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Teacher Advocacy Group Presentation

Podcast 1: Teacher Advocacy Groups

This graphic data representation should show specific standards, goals, and/or objectives that are met by the performance task.  It would also be optimal to have a pretest and posttest to show how students improved after the performance task.  These data should also be presented in graphic form.  If a standardized state test is given to students it would be best to have those data for the students in the classes the teachers in the advocacy group are using to gather the data.  This could be standardized test scores broken down by each class or for the whole group of students represented.  It would not be necessary to break these data down by student since what you are trying to show is how students can do just as well if not better on performance tasks as they can on standardized tests.

The teacher advocacy group is also trying to show how the performance tasks are just as legitimate forms of measurement as standardized tests, since they are measuring students’ attainment and retention of standards set forth by the schools system.  Once all the charts and graphs are created in Excel or even in Word, brief analyses and interpretations can be added in narrative form.  These short paragraphs at the bottom of each graph can explain how well students have done on performance tasks in comparison to standardized assessments.  They can also explain how a more comprehensive measurement of student achievement is necessary to show how well the students are learning.  It would also be helpful to explain that these performance tasks are currently being done by teachers and would therefore not cost the district any more money.  All that the teacher advocacy group is asking administration to do is to consider including data on performance tasks as part of the annual yearly progress of the school.  The argument is that this would provide a more realistic and comprehensive picture of student learning.

So, how do teachers in the advocacy group you have formed judge their own assessments based on the criteria? Teachers in the advocacy group should begin by making a list of all the assessments they use in the target class.  The idea is to gather data from this class to present to administrators in order to make a case for more balanced assessments.  Once teachers have made a list they can divide it into two columns: performance tasks and other evidence.  Performance tasks can be characterized as measuring growth over time, causing students to solve a real-world problem, involving a scenario set up by the teacher for students to perform, and having specific criteria tied directly to the objectives for the unit or set of lessons.  Other evidence measure specific knowledge and skills students need to carry out the performance tasks; give the teacher a snapshot of what students know and are able to do at a particular time; and offer feedback to both teacher and students as to what knowledge and skills are still needed to carry out the performance tasks.

Because of the nature of these two types of assessments, they should be sequenced in such a way as to make sure students have the knowledge and skills needed to perform the tasks that prove they have truly mastered the objectives of the unit the teacher has created.  Performance tasks and other evidence can be both formative and summative in nature.  Formative means the teacher is measuring what students know and can do at a particular time in order to determine what they still need to know and be able to do.  Summative means the teacher is measuring the knowledge and skills students have accumulated over a period of time to determine how well they have attained the bigger ideas and understandings inherent in the goals the teacher has determined for the unit or group of lessons.

After teachers have made a list of assessments, they should then put them in sequential order.  First, the formative assessments must come before the summative assessments.  Second, other evidence that measures students’ attainment of knowledge and skills should come before the cumulative performance assessment that requires the knowledge and skills measured by the other evidence.  Finally, after teachers in the advocacy group have created the list and put it in sequential order, they should imbed and explicate how they will involve the students in the process of assessment.  Two ways to do this are to have students help create the assessments, and to have students reflect at each stage of the unit on what they have learned.  This process of judging your own assessments on the criteria for balanced assessments may take several meetings, and offering feedback to each other will not only improve the evidence you present to administrators but will also improve your actual assessment practices.

For self-assessments to work, students must see their value. If teachers have students fill out forms, but never return to this information provided, students will see them as a waste of time, yet another instance where they have no real control over their educations. However, if self-assessments are used alongside teacher created assessments, students will begin to understand why they are doing what they are doing. So how can these assessments be used? One way is for students themselves to begin to identify their own areas of strengths and weaknesses prior to the beginning of a unit. These can be done as a class using strategies such as the KWL charts (What do we know? What do we want to know? What have we learned?) or through inventories that ask students to look at their own work with a critical eye. Self-inventories that ask students to identify their own areas that need improvement can be more valuable in the learning process than teacher assessments because they allow students to see for themselves what skills and knowledge is expected and where they lie in regards to these areas. However, students need to trust that the information shared in these inventories will be respected and not shared with just anyone and will actually be put to use. Students also need to be guided through the process several times in order to accurately assess themselves. Like any other skill, self-assessment is not something students intuitively learn. Rather scaffolding needs to occur. Once students are comfortable with the process, the information from self-inventories can be used to create personal learning goals, goals that students will have more motivation to achieve because they were set by themselves and not an unseen third party.

