is a behavior so should be punished with a behavioral penalty not a grade penalty. As I have said before I am not telling anyone how to grade. But no one should grade or calculate grades without thinking about how they are doing it and why. At the end of the day the teacher (the expert in the subject) should know that the grade is a accurate and fair reflection of what a student is able to do.

Bench Press

3 December 2007

I was listening to the sports talk radio show Mike and Mike in the Morning the other day and one of the hosts Mike Golic said, "They don't do the bench press on the 50 yard line." He was making the point that the game of football is more than speed and strength. Those things are important and need to be trained for but doing only those things would miss out on the big picture. It is necessary to play together as a team to be successful with the ultimate goals of football teams.

I always find a way to relate everything I hear to work but I don't feel that it is too much of a stretch to see how this analogy works with the CHS work this year. It is a vast over simplification of the process that we are going through but it does help explain what we are trying to achieve. In my last post, "The Circle," I spoke of the path that we are following, 1) District Goals, 2) CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations, 3) Overarching Competencies, 4) Courses, and 5) Competencies. Each of these steps, from 1 to 5, act as filters for the next. Each filter needs to inform the step that comes after so that the main goals of the school will be fulfilled. (Fulfilled? Yeah, that's a little over the top by you get the point.)

To continue with the football analogy, consider an extreme example. What if all a team did was work out in the weight room? They could work out to the point that they were the strongest team in the league. This would help them and they may win a few games based just on strength. But they could probably be beaten quite easily by a moderately strong but cohesive and well coached team. The team that only worked out in the weight room would have missed the big goal in favor of focusing on one of the smaller aspects of football preparation.

When you have an ultimate goal it is also sometimes necessary to filter out some other goals and that is what we are doing this year at the high school. With our work on graduation expectations we are trying to always filter what we do by thinking about the graduate that will walk across the stage in June. What do they need and what would we like them to be able to do? This year in the NFL the New England Patriots may have to do some filtering as they near the end of their season. Their stated goal for this year, and every other year, is to win the Super Bowl. This year, though, they also have the chance to go undefeated. This has not been done since 1972 (or somewhere around there) and would be an amazing achievement. But going for the undefeated season might actually hurt New England's chances to win the Super Bowl. If an important player was hurt in chasing the undefeated season and was not available in the playoffs it might cost them their larger goal.

I remember a game in the 90s where the 49ers were 14 and 1 and going into their last game. They had a chance to win at one point but didn't push too hard, wound up loosing the game and ending the season with a 14-2 record. At the time I was young and didn't understand the big picture. I was confused as to why they had not put in all their best players to try and win their last game. After they won the Super Bowl that year I realized that they had been filtering their goals. 15-1 would have been nice but a total waste without a Super Bowl victory. They chose 14-2. They sacrificed one smaller goal to achieve another larger goal.

As we continue with our high school work this year there will be times when we have to do the same thing. We aren't trying to win a football game of course but we do have the ultimate goal of preparing that student that walks across our graduation stage. Just as a teacher would consider all of the little details of their course that they could teach--but don't because they miss the big goals. In biology teachers have decided in recent years to not focus so much on very minor details like alleles. (Do you know what alleles are? Don't worry about it, most likely you are still a highly functioning member of our society--and that is the whole point.) They looked long and hard at their course and decided to leave out (or de-emphasize) some details in favor of the big goal of having biologically literate students. Now as a school we are trying to work with doing the same thing. What are the big goals that we have and what are the smaller things that we can filter out so that they don't interfere with students meeting those goals?

These are not easy questions and this will not be easy work.

The Circle

29 November 2007

I was looking at the CHS plan the other day. Here it is from top down. Each one is designed to inform the one below it.

1. District Goals
2. CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations
3. K-12 Curriculum Guides
4. Programs--The Departments at the School
5. Overarching Competencies--the ones that are specific to a subject area or department. Like graphing in science.
6. Courses
7. Course Competencies

As I looked at it for the hundredth time and compared it to books and planning guides and my notes from the past few years I began to think of it differently than I ever had before.

