Structure Regular Time for Teams to
Examine Data and Student Work
|
Structure Regular Time for Teams to Examine Data and Student Work |
|
|
|
|
Teaching is no longer a solitary act. If a school is going to move all students to proficiency on reading and mathematics indicators, then all teachers must be on the same page in terms of defining proficiency and interpreting student performance. Teams of teachers must regularly meet to analyze monitoring data, examine student work and teacher assignments, and reach consensus on what proficient performance looks like at their grade level. As students move from grade-to-grade, teachers need concrete information about where the student was when they left the previous grade to plan effective instruction. Teachers who think they do not need to regularly collaborate with their colleagues will limit their ability to help their school reach the target. Your role in structuring regular time for teams to examine data and student work is similar to the role that Rick DuFour, superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School District 125 in Illinois, describes as his role in shifting the focus from what was being taught to what was being learned in his article, "The Learning-Centered Principal," "As principal, I played an important role in initiating, facilitating, and sustaining the process of shifting our collective focus from teaching to learning. To make collaborative teams the primary engine of our school improvement efforts, teachers needed time to collaborate. Teachers, accustomed to working in isolation, needed focus and parameters as they transitioned to working in teams. They needed a process to follow and guiding questions to pursue. They needed training, resources, and support to overcome difficulties they encountered while developing common outcomes, writing common assessments, and analyzing student achievement data. They needed encouragement, recognition, and celebration as they progressed. They needed someone to confront those individuals or teams of teachers who failed to fulfill their responsibilities."
What do you want teachers to do in team meetings? How do you structure team meeting time? What is the principal's role? How do you communicate expectations? Where can you find time for ongoing team meetings? Why do we need to collaboratively examine student work? What questions guide the examination or facilitate the discussion? What capacity building do staff need to effectively collaborate on examining student performance? Resources What do you want teachers to do in team meetings? Teachers need to meet regularly to plan strategies to attain student achievement goals, analyze performance data and student work, and identify instructional implications. The focus of these team meetings is an ongoing examination of what students know and can do and what they still need to learn so that teachers can appropriately focus their instruction. Teachers need to do much of this work in grade level teams, but must also meet with vertical teams on occasion to ensure an instructional continuum of increasing rigor as students move into higher grades. Team of teachers need to collaboratively
[top] How do you structure team meeting time? In a JSD (Journal of Staff Development) article entitled, In the Right Context, Rick DuFour says that creating an appropriate structure for teacher collaboration is vitally important, but also insufficient. Principals must do more than organize teacher teams and hope for the best. They must provide the focus, parameters, and support to help teams function effectively.Principals who are staff development leaders must:
[top] What is the principal's role? Principals play a critical role in setting the expectation that planning and examining student work and performance data should be an ongoing, collaborative process. Principals need to provide time for this to happen. They need to consider how they could use staff meetings or other meeting times to build capacity and set expectations for how teams or departments will examine student work as a regular activity at their team meetings. Principals must also monitor the process and products and recognize it when it is successful. Principals need to
[top] How do you communicate expectations? It is probably a good idea to communicate expectations both in a meeting and a memo. Your presentation and memo should describe your expectations that teams or departments participate in ongoing examination of student achievement data and student work. You need to identify the reason, focus, and end products for these meetings. When staff members hear your presentation and read your memo, they should be able to answer the following questions:
[top] Where can you find time for ongoing team meetings? Middle schools have traditionally organized schedules to include team planning, so finding the time for them is not as challenging as changing how folks use the time. Finding the time in many elementary and high schools is more challenging Ideally, elementary schools would create a schedule that frees up a grade level team to meet by scheduling all the students in that grade in a variety of specials at the same time. High schools need to prioritize scheduling to accommodate a common planning period for staff teaching the same course. An ASCD article in Educational Leadership, entitled, "Finding Time for Collaboration" by Mary Anne Raywid offers 15 examples of how schools are experimenting with creative ways to make or find time for shared reflection. In the March 2000 issue of Education Update, Dan Galloway, principal of Stevensville High School, says, "Teachers didn't want collaborative time in addition to the school day - they wanted it as part of their school day." Teachers found time by deciding to arrive at school 15 minutes early on the first day of the week and delay students starting classes by 30 minutes so that teams could collaborate. In an NCREL report "An Exploratory Analysis of School Improvement Systems," Cromey and Hanson describe how four schools found time to plan.
