Posts
An LYS Superintendent shares the
following:
SC,
A
superintendent and a teacher asked me essentially the same set of questions
yesterday - two different districts, two different roles, but the same dilemma.
Both districts have just completed a testing cycle of "curriculum based
assessments” with seemingly poor results. The following are my thoughts.
1. Great job
doing common assessments! I will add that waiting 6 to 9 weeks is too
long. You are now finding out 9 weeks into the school year that your
instructional practices are maybe, and I add MAYBE, not as effective as you
thought they were. You could have known that with a short assessment 6
weeks ago, after only 3 weeks of instruction had passed. Teachers, if
your district persists in doing 6 weeks and 9 weeks assessments, it falls to
you to make 3 weeks assessments, in the same format as the district's common
assessments. These can and should be less than 10 questions long, and
should not take an entire class period. You can and should spiral
questions from identified holes onto these assessments. In other words, follow the Cain model.
2. Both
districts are implementing C-Scope for the first time this year. Now it
must be made clear to everyone that this is NOT the first year both of these
districts made C-Scope available to the staff, it is merely the first year both
districts have become concerned enough to mandate and monitor the
implementation of the curriculum. Leaders, you may want to sit down, because
this may sting. What you have done as leaders, by not making an aligned
curriculum mandatory, is an egregious leadership failure. You KNEW you needed a
curriculum, which is why you bought it, yet you failed to lead the
implementation of the curriculum. Your responsibility to implement best
practices, including curriculum implementation, does not end simply because you
sent teachers to C-Scope training. Enough said, now don't beat yourself up over
it, let's fix it. Also, don't beat the teachers up either, as this
situation is mostly a result of your leadership failure, not teaching failure.
3. Early
testing results in both districts were, to be generous, poor. Neither of these
testing results should be a surprise. That is, I would bet a copy of the
Fundamental 5 (Cain & Laird) that neither district had TEACHERS conduct a
focused analysis of their student's deficiencies AND develope a viable plan to
fill in holes. Every teacher in my district was required to identify the
most failed objectives from last year. Once that was conducted, we
remembered our Schmoker: we concentrate on the deepest hole and begin filling
it weekly. Schmoker tells us that if we try to fill all learning holes,
we fill nothing. However, learning is a complex interconnected web. If we begin
by filling in the deepest hole, we will address some learning gaps and
misconceptions that are likely to partially or completely fill in other holes.
Once the deepest hole is filled, and that may take a while, start on the
next one. The catch here is two-fold. One, your students have not
been in an aligned scope and sequence, so there are certainly holes in the
learning. This will create low common assessment scores. Two, this
phenomenon of low scores was totally predictable had you put some thought to
the problem early on. This reflects back to point one: MAYBE the
instruction was ineffective, or MAYBE it was effective but there are just too
many unidentified and un-addressed learning holes.
4. The first
year of common assessment implementation is likely to be chaotic. Again,
leadership created this chaos; so don't panic in the face of your creation!
Scores will be low, holes need to be identified, and strategies need to
be developed to fill in the holes, one at a time. The process is not as
slow as it sounds, but don't be surprised when your common assessment scores
remain in the tank all year long. The trick is to look at next year's
common assessment scores. Are the scores moving up, overall? If so,
your system is beginning to add value to children, congratulations! Keep the
word "system" in mind. You are now in the first stages of creating a
system approach to educating children. Before you were simply treating symptoms.
System work will be much harder. Keep in mind too that it is likely you
do not fully understand instructional systems at this point. I started
using an instructional system approach in 2006. It was not until 2009 that I
would have called myself actually competent, three years. The 10,000-hour
rule as described by Gladwell is in full play here.
5. Common
assessment data is valuable in the following ways: A. It puts a numerical value
on the health of your instructional systems. B. It verifies if instructional strategies and deficit filling are occurring, over time. C. And this is a distant third, it is
student performance data. We seem to get common assessment data and then
want to come up with student interventions, which is the LEAST valuable data
from common assessments. Student interventions are symptom treating, and
that is OK as long as the main thrust is to treat the disease. In our
case, the disease is an ineffective instructional system. I see teachers
spending hours doing tutorials after school: symptom treating. I see
almost ZERO time spent anywhere trying to create a better instructional system.
Those priorities are 180 degrees out of synch.
In closing,
don't panic in the face of common assessment scores. Use the scores to
improve your systems. It took Lesa Cain three years of faithful and
relentless systems building in order to produce an exceedingly high performing
school with a student body consisting almost entirely of low SES students. Not
to mention that Lesa had access to an incredible support network that too many of
us don't have (but you can). Just understand that system building is
work. Work this process diligently for several years and reap the
rewards. Leadership should concern themselves only with teachers who
refuse to implement the curriculum, refuse to adjust instructional practices,
and refuse to fill in student learning gaps. For teachers who are on board, pat
them on the back and a give them a little cover and a little time.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
- Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5
- Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook
- Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
- Upcoming Presentations: TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations)
- Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation
