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| Policy Work and How It Is Connected With Student Achievement January-February 1998 So far we have discussed the role of the university, the role of principals, and the characteristics of effective and ineffective collaboration. What we have not yet discussed is the effect of all this on students. So I pose this question to us for anecdotes, for answers to the I-want-to-see-the-results-now folks, and for the celebration of what is working: So what? What difference does the work we are doing make in our classrooms, our students, and their achievement? --Sally Roderick My work with NTPI influences my work with my students in various ways. I have a sharper interest in policy issues. For example, in Boston, their are new learning standards for the bilingual science class. I am encouraged to enter the debate on standards in order to emphasize the importance of effective teaching strategies for enabling bilingual students to meet these standards. In my classroom, when I present these standards to my students, I am interested in their input as to how they think they can best approach the learning. Simply stated, because my involvement with educational policy issues, I listen more carefully to my students' voices. --Berta Berritz Your idea about listening more carefully to students' voices because of your policymaking involvement intrigues me greatly. I agree that they are our daily reality checks as we try to move our profession forward. I also have the experience of my students being very interested in what happens in schools. Any ideas--anyone, everyone?--on how to involve them more in our work? --Sally Roderick A great question. Unfortunately, one for which there are no easy answers. As a new teacher I struggle to assess my "effectiveness" each day. I echo Berta's advice and listen very carefully to my students, but still wonder whether this is enough? In terms of the curriculum, what matters most? Am I truly helping my students develop and hone the essential skills and talents they'll need to succeed--professionally and personally--and to tackle the increasing challenges of life in the 21st century? My students seem engaged, they're excited to contribute to the conversation, they respond to one anothers’ points using evidence and analysis (with varying levels of finesse and gentle pushing)...But is this enough? How can I be sure how much they’re learning/remembering/retaining? I don't give tests, and the alternative high school at which I teach doesn't require me to "grade" my students, but is my "authentic assessment" really what it ascribes to be? I encourage a great deal of writing, and am aware of incremental improvements in quality in some cases, but this is so subjective, and even the most well-developed rubric doesn't offer me the certainty I seek. Could I adequately defend my work to conservative critics, providing them with the convincing quantitative evidence they clamor for? I doubt it. What I CAN offer is eminently more qualitative--a gleam in the eye, an excitement in the voice... How could I ever hope to capture and convey this kind of "evidence" on paper? Still, it offers me some comfort amidst my confusion. Forgive my fumbling response--I know that this is not the kind of clean, coherent answer we need, but here are some starter thoughts. I look forward to hearing from others! --Sanda Balaban Personally I think that my involvement with NTPI (and TPI) has made me a stronger teacher for no other reason(s) than shared visions & time with colleagues & learning about some of the nuts &bolts of why the system is the way it is - I say this, as, prior to my involvement with IMPACT II, I didn't have an outlet for on-going conversation (beyond the frustrated conversations with one or two colleagues, who are often basking in the same school). I believe that some school reform starts with teachers being more "informed" employees of the system in which they work. By that I mean, able to break through some of the hierarchical bullshit that exists. In other words, challenge school policies (in a nice way) & put forth ideas (in a nice way). In my experience, so far, my director is a kiss-ass to the system (the district) - and this creates stagnation . I've gained a stronger voice b/c of my involvement. Does anybody out there agree???????? I apologize for the scattered writing, but my brain is short circuiting. --Lexi McGill I agree with you that our work has made us more savvy employees at our site. I'm sure we all are interested to hear what school policies you have been able to challenge and what new ideas you have been able to put forth and in what "nice way"!. It's a difficult task. For example, I've been working hard at my site--along with Ken--to create a collaborative and professional climate of inquiry. During exam week, however, the administrators checked into all classes to see who was really giving a two-hour final. That might have been okay if they had told us, "Gee, we're just not sure this policy is viable anymore, so we're going to survey the campus as you finish up the semester." Instead, it left a stinky cloud over the end of the semester. --Sally Roderick Okay, it's gotten really QUIET out there. It may be that a) we are not sure of our work's impact on