School B: School staff are released early from school once per week for at least 45 minutes. This time is added to other days throughout the week. The entire staff meets once a week for one hour before school. Staff decreased the "nuts and bolts" of the meetings and prioritized work related to assessment. School C: Same-grade teachers meet informally during weekly planning periods and formally every six weeks. To accommodate these planning periods, students in entire grades are sent to "specials" (e.g., gym, art classes). Time is also allotted at regularly scheduled staff meetings. Teachers are released from teaching duties several days each year and are replaced by substitute teachers. School D: Teachers meet in "within-grade" and "subject-area" teams during their planning hours once per week. Teachers request time to meet with each other during school hours, and substitutes are hired to support this. In addition, teachers meet after school. [top] Why do we need to collaboratively examine student work? The Aspen Workshop on High Schools recommended in its summary report of the Transforming High Schools Task Force that the continuous and collaborative examination of student work along with the personalization of schooling are the two critical strategies for transforming high schools at the local level. Kate Nolan, Director of Re-Thinking Accountability for the Annenberg Institute of School Reform, believes "The process of studying student work is a meaningful and challenging way to be data-driven, to reflect critically on our instructional practices, and to identify the research we might study to help us think more deeply and carefully about the challenges our students provide us. Rich, complex work samples show us how students are thinking, the fullness of their factual knowledge, the connections they are making. Talking about them together in an accountable way helps us to learn how to adjust instruction to meet the needs of our students." Though teachers have always examined student work as part of their grading process, the new focus on accountability and standards has driven a more structured and collaborative examination of student work. The focus of the examination has shifted from a summative evaluation of student performance to a diagnostic evaluation of student performance, teacher assignment, and implications for instruction. [top] What questions guide the examination or facilitate the discussion? The Annenberg Institute Web site on "Looking at Student Work suggests the following questions as possible focus areas when examining student work. http://www.lasw.org/questions_focus.html About the quality of student work:
Select one standard that is most directly related to the activity from which the student work was created. Please write out the entire standard. What were students asked to do? Clearly outline the activity or performance that students were asked to conduct. Use concrete examples. What story does the work tell? Take some time and look deeply at the student work. For your own use, record your observations, comments, and questions. Look specifically for evidence that your selected standard has been addressed. Analyze the student work using your standard to assess student learning. Using your observations as evidence, discuss how one can tell that the student has understood and synthesized the knowledge, skills, and concepts addressed in the standard. How good is good enough? Use your scoring rubric or other assessment tools to assess your sample of student work. Describe how the student has exceeded, met, or failed to meet the expectations set forth by the scoring rubric. Include a copy of the rubric if possible. How can your inquiry guide further instruction? Discuss what your inquiry into the sample of student work tells you about student learning, classroom instruction, and the assignment given. How might you do things differently in the future? [top] What capacity building do staff need to effectively collaborate on examining student performance? As teams begin to collaborate on the end products they are responsible for producing, they will quickly identify areas in which they need to build capacity. They may recognize they need capacity building in understanding a content standard indicator or in reaching consensus on defining proficiency. They may need help in writing good assessments, analyzing data, or in leading a discussion about student work. "Just in time" learning is an effective professional development strategy for this kind of capacity building by embedding the professional development in the context of the process. For example, you or someone else with expertise in these areas, might facilitate the data analysis or examination of student work discussion so the team understands what the discussion looks like. You may ask a district or school content expert to sit with the team to answer questions about an indicator. You may provide feedback on the end products and/or showcase especially good end products to provide clarity about what they should look like. [top] Resources for Monitoring Student Progress Online Technical Assistance School Improvement in Maryland Web Site Examining your Monitoring Data is a workshop on how to structure data dialogues to discuss, analyze and make instructional decisions based on the data collected in your monitoring plan.  Examining Student Work is an online workshop designed to support school leaders setting expectations and facilitating the discussion about student work.  Examining Classroom Assignments and Assessments is an online workshop designed to support school leaders in aligning their assessments and assignments to the state content standards.  Other Web Sites Looking at Student Work is an Annenberg Institute for School Reform Web site that explores the general use of various protocols for looking at student work. "To ensure success and equity across school systems, successful practices like the examination of student work samples need to become part of how schools and districts do their work." Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Toolkit provides information about protocols for examining student work. This Coalition of Essential Schools Web site asserts that "looking closely together at student work can unveil a treasure trove of insights to guide school communities as they reflect on their purpose, assess their progress, and plan strategies for reaching all children better." The site provides a number of useful protocols including the Tuning Protocol, the Collaborative Assessment Conference, and a Constructivist Protocol. Guidelines for Looking at Student Work, produced by Philadelphia public school teachers participated in the Philadelphia Education Fund's Small Learning Community Mini-Grants program. They describe guidelines that Philadelphia public school teachers used to help teacher teams get started with a process of inquiry based on the student work generated on the standard being taught in a unit of study. Online Articles "Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment" by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam in the Phi Delta Kappan argues that there is firm evidence showing that formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and that its development can raise standards of achievement. "In the Right Context" by Rick DuFour in the Journal of Staff Development discusses how effective leaders structure team meetings and provide professional development for staff. |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
| How Have States Implemented AYP? |
| How Have States Designed Their Accountability Systems? |
| How Do States Report Progress? |
| How Do States Provide Technical Assistance to Districts and Schools? |
 |
