Gary Miller, Wyoming Indian High School, Ethete, WY

Research Question: 
What are current classroom teacher attitudes about WDE Body of Evidence policy?

I continue to gather information, mostly through district email and personal interviews and conversations. This continues to present some problems in how to categorize and index the response data. So far the data sorts (sort of) into four theme categories. Brevity being close to godliness, I list the categories and summary statements/questions of teacher comments.

WDE & District Policy:
Concerns that we are repeating a process that may again change soon.
Is the message clear?
Money/time for staff development and compliance.
Is minimum compliance quality education?
Accountability issues.
Need to trust teachers and classroom practice.

Assessment:
Matching assessments to standards.
Should we start with authentic assessments, then look at standards?
One good assessment will cover many standards.
One critical assessment may be assessed several times.
What is reportable?
Value of WyCas?
Limits of WyCas.
Variety of assessment accountability audiences.

BOE Process:
Better than high stakes test.
What is BOE?
How many models?
What are minimum requirements?
Some classroom assessments don’t report nicely into BOE
accountability guidelines.
Teacher time better spent designing and improving classroom
instruction.
SPED issues.

Standards:
Helpful as guidelines.
Good for new teachers.
WDE intrusive, overstepping responsibilities.
One assessment/multiple standards; One standard/multiple
assessments.
Dumbing down curriculum?
Lack higher level thinking skills and creative intelligence. Education is more than proficiency in standards.
Content standard/Benchmark assessment.

Teachers like to respond to the NTPI articles I have shared, especially the NTPI Policy Statement, Leo Casey "Accountability" article, and teacher-designed teacher training and in-service. I continue to collect research as we move through our District in-service days.