Another form of self-assessment occurs after traditional assessments or performance assessments occur. Reflection on a product, examining what the learner feels the strengths of the product are, as well as where growth needs to occur, helps the student practice metacognitive skills. Portfolios provide a place for students to add reflections because students can examine each portfolio entry and respond either verbally or in writing as to what the piece shows about them as learners. Again, however, this reflection skill does not occur naturally. Teachers should begin by providing open-ended questions that provide guidance for students as they begin the reflective process. Additionally, students should be encouraged to provide evidence from the works themselves to support their reasoning. As students become comfortable with this process, learning becomes less abstract as they begin to understand what it is they are learning.

Another possible way to introduce reflection and self-assessment into the classroom is through videotaped classroom discussions. Classroom conversations can provide great insight into just how much students understand if those participating slow down and actually analyze them. One way to do this is through recording, watching and then discussing what is shown on the video. This can allow the teacher to see exactly how the conversation evolved, and it can also give students an opportunity to see themselves in action. As all participants, including the teacher, begin to break down where learning is exhibited and which individuals dominate or remain passive in the discussion, modifications can be made to ensure that future conversations become stronger instruments for student learning. Along this vein, Socratic Seminars also provide a platform for increasing this awareness, leading to well-designed learning situations. Socratic Seminars, discussions that divide the class into two groups with one group discussing a topic and the other monitoring the effectiveness of the discussion, take group interactions out of the teacher’s hands and place them directly into the hands of the participants: the students. This is a powerful self-assessment tool that many students find empowering because it gives them control of their learning.

Criteria for Balanced Assessments

• There should always be a variety of assessments (i.e. teacher made tests, quizzes, journals, performance evaluations, notes etc.)
• Assessments should be created in cooperation with the students being assessed (in the language of the students, shared with students beforehand, record keeping responsibilities given to students)
• Assessments should be sequential in nature (beginning by measuring knowledge and moving to application of knowledge)
• Assessment should involve metacognition (students think about and discuss what it is they have learned)
• There should be formative and summative assessments (measurement of growth over time and measurement of key ideas and understandings attained)

Traditional Assessments

Traditional assessments provide quick snapshots of student knowledge on a given day. With clear right and wrong answers, these assessments demonstrate whether or not students have a grasp on knowledge, either in the formative or the summative stage. Because of the government’s reliance on these forms of assessment, primarily because of the ease of standardizing results, traditional assessments have a tendency to be viewed negatively by teachers in schools today. Yet, these assessments do have a place in educating students. Formative tests, given prior to starting a unit, provide teachers with information about the prior knowledge students have on the subject. This information can be valuable, showing teachers what areas the students have little familiarity and providing insight as to what may pique students’ interests. These tests, however, are only valuable if used in this way. Planning units prior to gathering this information and merely glancing at the results makes giving these tests a waste of time. Likewise, periodic quizzes and worksheets can help teachers keep track of which students are learning the information covered in class. Scores on these assessments allow teachers to identify areas they may need to be covered again or in new ways. If used in these ways, there should be little surprise in scores of summative tests, tests designed to measure how much of the knowledge students have acquired through the course of the unit.  One thing to remember is that even teacher made tests can be very limited and limiting, especially if we as teachers do not create them in a purposeful and thoughtful way.  This is where teacher advocacy groups can have the advantage of collaboration.  Just as two heads are better than one, many heads can work together to create formative and summative assessments that measure what they are supposed to measure (knowledge and skills students need to perform the objectives).

Despite these uses of traditional assessments, there are dangers in relying on them as the only form of assessment. One of these dangers is that many of these tests are designed to assess lower-level thinking skills. Because of their reliance on clear-cut answers, much of what they measure is at the knowledge and comprehension level. This is particularly true of standardized, multiple-choice tests. It is difficult to finitely measure skills that call for making judgments and creating new ideas from existing information. Another danger lies in the tendency to design the test without a particular learner in mind (as standardized tests do). When this happens, the focus shifts to making sure everyone achieves the same results, regardless of personal skill levels and interests. Lessons are created with a singular test in mind, and this can mean sacrificing individuals and their needs. It is because of these dangers that educators need to work to ensure that traditional assessments are just one form of assessment used to evaluate the growth of a learner.