students, as Sanda's response suggests b) it is indirectly affecting the classroom, such as Lexi's response suggests or c) it's being ignored, as Leo's response suggests. The trouble is that the public and funding organizations, are clamoring for results NOW, and it's a hard question to answer. For us in LA, the network work we are trying to do is primarily at the District/Union level, and there is a huge maze of bureaucracy to convince before we can even offer networks as a viable staff development to classroom teachers. That activity is fired with the hope that we will eventually be making a positive impact on classrooms based on what we know about networks and how beneficial they are. But to tell the truth, we are a long way from being able to point to our work and its possible policy shift as a contributing factor to more powerful teaching and learning for kids. Individually, we are making some progress, but not without bumps in the road. Ken and I are revising the process we started at our school for sharing stuff that we do in our classrooms and the ensuing student results. The faculty was not willing to say that we could just improve instruction, and then we'd all live happily ever after. They saw a whole bunch of other non-classroom factors that impacted students, and they wanted to talk about those too. Today our staff looked at all of the factors they could think of that negatively affect students' performance, decided which ones they thought they had control over, brainstormed what they could do to address those factors and what might get in the way, and then decided what things they could try right now. From there they will commit to another go-round of trying stuff in their classrooms. This worked better than last time because the sharing had more focus and seemed more tangible to most folks than last time. Anyway, the idea of this report is to urge you to share with us what is happening relative to the classroom with your work--tiny steps, large movements, or dismal failures--or what other ideas you have for connecting what we do to the classroom. I can't think of a better group of people on whom to try out new ideas, and from whom I might get better advice. --Sally Roderick Sometimes I think that our network work has an indirect and hard to define link to my every day life with children in my classroom. However, this link is not unimportant to my students' achievement. I bring the joy and enrichment I receive from talking to and working with other teachers into my classroom every day. When I am fulfilled and feel good about my profession, I am a better teacher for my students. Other times I can see clear linkages to the classroom--at the most simple level, when I get curriculum ideas from colleagues that spark the interest and curiosity of my children, or when I get advice on how to handle certain situations with my kids or their families. Always, it is helpful to talk about and find different views to what is happening in our classrooms, and hearing differing points of view can have a strong impact on what we do and how our students respond. I think that through my networking I have become a better, more prepared, and especially, more thoughtful and reflective teacher. Wouldn't even the most uninvolved lay person see the link between better teachers and their impact on student learning? --Judi Fenton I too am a better teacher when I get to discuss/hash over/try out new stuff with my colleagues. And you would think that it would be obvious to any lay person that fostering better teaching would have a positive impact on students. But the strangest stuff comes out of government offices. Here's a couple from the governor of CA: 1) Teachers should not be paid for the six minutes' passing period in high school because "the kids are just running around and the teachers aren't teaching during that time". (He took a LOT of flak for that one...) 2) Staff development time should be at the beginning of the year or the end of the year with no days in between. (Forget the periodic reflection, revision, etc. that we now engage in. You can pour in the knowledge and go to work.) --Sally Roderick As I see it in high school, the impact of reform in Boston is creating a lot of waves with kids who have become very educationally complacent. Standards have been in jeopardy for many years with watered down curriculum in many cases. An individual teacher with high standards has had to compromise or fail kids who consistently come unprepared never mind with a lack of content, but the necessary skills (i.e. reading and writing to perform on a high school level). I see panic in their little faces as they realize that they must be accountable. We as teachers must help them through this transition. I personally feel that I am doing this all the time because students (juniors and seniors) will say, "Ms. Hoyt you are really making us work hard." Now that the pressure is on to produce, the individual teacher is no longer alone, but must still stem the tide of despair as these kids en masse face up to their part in the learning process. We have to cajole students away from apathy and make learning stand for something that is real to them. They must believe that education is both a right and a responsibility. Moreover, parents cannot abdicate their role