Measures of Effective Teaching

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recently outlined the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study which calls for educational researchers to collect public school data on a voluntary basis for the purpose of uncovering the indicators of a teacher's impact on student achievement.

The primary goal of this study is to "develop objective and reliable measures of effective teaching." The researchers will focus upon the following indicators:

• student feedback through surveys
• looking at student work
• supplemental student achievement assessments
• recorded classroom lessons
• teacher reflections of the recorded lessons
• assessment of teachers' ability to recognize and diagnose student learning problems
• teacher surveys on working conditions

More information regarding this educational research can be found online at the following website.

A's for Good Behavior?

The New York Times recently published an article titled "A's for Good Behavior" (11/27/10) that focused upon the widely divergent grading practices that result in student report card grades. The idea of standards-based report cards has been around for a while, yet this article questions the value of including homework, participation, effort and behavior scores as contributing factors into a student's academic report card grade. The central idea here is that report card grades should accurately reflect student learning and mastery of academic content and educational skills.

The article examined Ellis Middle School, located in Austin, Texas which has shifting grading practiced to reflect student learning. The school uses calculates academic report card grades for students by averaging the scores on end-of-unit tests. The article states "those tests can be retaken any time during the semester so long as a student has completed all homework; remedial classes that re-teach skills will be offered all year." Additionally, the school doe not factor homework into the academic report card grade as homework is considered a formative assessment, or practice. Ellis Middle School provides students with a "knowledge grade" and a separate "life skills grade" for students.

The entire article is available online here.

What makes schools better?

The Economist recently published an article titled "How to get good grades: It is not money nor uninformed reform that makes schools better" on November 25, 2010. The article focused upon school systems which demonstrated growth in student achievement rates and identified what these systems had in common. The basis for this analysis is derived from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Here are the findings outlined in the article.

#1 Spending money is not the answer: This claim was supported from the graphic from the Economist magazine below.

#2 First focus upon the basics: School systems should first focus upon teaching towards basics standards.

#3 Then collect data: School systems should "pay more attention to collecting detailed data on examination results. This serves not just to make schools accountable, but helps to identify the best teaching methods." (The Economist, November 26, pg.68)

#4 Only hire highly effective teachers: Those school systems which focused upon selecting professional teachers, recruited from the best universities, were able to raise standards.

#5 Decentralization is the name of the game: The highly effective school districts that were able to achieve the above criteria then created a professional climate conducive to ongoing learning. "The authorities hand control over to teachers, most of whom are highly educated and motivated, so they can learn from each other and follow the best practices." (The Economist, November 26, pg.68)

The entire article can be found online here.

Create a 'Learning System'

This was the by far the easiest article to post onto my Middle School Learning blog since it documents teachers in the Social Studies Department at Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts. In full disclosure of my bias, I am the Social Studies Department chair at this school.

Ed Week recently published an article on November 10, 2010 focusing upon the effective use of professional development at Lexington Public Schools to create a 'learning system'. The goals of the professional development program are to provide high quality, relevant and accessible training for educators in the district. The article addressed the implementation of PLCs as instrumental in building a collaborative focus at Lexington Public Schools.

Teachers across the district have been provided with common planning time for content teams or by grade-level teams. This collaborative focus in building teacher capacity to improve student achievement by creating and using common assessments using data-driven decision making to improve instruction.

The Ed Week article provided an example of this collaboration in the Social Studies Department, "At Jonas Clarke Middle School, for instance, the three members of the 8th grade U.S. history content team used their collaboration time to craft a unit on the 2008 presidential election, after realizing that many students didn't understand the distinction between a Republican and the political concept of republicanism." (Ed Week, 11/10/10)

The entire Ed Week article titled "Mass. District Strives for Teacher Learning System" is available online at the following link: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/11/10/11pd_local.h30.html

Common Planning Time

A recent research study on the effective use of common planning time at the middle school level investigates numerous factors to determine best practices. The research study was created by Christopher Cook, Ph.D., and Shawn Faulkner, Ph.D, both of Northern Kentucky University. The study was published in the online journal of Research in Middle Level Education, RMLE and the abstract is available online at the National Middle School Association website.

The focus of this study is "the effective use of common planning time in high-performing middle schools" (Cook & Faulkner, pg. 3, 2010). Two high achieving public schools were selected for analysis, Lincoln Middle School and Washington Middle School both located in Kentucky. The study employed comparative qualitative data analysis gathered through the structured observations of team meetings and teacher interviews. Common themes emerged at the middle schools examined and the results are as follows:

• Clearly defined common planning time goals
• Effective building level leadership
• Common vision and mission of participants

One statistic of note was the relative lack of experience of the teachers surveyed in this comparative case study. Teachers at Lincoln Middle School reported an average of 7.2 years of experience while Washington Middle School teachers had 5.2 years. The study poses the interesting question, "Does the relative professional youth of the faculty indicate that the building level leadership had actively and successfully complied a staff that would embrace the mission of the school, resulting in the effective use of common planning time?" (Cook & Faulkner, pg. 11, 2010). The entire research study is available online as a PDF here.

