As I was completing my project for Dr. Sauers, I spent a lot
of time investigating and reading about effective professional development. It
also made me think of the current PD we have in our school and if teachers are
truly implementing these best practices. Working in a high performing school,
our test scores have always been exceptional and exceeding state expectations.
However, when the state moved to testing through GA Milestones versus CRCT our
school noticed a decline in scores. This decline was common among many schools
since it was a more rigorous test. As our school compares their achievement
among like schools in the district, we are no longer on the top (still high
performing though). This has raised concern among the administration team. The
leaders believed our assessments did not match the rigor of the GA Milestones.
Consequently, this year they partnered with a testing agency to create common
assessments for our entire school in math and in reading. Additionally, our
entire cluster of schools is taking the same tests. These tests have raised the
bar significantly and many of our students continually fail them. We have been
asked to enter them in as summative grades which hold more weight in the grade book.
The effect of these tests has led to several parent complaints, teacher burn
out and frustration. It is hard for a teacher who works effortlessly to
continue to see scores that are abysmal. Our parents are also not used to their
child failing tests and have asked for many meeting to be held with teachers.
The biggest complaint is how instruction in the classroom is preparing students
for these rigorous tests. Teachers are allowed to preview the test, but are not
allowed a copy till the test day. No PD has been given on how to raise the bar
in instruction. So how can we expect these children to succeed on these tests?
It has been a controversial topic at my school. Here are some solutions I came
up:
- There was no teacher buy in when this school improvement plan was put into place; therefore, I would have held grade level meetings to preview the tests and talk about goals in achieving success within a time frame (80% of students will meet or exceed expectations in 3 years)
- Allow coaches to provide depth of knowledge level 2 and 3 questions (similar to the assessment) as resources to teacher to use in instruction.
- Provide PD on how to scaffold students on multi-step level 3 reading and math questions/word problems
- For proper implement of PD to occur, allow coaches to observe teachers and provide feedback and guidance
- In the first year of rollout, enter scores as formative assessments versus summative assessments
Yasaman, I’m always interested to read about your school’s practices. The addition of common assessments is interesting, and I can see the rationale behind doing so given the administration’s concerns. However, the fact that a lot of your students are failing them is another concern in itself. I think the gap that you point out between the introduction to these assessments and the lack of professional development relating to implementing them is definitely a major cause behind the ongoing struggles. I think the grade level meetings would have been a good place to start. At a conference recently, someone once said that the most effective meetings are ones where you go in and say what you would like to see as opposed to complain and/or discuss what is not going well. If in those meetings y’all discussed goals and been exposed to the ideas beforehand, I think that buy in AND results would have exponentially increased. I also think that entering scores in as formative as opposed to summative assessments is fair, given the fact that this is no longer just affecting students but the community-at-large since parent complaints and concerns are on the rise as well. On a related but slightly unrelated note, do you think that the change from the CRCT to GMAs has been fair? If your school, which has traditionally been a high-performing one, saw a decline in scores, I can only imagine those decreases were radically worse in lower-performing schools across the state. These standardized tests leave a lot to be desired across the board, it seems.
ReplyDeleteI facilitated the development of many tests for TKES. I strongly recommend, if you ever have the opportunity to participate in the assessment development process . . . DO IT. Although, teachers found the process to be time consuming and difficult, they learned a lot from it. Specifically, deconstructing the standard and writing test questions at the appropriate DOK level (test blueprint). Creating a test forces you to really know and understand the standard that you are teaching.
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