Performance Assessments

For those collecting data, performance assessments often get a bad rap because a certain amount of subjectivity exists in the scores assigned to these assessments. However, one must remember that all forms of assessment are subjective.  The only thing that can be objective about tests is the scoring.  The questions and answers are all objective, since the creator of the test is the one who decides what the correct questions and answers are.  Performance assessments, however, are more difficult to standardize as the results are much more indicative of what an individual learner knows rather than a group of students.  Additionally, performance assessments take more time to design and score. However, the extended time and the emphasis on the process the learner goes through often make performance assessments better indicators of how well students grasp a skill or concept. If used correctly, they are also a way to monitor the growth of individual students.

To ensure that performance assessments accurately reflect the desired information, it is important to create a rubric that addresses all the aspects of the project. Performance assessments tend to measure multiple skills, multiple levels of knowledge. For example, a writing assignment measures not only the writer’s ideas and understanding of a concept, but also the writer’s grasp of mechanics, language and organization. Thus, it is possible, maybe even probable, that a learner will have a strong handle on one aspect of the concept, but need more remediation in another area. This means that most of the time, a single performance assessment will not adequately assess a student’s knowledge. Like the reliance on traditional assessments, performance assessments used in this way provide little more than a snapshot of the learner at a single moment in time. Granted, the performance assessment may be a little more accurate because it takes place during a longer period of time than a test or quiz, but it still only measures how well the student understood the concept during that period of time. It does not take into account other factors that may have affected the student during the time.

To counter this problem, many educators often collect samples of performance assessments in student portfolios. Portfolios allow educators to monitor student growth over an extended period of time. When used as a primary form of assessment, teachers can examine early work samples, evaluating areas that individual learners need to work on. This provides for more differentiation among learners, giving the teacher a way to monitor each individual’s growth on specific goals. Returning to the previous example of a writing assignment, a student who has a clear grasp of ideas and concepts but struggles with mechanics like grammar and spelling can be assessed in these areas where growth is desired. By stressing mechanics in future assignments for this student, the teacher can monitor student growth in this area. Likewise, another student who has perfected mechanics but struggles with developing ideas can focus on this area through future writing assignments. This method of assessment turns the focus away from generic whole-class assignments to more individualized educational experiences.

To some, the idea of portfolios suggests writing-based projects. While written papers do fit well in portfolios and are performance-based, there are multiple other ways educators can assess student performance. For some students, oral explanations, reports, or stories can be an accurate assessment of student knowledge. These can be added to portfolios through audio recordings placed on CDs or, as technology continues to expand and provide new possibilities, students can create electronic portfolios that allow one click access to any recording made by the student. Technology also provides students the possibilities to create visual presentations that demonstrate their understanding. Video recordings, movies created in MovieMaker or iMovie, PowerPoint presentations, and other digital forms of communication can be used to assess student understanding. Electronic portfolios can house these projects, as well, once again giving the teacher an opportunity to assess student growth as they continue to work on a concept. Furthermore, these more in-depth assessments allow for student to share their synthesizing and evaluation of the new knowledge, skills that are often difficult to demonstrate on traditional assessments.

Once you have established a partnership with another teacher, it is important to spread the word that you are starting a teacher study group to look at improving assessment practices. There is power in numbers, so it is important to involve as many colleagues as you can. Approach your administration or your department chair with a proposal that outlines your concerns, why you believe the study group will be valuable to school success, and what steps you will take to study the problem. A well-planned, upfront approach will smooth the way for getting this group started. Because advocacy is a term that can sometimes be misunderstood, a less intimidating approach for teachers may be to frame it as a teacher discussion group whose goal is to study how to improve assessment.  When you advertise that you are starting this group more teachers are likely to join if it is stated in this way.  As you talk about the group to others you can expand more on the goals of the group.  Once you get 5-10 teachers who are interested in meeting you can decide on some mutual times to meet.  It is not necessary for everyone to meet throughout the semester as much of the work actually occurs in the classroom, as teachers gather data.  It is important, however, that you meet to discuss the criteria for balanced assessment.  This is important because each teacher needs to focus on one assessment that they will get data from.

