Last week I met with the building representatives of our education association. We had a good conversation that mostly focused on how the district is guiding instruction and measuring student learning. Despite not having all the answers to the posed questions, I was pleased that the teachers were grappling with how the district can better support their instruction. While some of the questions had relatively simple answers, the district developing its own assessments was the topic that garnered the most attention. I felt that the underlying concern was that these assessments would assume a greater significance than they deserved.
For the past two years the district has been creating common quarterly assessments as part of its curriculum development process. At first glance it appears that the inclusion of these assessments are just more testing. And while the tests are more formal, they should simply replace the individual or resource driven assessments that teachers have used for years. From a district perspective, the results of the tests will help us to identify holes in our curriculum or gaps in our resources and in turn, drive our professional development. The original intent of adding the tests was not to measure student learning, but we do recognize that we will need this sort of formal assessment of student growth to meet the teacher evaluation regulations. My sense is that the unspoken part of our conversation last week is that there is not a simple causality between instruction and student learning. All teachers understand that there are a plethora of variables that affect student learning and that a common assessment can only tell you so much about the instruction. Nevertheless, the information provided by these tests will help the districts and our teachers improve.
Common Assessments
Last week I met with the building representatives of our education association. We had a good conversation that mostly focused on how the district is guiding instruction and measuring student learning. Despite not having all the answers to the posed questions, I was pleased that the teachers were grappling with how the district can better support their instruction. While some of the questions had relatively simple answers, the district developing its own assessments was the topic that garnered the most attention. I felt that the underlying concern was that these assessments would assume a greater significance than they deserved.
For the past two years the district has been creating common quarterly assessments as part of its curriculum development process. At first glance it appears that the inclusion of these assessments are just more testing. And while the tests are more formal, they should simply replace the individual or resource driven assessments that teachers have used for years. From a district perspective, the results of the tests will help us to identify holes in our curriculum or gaps in our resources and in turn, drive our professional development. The original intent of adding the tests was not to measure student learning, but we do recognize that we will need this sort of formal assessment of student growth to meet the teacher evaluation regulations. My sense is that the unspoken part of our conversation last week is that there is not a simple causality between instruction and student learning. All teachers understand that there are a plethora of variables that affect student learning and that a common assessment can only tell you so much about the instruction. Nevertheless, the information provided by these tests will help the districts and our teachers improve.