in this partnership. It's a contract that has many signers, the student being the most important investor. --Maggie Hoyt This came from Maggie today, mirroring a lot of what is happening in LA as we are moving to end social promotion, make the middle school years count for high school GPA, and enforce rigorous local and state standards for student performance. How about the rest of the country? Does Maggie's experience sound like yours? --Sally Roderick There seems to be an telling silence over Sally's question. To what extent do our professional development networking activities (such as our involvement with IMPACT II) affect student achievement? Our responses thus far have been sparse and thin. Yet the answer to this question is vitally important to me, as it touches on the heart of LA's own model which postulates that all professional development, if it is to be considered authentic, should reflect directly and positively on the classroom (remember the Mickey Mouse graphic from our paper and presentation?). So, perhaps I can expand on the issue somewhat so as to reframe the question into a more accessible form. Ellen Dempsey has in the past said something that goes like this, "We at IMPACT II work under the assumption that if we can make better teachers then students will learn better" (a rough paraphrase---Ellen, can you paraphrase yourself better for us?). It seems to me that Sally's question is in an attempt to get us to examine the two hidden assumptions in Ellen's common sense: that our network activities are indeed making us "better" in our practice and that by simply putting better teachers into the classroom students will learn and achieve more. There are detractors who speak against both these assumptions. Letting teachers collaborate isn't "training" them for anything substantial; in fact, such activities might be harmful because they serve to spread and perpetuate ineffective educational practices. Perhaps Sanda's "conservative colleagues" would point out that even the best teacher cannot hope to compete with other important learning influences such as student socio-economic level, family literacy, lack of technology or basic supplies in the classroom, classroom size, gangs and drugs, schooling systems designed to track and segregate, administrative systems focused on management rather than instruction. In answer to the first assumption, we know there is a growing body of research (by the likes of Lieberman, McLaughlin, Darling-Hammond, etc.) that does support the proposition that teacher networks can be effective mechanisms for teacher development. We also know from our own experiences that the one-shot workshop approach is no longer considered an effective method. This is a reality that we are beginning to accept in our time, but I feel it would be useful here to briefly consider professional development in an historical perspective. Should teacher networks have been introduced eighty or one hundred years ago into our professional development systems? I would argue not, and that understanding why might help us better address Sally's question (and defend Ellen's statement). But first, a helpful construct. In the new science of Chaos, there is a geometric structure known as a fractal. I'm certain that you have all seen pictures of fractals; some of the more common are computer generated images of ferns or trees. What is unique to fractals is that they have a scaling quality of self-similarity at any magnification. This means that if you take just a small corner of the fern picture and magnify it, the resulting picture will look just the same as the original. You can take a single dot on the picture and enlarge it, and you will see the original fern again. At any scale or level of magnification, the image is the same. This notion of scaling self-similarity also exists within our society, schools and classrooms. One hundred years ago, hierarchical social structures were necessary because they were the most efficient methods of information transfer. This was because the ratio of educated to non-educated workers was very low. In addition, modern conveniences of information transfer---telephone, television, radio, Internet, etc.--- were either non-existent or not widely distributed within the population. Thus, there were few individuals (managers) who were generally more knowledgeable about the nature of their business, and knowledge was best passed hierarchically. A similar structure also scaled into the schools. Remember that teachers in those days were little more than high school graduates themselves (even today, not all teachers are college grads!). Administrators, who were better educated or more experienced, passed information hierarchically just as their counterparts in the business arenas did. What's important here is that teachers also passed information hierarchically on to their own students, a further scaling down of the same structure. We now call these scaling structures the Factory Model School. Today of course, the overall level of education in our population is much higher, our information transfer capabilities are mind-boggingly greater, and our society is adjusting to these facts (Ann Lieberman spoke to this in Snowbird). Human information networks have been popping up everywhere: in businesses, in