Study promotes economic integration to increase student achievement

An article in the Washington Post on October 15, 2010 focused upon the positive effects of 'economic integration' of low-income students across school district. The research study found that low-income students had higher rates of achievement when attending affluent elementary school in comparison to low-income students who attended elementary schools with higher rates of poverty. This study was accomplished by examining an existing income achievement gap in the Montgomery County Public School District in Maryland.

The Washington Post newspaper article outlines the study which, "tracked the performance of 858 elementary students in public housing scattered across Montgomery from 2001 to 2007. Researchers see the results as especially significant because Montgomery, one of the nation's best and largest public school districts with 144,000 students, has been uncommonly aggressive in seeking to improve the performance of students in schools with higher poverty."

The Washington Post article summarizes the concepts from the educational researcher, Heather Schwartz, who authored study, "Housing Policy is School Policy: Economically Integrative Housing Promotes Academic Success in Montgomery County, Maryland." Her entire study can be found here.

You can read the entire Washington Post newspaper article online here.

Technology promotes educational change

Quest to Learn, is a public middle school located in New York City, which employs a curriculum centered upon multimedia video games for group learning. The middle school students create podcasts, edit videos, play video games, and utilize other technologies to promote interdisciplinary learning.

The school, Quest to Learn, states that it is a "school for digital kids. It is a community where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems." source http://q2l.org/

The video clip below titled "Games Theory" from the New York Times magazine posted online September 15, 2010 describes this school and documents the educational rationale for using technology as the cornerstone of Quest to Learn.

Analyzing Teacher Effectiveness using Value Added Data

The Los Angles Times published an article describing the practice of applying value-added data for the evaluation and comparison of teacher performance. The article "How the teachers were evaluated", (Source: LA Times, August 15, 2010), described the statistical method of estimating teacher effectiveness using student test scores. Student's prior test scores are used to project future performance. The rate of change between the student's test scores compared to the projected results determines the value added from the teacher.

The below graphs were published in the LA times to illustrate the value added practice.

Student 1 - Results exceed expectations

Student 2 - Results fall short of expectations

The practice uses value-added based upon student growth to determine teacher impact.

What is the purpose of a D?

The New York Times published an article titled, "Little as They Try, Students Can't Get a D Here" (August 7, 2010) which described a recent no D grading policy adopted by school board of Mount Olive Public School District in New Jersey. This new policy is an attempt to combat against the practice of grade inflation to raise standards and motivate students to work harder.

The school district is developing a system to help struggling students achieve by providing additional time, three days, to make-up the assignment for a C. Additionally, the school will communicate with parents when students struggle and can provide interventions such as extra-help classes, peer tutoring and evening classes. One must wonder, does this mean that C is the new D?

Source http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/education/08grades.html?_r=1&ref=education

School of One

I came across the NYC Department of Education's innovative School of One while listening to a podcast. The School of One employs a new educational model using a mixture of teacher-led instruction, independent student learning, virtual learning and one-on-one tutoring.

The most profound aspect of the School of One is the consistent use of differentiated learning methodologies and schedules tailored specifically for each student. The teachers constantly use student achievement data on a daily basis to alter instruction accordingly. Teachers are able to achieve this through the use of technology that apparently uses an algorithm capable of determining and matching up a student's academic needs with learning styles using existing classroom resources. The following video demonstrates this process in more detail.

Click here to watch a streaming web video about the school of one.

The School of One was recently described by the Atlantic Magazine in the article The Littlest Schoolhouse.

Data Wise Improvement Process

Over the past school year I applied the central idea from the book, Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning, into my teaching practice by using of formative assessment data to determine student groupings for enrichments and interventions. This book was authored by the professors Richard Murnane, Kathryn Boudett and Elizabeth City of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The main idea proposed in this book is the Data Wise Cycle which involves an eight-step process to help organize school improvement using manageable steps.

In general, the steps of the Data Wise Cycle are:

(1) Organizing for Collaborative Work

(2) Building Assessment Literacy

(3) Preparing a Data Overview

(4) Digging into Student Data

(5) Examining Instruction

(6) Developing an Action Plan

(7) Planning to Assess Progress

(8) Acting and Assessing

Visible Learning, John Hattie

Dr. John Hattie, the author of Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, recently provided the keynote address at the Data Team Summit in Vail, Colorado. After listening to Dr. Hattie's presentation, I purchased his book

and read it on the flight home. He presents an amazing quantitative analysis of the effects of various educational programs and initiatives. He examined over 50,000 educational studies involving the learning of over 200 million students to determine the typical influence on achievement. He places each upon a single continuum of achievement for comparison. He arrived at an typical effect size of 0.40 as the 'hinge-point' where the effects of the educational innovation enhances achievement that is greater than significantly average. This .040 hinge point creates a standard to judge the efficacy of educational innovations. His findings are quite interesting and thought provoking.

Below is a list of several highly effective educational innovations with the corresponding effect size:

• Acceleration (speed up a year) .88
• Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students .77
• Feedback .73
• Student-teacher relationships .72
• Teaching study skills .59
• Reading Recovery .50
• Cooperative Learning .41