As you prepare your plan, remember that teacher advocacy is not a quick fix. It takes time to examine all the possible assessment avenues available to you and the best way to implement the practices, as well as to collect the data. Teachers in the advocacy group should plan on taking a minimum of one semester to discuss your options and to put them into practice.  If your school is uncertain about the course of action best suited for your school, the examination stage alone could take an entire semester, with the next semester dedicated to implementation and collection of data.  For example, your teacher advocacy group could decide to use one performance assessment in one of each one of the teachers’ classes.   This performance assessment would be part of a 4-6 week unit that focused on particular objectives.  A pretest and posttest could be given to the students in the class before and after the performance assessment is done.  Data from the pretest and posttest as well as data from the performance assessment could be used to show how effective the performance assessment was in measuring students’ learning.  In addition, it might be helpful to have data from the students’ performance on the standardized test in order to compare students’ performance on the standardized test with their performance on the performance assessment.

Once a semester of data collection has been completed, the information must be disseminated to your administrators. This information can be share in report-form or through presentations created in programs such as PowerPoint or Key Note. In addition to numbers derived from the data, it is also helpful to share specific assessments that have worked to measure student growth in specific skills. Some examples of specific assessments teachers from the advocacy group have used with their students might include portfolios, demonstrations, labs, group projects presented to other students in the class, mock trials, or real-world scenarios students create.  These concrete examples demonstrate that you have looked at the issue from different angles and are knowledgeable about school goals, as well as student achievement. Getting building administrators on board is vital to the next step of the process. While it is important for schools to adopt best practices, when you as the teacher advocacy group educate district administrators and the public about your results it will help promote fair assessment practices beyond your own classroom door.

Fortunately, teachers can choose a different route. NCLB continues to be an issue of public concern leading to teacher advocacy groups popping up across the nation. As Linda Christensen, a high school literacy curriculum specialist, explained in an article in NCTE’s The Council Chronicle, teachers can create momentum through an organized effort:

“Educators need to be advocates. The majority of our days and lives are spent working in schools. We know schools. We know what works. We can talk about class size or the need for books in a way that no one else can. We’re traveling in hard times—budget cuts and top-down decision making take education out of the hands of teachers and [puts it] into the pockets of corporate publishers and politicians. In the past 20 years we have witnessed an erosion of teachers’ rights. We can’t stand idly by while public education is dismantled.” (p. 2)

One route teacher advocacy groups can take is through broadening the understanding of the role of assessment.  For assessment to be truly effective, it should be used as a tool to help students grow as learners, rather than as a one-time examination of knowledge.

“Classroom Assessment is a simple method faculty can use to collect feedback, early and often, on how well their students are learning what they are being taught. The purpose of classroom assessment is to provide faculty and students with information and insights needed to improve teaching effectiveness and learning quality.” (Angelo, 1991)

Standardized state tests, unfortunately, do none of these things.  Mathew Lipman, in his piece on reflective education, argues that standardized achievement tests using a multiple choice format are not effective in measuring complex problem solving skills, divergent thinking, and collaborative efforts among students.  Further, the uses of such tests are often questionable.  According to Russ Allen, research consultant in instruction and professional development,

“The results of standardized achievement tests served, and continue to serve, a variety of purposes. Unfortunately, many of these purposes are not justified. Test scores are used to compare students with other students, to place pupils into groups or programs and to guide and counsel students. The results also are used to evaluate teachers, administrators, and even the quality of a school district’s entire curricular and instructional program.” (p. 2)

In addition, tests, which are usually taken in the spring, take time to score, which means that by the time the results are returned; students have already left the teachers who instructed them prior to the test. While some may argue that the next teacher can use the data to inform the next year’s instruction, the reality of the classroom is that it takes time to get to know the learner and how to best use the information. This is where teacher advocacy groups can work to students’ advantage. By illustrating how a broader menu of assessment practices can be used to continually gauge the learner and guide instructional practices, teacher advocacy groups can help create an environment that practices fair assessment, which will lead to the ultimate goal of NCLB: all students will continue to grow as learners.

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