governments, in communities, and now in schools. Teachers are not only highly educated, but many are as or more educated than the administrators and resource experts they work "under." Hierarchical information flow, as represented by one-shot workshops, is now less effective than collaborative teacher networks. But here's my key point which addresses the second assumption above (and I know that you were all wondering when I'd actually get around to it). We must recognize that this same way of human interaction and behavior must also scale into the classroom, and our way of thinking about student achievement must also change accordingly. Our current methods of assessing student achievement, such as tests and grades and standardized evaluations, are also artifacts of hierarchical systems and no longer adequate for assessing the kinds of complex thinking and performance we expect students in the next century to be able to do. Nor are our current methods of teaching or the way we move kids through school. Perhaps what we should be looking for then is how we are able to scale our newly learned communication age behaviors down to our classrooms and kids, both instructionally and in assessment. What would this look like? I can only offer some simple examples from my own experience. My classrooms have become increasingly collaborative and student centered each year. Sally and I have both worked toward teaching the facilitation skills we've found so professionally productive to our students with some success. Even prior to reporting to Snowbird, I introduced a policy paper component to the research project I require of my seniors each year, with encouraging results. Yet, these examples are simple and simplistic; they represent only small fringe changes to a system which is incapable of translating them into entrenched notions about student "achievement." Of course, none of this will satisfy Sanda's conservative colleagues. Do my students score higher on standardized tests? I don't know...yet. I won't know for a year, or two, or three. As you all know, this is a normal state of affairs in education; there is a tremendous delay between action and results. Unfortunately, the tolerance delay that exists in the political world is vastly shorter. This is the reason it is so vitally important for us to continue to document our work carefully, and to not ignore the student achievement side of things. So in considering the effect of professional development on student achievement---both the definitions thereof coming from Sanda's pals or my own progressive one---don't limit yourselves to what you are currently engaged in. Try to think back a year or two or three, and evaluate how your activities then have and are affecting student performance now. --Ken Barker You get at the heart of what we've been dealing with for years at IMPACT II. But does it raise reading scores? The line you are referring to is our attempt to confront that head on. It appears prominently on our brochure--"When teachers teach better, students learn more." It's only the short answer. It's exciting to hear how you and Sally and others are struggling with the long answer. Our concern is that if we don't make the connection of policy to classroom practice loud and clear to policymakers we won't get our message across--the teachers' role in policymaking--nor have your recommendations heard. Thanks for wrestling with this. I hope others chime in as well. --Ellen Meyers Wow, with teachers as terrific as Sally and Ken, L.A. is starting to look pretty good to me (and I'm not just saying that because I slipped and slithered home through hateful hail earlier this evening...) Thank you, Sally, for raising such important questions, and complicating them so compellingly. Thank you, Ken, for providing an extremely useful historical and political backdrop. This importance of this context is too often overlooked and/or undervalued, and yet absolutely necessary in understanding the issues we are addressing today, and in attempting to overcome the current constraints. I am increasingly convinced that our "conservatives colleagues"--the syncophants of scores-- *can't* be convinced--or that we shouldn't over-expend our energy in the attempt to do so, since it would require us to shift our focus from our central concern: our students and supporting them in their learning. I'm not sure that all the accountability-devotees in fact *want* to be convinced--as we've learned, education is an incredibly political issue, fraught with all sorts of variables that are impossible to account for. We will always have cynics and critics who will want "proof" that we cannot possibly provide. I do not mean to be dismissive of these very real concerns, which are put forth by allies and adversaries alike. I write this not to release us from our responsibility to really think hard and good about how our work is affecting students, merely to refocus our attention on what matters most. Self-evaluation is far more personally-pertinent than succeeding on standardized tests to me. I know that I can "achieve" on such exams without really understanding or analyzing anything at all, and suspect the same is true for many students. I need alternative indicators to ascertain success--for myself and my students--and am