Q & A from the Real World

90/90/90 Schools

      I just returned from Portland, OR and their questions mirror what upsets you about references for success. Their quest for "names, dates and places" was the norm after I shared the 90/90/90 data with them. So here I go asking for them:

      The original schools were in Milwaukee—high poverty, high minority, high second language. Since then, the 90-90-90 techniques have been replicated all over the country with multiple language and ethnic groups. The school in California that had the highest achievement gains for two consecutive years, Mead Valley Elementary, was 100% poverty and 99% Latino and second language, and used 90-90-90 techniques. It's also been replicated in deep south rural schools, Native American schools, and many other schools with diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

      What percentage of the population in the studies were ELL and special education learners?

      We have worked with 100% ELL schools and with schools that have full inclusion. In some cases, more than half the students with IEPs, including students with autism, ED, LD, and developmental delays, met or exceeded state standards, with the only adaptation on the state test being time.

      Are there effective resources/best practices in the area of writing to deal with a significantly large ELL population?

      See the new books Reason to Write and the Reason to Write Student Handbook for more elaboration here. In general, the keys for ELL students include multiple opportunities for success, multiple ways of representing ideas (writing, oral, webs, pictures), and focused feedback. By "focused feedback" I mean don't try to do grammar, organization, word choice, simile, metaphor, irony, and spelling all at the same time. With my ELL students, I would start focusing on JUST organization - beginning, middle, and end. If we had that, it was worthy of celebration. Then I might add just ONE convention, such as capitalization or ending punctuation. Incremental steps, regular feedback, and opportunities for IMMEDIATE correction and success.

      I would like to know what schools Doug Reeves is talking about in his research. They are called 90/90/90 schools because they are 90% minority, 90% students living in poverty, and 90% achieving at or above grade level. Please send me a list of these schools and where they are located. I am very interested in finding out more about them.

      Thanks very much for your inquiry. The original research is contained in a chapter of my book, Accountability in Action: A Blueprint for Learning Organizations. You can download that chapter for free at www.LeadandLearn.com. The original 90-90-90 schools were in Milwaukee, but since that time the results have been replicated in many other areas.
      A couple of points of clarification are important.
      1) There is NOTHING new or remarkable about this research - it is a small pebble on a thirty-year mountain of research about performance in high poverty, high minority schools.
      2) There is no "90-90-90 system" - there is nothing to buy, no program to implement. It is just a set of replicable practices, such as collaborative scoring of student work, frequent nonfiction writing, editing, and rewriting, displays of proficient and exemplary student work, and multiple opportunities for student success.
      3) There is no insinuation that poverty is irrelevant - of course it is relevant to student achievement. The only point of the study (and many other like it) is that poverty is not destiny, and that demographic characteristics are outweighed in importance by teaching, curriculum, and leadership.
      You can also learn more about subsequent questions about the research in the book 101 Questions and Answers About Standards, Assessment, and Accountability and the book Holistic Accountability: Serving Students, Schools, and Community.
      In California, there are a growing number of high poverty, high success schools. Mead Valley is one that has for two consecutive years implemented 90-90-90 principles with significant success. You might talk with the principal there, Earl Shore.

Assessments

Common Assessments

      We are in the midst of deciding how to weight and record the common assessments that happen twice/year. High school is happy with them on the report, 5% each of the final grade. The push is to do the same at middle level-I am not in favor of this, want it worth 2% for 6 and 7, and only shown on report card for 8th. Our younger students are struggling with the assessment, anxiety wise, and performance wise. Report card is personal to them and those students, who work very hard, get B's for grades and then see that D or F on a common assessment will be devastated. We have seen this in the classroom when we hand them back to discuss. What are your thoughts on the weighting and reporting?

      First, I reject the premise that there is a formula for grading based on the use of the average. We make 5th graders learn that the arithmetic mean is not always the best representation of a data set; surely teachers and school leaders can learn the same lesson.

      Second, I applaud the notion of making formative assessments "count" - but neither these assessments nor ANY single project, paper, assessment, or test should be allowed to so profoundly influence a student's grade. Each time we have the "killer project" we administer the academic death penalty, telling students that resilience doesn't matter, finishing strong doesn't count, and a single bad week or month can ruin an entire year. Rather than teaching resilience, we teach defeatism.

      Therefore, let me offer some practical ways out of this dilemma.

      I would concur with making the assessments "count" - but only as part of a menu of student projects, assignments, and assessments. If the blow the assessment, the consequence is not a failure, but rather the consequence is that students select something else from the menu. The same if they miss an assignment, blow a test, or fail to turn in a project (or, just as commonly, complete the project, but leave it at the bottom of a locker that resembles a toxic waste dump). Our responses should be neither sympathy nor judgment, but simply the rational, logical, encouraging, and firm response that students are responsible for their work, and when they miss important work, they don't fail, but rather they select something else form the menu and GET THE WORK DONE. This results in more work of higher quality, better grades, fewer failures, and appropriate respect for formative assessments without making formative assessments "make or break" tests.

Common Assessments and Specials

      My administration has started our school down the road towards implementing common assessments. This seems to be a very effective way to ensure equal and fair learning opportunities for all students. Unfortunately, as with most other ideas, the elective or special teachers (technology, foreign language, art, music, consumer science, study hall, etc.) are placed into a "discipline team" and asked to participate in the common assessment strategy. Is this a fair application of this stragegy? Can the special teachers create a common assessment across our different curricula? Or, should we spend the time finding other ways to promote reading, writing, and math literacy in our content areas?