First, I began to realize that in this year of work CHS has literally gone from number 1. right down (or will go) to competencies. Because of the way the year has been organized and because of the pressure from our accrediting body this has been the way we have had to go about it. The thing is--we went about it exactly the right way. Why in the world would you start to think about course competencies before you had thought of the overarching competencies of a subject area? Wouldn't you want to know which competency type things were going to appear in every course? Well we have done the same thing with our whole school. We have identified what we want graduates to look like and are working on seeing how they get there.

Second, I came to see that in designing our process to go over many years what we really are doing is going through the steps from 1-7 and THEN going back to number 1 to revise from the top down again. We will use the data that we have collected this year to inform what we should do, how we should change things to make them better.

Each time I look at it it becomes more clear that we are doing the right thing. How many people believe that? I'm not sure--but I am confident that we are doing the right thing.

Anatomy Teaching Idea

November 2007

Just thinking about a way to teach anatomy without dissecting cats.

The theme of the year is building an organism. Students can build any mammalian organism that they want. A whale, a cat, a monkey, etc. Clearly some organisms will be more difficult because the available literature will be limited. It will change the order of the course from exterior of organisms to the interior but the change will be a logical one.

Overarching themes:
--appreciation of the beauty and functionality of the living mammalian organism
--appreciation of life
--yes it is hard to show appreciation so students will need to demonstrate their change in thinking over the course of the year.

Rules about supplies
--teams of 2 or 3
--same money that would have been spent on cat $30 per student
--cannot spend more than that and must have receipts as part of the project

Units:
1. Bones and Joints
--Big Goal--The skeleton is the support and protection system for organisms.
--Learn bones and joints as units. For example bones of the arm, rib cage, leg, pelvic girdle, vertebrae--how they all fit together. Not in isoloation.
--Build skeleton of organism--4 class days (90s)
2. Circulatory and respiratory
--Big goal--circulatory system moves oxygen to needed parts of the body.
3. Digestion
--Big goal is break down of nutrients for use in the body.
--Build 2. and 3. as part of one building session--2 days (90s)
4. Muscles
--Big goal is movement and how it works in the body.
--Build musculature--4 days (90s)
--Zoo field trip or similar--looking at live organisms. It would be best if it could be a petting zoo or something where students could look close up at organisms.
5. Integumentary
--Big goal is the role of skin in protection
--build skin
6. Microscopic
--Big goal is what is happening at the microscopic level.
--immunity
--histology

Grading Continues to Evolve at CHS

Questions

Some questions that keep coming up....

1. How do I receive scores like 5,4,3,2,1 and get into college?
2. Where is the F?
3. We need to punish not turning work in, how do we do this in this system?
4. What does this mean in terms of GPA?
5. What does this mean in terms of graduating?
6. What does this mean in terms of passing a course?
7. Why do we need a new system?
8. How do I compare myself to other kids so I can ensure that I am on top? I want to go to a good college.

Achievement Categories

A colleague asked me the other day for my explanation of the grading levels that I used last year.

I used the following achievement categories:

5=Wow!
4=Great!
3=Got it! (met the standard)
2=Nearly there!
1=Oops!
INC=not handed in.

What I wrote for last year:
Look for these categories on all progress reports that are given to you (the student.) They are much more important than the single grade that you will receive on a report card. These are indicators of how you are doing in relation to specific things that you need to know. If you see a score of a 2 it means that you are close but you need to do a little more work to reach at least the 3 level. If you score a 4 or a 5 it means that you are really putting it all together. Not only do you know the material but you can transfer it to new situations.

The point about using levels instead of traditional grades is to you and I can work together for you to improve. If you score a 1 on something at the beginning of the unit --THAT IS OK! This is just a signal that you and I will need to work together to improve what you know about that subject.

If you see an incomplete (INC) this means that you have not handed something in. I can't give you a grade on something if I can't see what you can actually do so if you have an incomplete you will need to get your work in. Once you hand in the work then I will be able to give you your score on that piece.