working to figure out which factors provide the most worthy and representative evidence of where my students are (in relationship to where they once were and where I would like them to be). For me, I know that the stimulation I receive through working with caring, compassionate colleagues--online and in-person--and collaboratively engaging with challenging issues, invigorates me and allows me to enter the classroom with renewed inspiration each day. I can't help but believe this benefits my students... --Sanda Balaban Your last posting really struck a nerve with me. What I see happening is that both nationally, and most especially in my state, the political pressure of accountability is trickling down to the classroom and affecting even those of us who believe in teaching depth not breadth and using "authentic" assessments to determine student learning in not only more meaningful ways, but often much more enjoyable ways, ways which are in themselves learning experiences.... not exercises in....ugh....regurgitation. Accountability, however, means, when you talk about state or national testing, how well are your students doing on standardized exams. The dilemma, it seems to me, is that if I teach and assess the way I believe is best I will not have prepared my students for the tests that they will have to take and upon which my and my school's performance will be judged. There is nothing quite so daunting for an educational institution than having its test scores to be published in the paper for the public to make school to school comparisons, if not classroom (and thus teacher) to classroom comparisons. I am very troubled by this drift, and the accountability train has yet to even leave the station. How long will it take for teachers to feel compelled "to teach to the test?" Perhaps I'm just paranoid, or perhaps I just don't yet grasp how to reconcile creative teaching, in-depth learning, and alternative assessments with the pressured need to have students perform well on THE TESTS! Anyone have some insight to share with me on this? --Jerry Swanitz Sally, you are right about our governor. He's on this "politically correct" instructional minutes kick! I think he sees this passing period idea as a way of wringing more free work out of teachers and making himself look good. The staff development issue is just more political expediency. The public loves to hear that the "education" governor is going to put teachers back in classroom and make them teach instead of engaging in this staff development nonsense. More time for students in the classroom sounds good to most people, and parents love it because staff development days and SIP days are an inconvenience to them. Where has the thinking gone that was behind SB 1882? At that point the state seemed to value staff development. Realistically, how many staff development days are there going to be outside the contract year? Your notion that staff development needs to be imbedded, have continuity and meaning and meaningless one shot in-service days is right on. Creating the time and the model to make it happen is the challenge. --Jerry Swanitz Jerry, I can understand your dilemma very well. I'm at an elementary math/science magnet and authentic assessment is a part of our curriculum. Unfortunately, the Stanford Nine assessment is scaring a lot of the teachers and we are leaning back towards "drill and kill." Also, the back to basics movement in Calif.'s math standards is putting a lot of pressure on the teachers who have been advocating math reform practices. Many of us are angry with the Calif. Board of Ed for overriding the recommendations of the state commission on the Math Standards. Now, we're worried about the science standards because the same thing can happen, back to basics science which is back to drill and kill science. Because I have a strong interest in science education, I am trying to keep up with the State Commission meetings on the Science Standards. I can attend one meeting up in Sacramento but it is really difficult to take time away from my classroom. So, my question is: How do we educate policymakers (who have no clue) about the value of authentic assessment practices? --Diana Taga We all seem to have a lot to say about our questions regarding the effect of our work on student achievement. Questions are a good thing, as Martha would say, and they may lead us to new horizons. Let's get them out. I hear that more discussion is being generated around this topic at the site directors' meeting in April, so let's give them plenty of things to talk about. Ken's ideas about the need to look differently at how we interact with students in classrooms and how we view assessment also allow us bigger parameters in which to think about and evaluate our work. (Eat your heart out, guys! I work with this brain every day!). Carol's current project of using GT teaching techniques in regular classrooms goes to the heart of the "those kids" arguments. As Ken says, "it is so vitally important for us to continue to document our work carefully, and to not to ignore the student achievement side of things." We may be feeling our way through the fog, but I believe the sunshine is near. Any more voices to help us find the way? --Sally Roderick |
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