Readers Ask... More Assessment Questions

There is a LYS district in Texas that is in the midst of implementing common assessments. The district is taking the lead on the six weeks assessments (awesome); the campuses are taking the lead on the three weeks assessments (awesomer). The following is a correspondence between the curriculum specialists (and new LYS'ers) and me that I thought that some of the LYS Nation might find helpful.

Question 1: How many questions should be on the assessments (3 week vs. 6 week), taking into consideration one assessment is campus based and the other is district based?

Answer 1: The three-week assessments (created by the campuses) should consist of 7 to 15 questions. The actual number is determined by the number of critical concepts covered during the three-week assessment window and the number of review items required.

The six-week assessments (created by the district) may have significantly more questions than what is on the three-week assessments. First, the assessment window is twice as long, which means that there are more critical concepts that have been covered. Second, there are times when the district needs data from a TAKS (state accountability test) similar assessment. However, a good rule of thumb is to use 15 to 30 questions.

Question 2: Should there be a time limit on the assessment? If so should it be the same for the three-weeks and six-week assessment?

Answer 2: The goal for the three-week assessment is that it can be completed in 30 minutes or less.

The six-week assessment should naturally take longer, since the assessment has more questions. However, it is our recommendation that the assessment take no longer than a class period, unless the purpose is to specifically mimic the TAKS (state accountability) test.

Question 3: Should we only put one question per TEKS (state curriculum standard) on the district assessment?

Answer 3: There are a number of factors to consider.
1) Some TEKS (state curriculum standard) are assessed in different ways, so the district assessment may need to reflect this.
2) Historically, some TEKS (state curriculum standard) are assessed on the TAKS (state accountability) test more than others. Again, the district assessment may be designed to reflect this reality.

Question 4: Should each district assessment for each six-weeks have the same number of questions?

Answer 4: Not only is this not recommended, the reality of district assessment needs would seem to predispose different assessment lengths at different times of the year.

Question 5: Is there any other information you feel would be good for us to share with principals and teachers?

Answer 5: Just the reminder that the purpose of assessments is to generate information that drives instructional decisions and adjustments. To not assess is to leave classroom, campus and district performance to chance.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Game On! video clip

Above is a TV segment on the success of Game On! at an elementary school in Irving, Texas.

How's that for excitement?

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The LYS Nation in the News

Click on the link below. It is about a newspaper article reporting on a LYS principal and the success he has had at his school since he took over.

http://neighborsgo.com/stories/61573

And yes, Game On! is pure LYS. Beware of bootleg versions and contact us if you are interested.

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Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Mythology)

In response to the post, “Mythology” a reader writes:

I enjoyed this article. Student engagement and purposeful talk are an informal way of assessing "who gets it and who doesn't" in a jiffy. Most students lack descriptive words in their speech and can no more write than speak appropriately. They use the same words over and over again. This is my second year to use purposeful talk and the more I use it the more I learn about our society: There is no one for many of our students to talk to at home, therefore, our students have TV language and their cognitive language is lacking. It is so difficult for them to speak about a science experiment we just completed. Consequently, I end up doing the same experiment until they have the vocabulary to speak about it. The most interesting conclusion - now the student can talk about it at home. I wanted to share and agree with your article.

SC Response

Thank you for sharing and thank you for validating the power of this Fundamental 5 practice. You are correct in pointing out that in many households, for any number of reasons, our students get little opportunity to converse. Much less, converse about academic topics. The more we model this behavior and provide students frequent opportunities to practice, the more our students blossom and begin to enjoy learning. Plus, as the teacher you get the added benefit of being able to sneak in a little rigor and relevance on the fly.

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Your turn...

Yes, I know the Hours are Long

I was recently working with a group of special education teachers at an alternative school. My purpose, to help them better organize their instructional day to make them more effective and increase student performance. Of course this was going to require a little extra time in the short run, as they learned to plan differently. But in the long run, even if no time were saved (very unlikely), their stress level would be dramatically reduced.

You would have thought that I personally slapped every one of them. They immediately started in with, “Our kids are tough. We have to individualize. We have too many preps. We have too much paper work. We have families. We have lives, etc, etc.”

All true, yet not a bit of it matters. If you are a teacher, to do your job well, you will work about 60 hours a week. How you spend that 60 hours depends on what setting you are in, but the hours remain constant. See the chart below:

	Secondary	Elementary	Alternative
Teaching	36	36	36
Planning	6	8	9
Grading	12	10	4
Meetings & Duties	6	6	11

If you don’t like the mix, switch settings. If you don’t like the hours, you have to ask yourself, “Is teaching my avocation, or my vocation?”

If it is your avocation, the hours are just part of the price you pay to do something that you love and that matters. If it is your vocation, there are easier ways to make a living, and in many cases the pay is better.

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Your turn...

Question What You Do

I recently visited two campuses that are arguably doing a number of things well and are experiencing improved student performance. But sometimes habit and lack of confidence trip up even the most proactive educators. Case in point.

For three straight days, these two campuses gave benchmark tests to their students. Which means that instruction shut down for three straight days. However both of these campuses are in a district that administers regular (every 6 to 9 weeks) common assessments and both campuses administer their own three-week common assessments.

I asked both principals if they thought that the benchmark tests would provide any information that was not already provided by the assessments that they already administer. The answer from both of them was, “Not really.”

So I asked them why they were administering the benchmarks. Both said that the staff felt it was important to see how the students would perform on a longer test. I won’t say that this is completely wrong. However, there is no question that both campuses paid a high instructional price for information that is probably redundant.

Every minute spent testing is a minute subtracted from instruction. Therefore, you must weigh the value of the information gleaned against the value of instruction lost. If the value of the information is negligible or redundant, don’t test; teach.

And just because everyone else is taking long tests (and then not adjusting) doesn’t make it a good idea.

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Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Broke is Broke)

In response to the post, “Broke is Broke,” a LYS Teacher writes:

You are right. Many recognized school still needs improvement. We are dealing with this on my campus

One major element of a teacher’s responsibilities is to complete the duties assigned. Writing lessons plans is one of these duties and it is a significant one. My school has teachers who think that writing lesson plans should be someone else's job. They don't write their own plans. They bully other teachers into giving them copies of their plans. And if they don't get the lesson plans, they blame it on the group.

This is not LYS. It is simply a poor work ethic. Part of LYS is to write lessons together as a team. When a team member does not care to write their part and just passes the buck to another part of the team because they just have too much to do in their lives and cannot write lessons, they need to go look for a job that does not require being part of a team. Anyway you are right, a lot of non-LYS Recognized Schools need to be set straight.

SC Response
An action oriented professional learning community has internal discipline. The transition from a loose confederation of teachers to a team of professionals requires the development of professional norms. Something that some of your peers seem reluctant to adopt.

This puts you in a tough position, leaving you few easy options. You can:

1. Do your work and the work of others (not fair and tastes bad).

2. You can refuse to share with those who do not reciprocate (feels bad).

3. You can point out the lack of teamwork with administration (can be bad).

What I suggest is creating regular meeting times, assignment of specific responsibilities and documentation. Those who act as professionals reap the rewards of purposeful collaboration. Those who do not, have to argue against written requirements and expectaions. Which is a tougher task than saying, “I’m busy and they won’t share.”

Good luck and keep working to get better.

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Your turn...