      I can see two sides of this. My very strong inclination is to agree with you, because I have seen some terrific writing assessments in music and art, and I would hate to have those efforts diluted. On the other hand, in many school systems the student:teacher ratio for music, art, and PE is MUCH higher than for other classes, and the use of common assessments can place an excessive burden on those teachers compared to their colleagues. Therefore, some team assessment might make sense -- study the Firebird Suite and artistic representations of it in music AND art, and submit written reflection for credit in both classes, with grading duties split between two teachers.

      At the end of the day, we need to honor your desire to focus on your discipline and use your expertise to help students link literacy skills to your class, without drowning you in paperwork. There must be a reasonable compromise here somewhere -- perhaps one quarter doing discipline-specific assessments and the next quarter doing cross-disciplinary assessments.

Benchmark Assessments

      What is your opinion on how frequently benchmark assessments should be given? We have been told to test every 3 weeks and the teachers feel they don't have enough time left for instruction.

      I'm an advocate of VERY short (10-12 items) assessments done very frequently. In my classes I would do weekly assessment, but many schools are doing bi-weekly assessment successfully. Certainly formative assessments must be no less frequent than quarterly.

      The key is not, however, simply "doing" the assessment -- the key is how teachers use the results to make immediate improvements in teaching and learning. The longer the interval between the assessments, the less likely it is that we can make meaningful alterations in teaching strategies and curriculum.

      With regard to the "not enough time for instruction" argument, I can only quote what I heard another Virginia educator say when confronted with the same challenge. "These assessment [they did them biweekly] SAVE us time -- it's the only way we know what to teach and who needs special assistance."

      There is not a shred of evidence that covering the curriculum and checking off items on pacing charts is equivalent to student learning. In areas where students succeed -- from electronic games to music to athletics - they receive very frequent feedback. Marzano is just one of many researchers who has established that of all the things that we do as teachers, feedback is the single greatest influence on student achievement, provided that the feedback is timely, accurate, and specific. End of semester finals do not meet any of those criteria.

      I am very sympathetic to teachers who feel overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of standards and curriculum elements. The best response to that challenge, however, is not a failure to assess students, but rather a narrowing of the scope of the assessments. It is not necessary to address every element of the standards. We can save a great deal of time if we first identify "Power Standards" (see the book by Larry Ainsworth of that title), and then focus our assessment efforts on the most important assessments.

Data

Collecting Data that Will Make a Difference

      We are struggling with ways to collect data that will make a difference.
      Last week we were able to work through some issues and find useful data to track with early childhood special education -- which is direct instruction to children ages 3-5 and you saw some of that on data boards.
      My real struggle is gifted education. We have successfully been tracking some data -- but in reflecting on that data last week, it's mostly data used to justify our program, if you will. I could use some suggestions about data to collect that would be used to track student success. Our gifted program is called GALACTIC, it is a full day pull-out program & each grade comes from all over the district on a different day of the week. I feel we cannot take credit for the MAP scores of our students, but I will say that 85% of them are proficient or advanced. As well, this last year I took a few of our students who were scoring Basic on their MAP mathematics test & signed them up for a math class here at our gifted class to give them a "double dose" of math. I don't yet know the results of that.
      We assign no grades to our students, but we do have a lot of accountability & a "star" system that lets us know if students meet or exceed expectations in each course they take at GALACTIC. I'm not sure that "star" system means much to anyone but us here at GALACTIC.
      I could use some advice about how to proceed with our data team for this coming year

     Thanks very much for a very thoughtful note. I agree that MAP is not a great reflection of the success of your students. However, I would not exclude MAP from the equation. One common problem in gifted education is that teachers assume "they already know that" and fail to give students the grade-level instruction that they need in addition to enrichment opportunities. That's one reason that gifted kids drop out in high school - they have never experienced failure, and then all of a sudden a high school teacher expects them to have some basic skills that they were never taught because teachers in earlier grades assumed that they had map reading, number operations, and essay construction down pat.
     The real question is, as you suggest, what additional measures beyond MAP can we use? First, I think we need to stick with same student to same student comparisons, not this year's group to last year's group. There implies, therefore, some sort of pre- and post- test information during the same academic year.
     Second, we'll need a variety of instruments, including traditional ones. As David Perkins reminds us, students who are gifted in one area may not be gifted in others, and therefore the student with superior mathematical ability may nevertheless use traditional literacy tests, or vice versa.
     Third, we'll need tests that are sensitive to exceptionally fact progress. That's why test of a single grade level do not work with gift students, because even if we give a 5th grade test to a 4th grade student, we have essentially created a "ceiling effect" of one year of progress above grade level. More nuanced tests, such as those that use Item Response Theory to give progressively more challenging questions each time a student answers correctly, are better suited for this task. But at the end of the day, you and your colleagues (and students) will complain of test fatigue if we just test the kids all the time.
     Fourth, to address the test fatigue issue and also challenge students appropriately, I would favor have them create their own assessments. First, I'd have an honest talk about times when they felt that a test did not allow them to show all that they know. When a 5th grader can do algebra, scoring 100% on a multiplication and fractions test is not very satisfying. So let them think about different types of assessment --- closed end, open-end, performance, etc. - and have them construct an assessment each month that, if they were the teacher, would allow their students to demonstrate all that they have learned. The worst case is that some kids will sand-bag, using this as an opportunity to get out of work by dumbing down the task. I think that risk is minimal, particularly when other students are going to create some wonderfully creative and challenging tasks in a variety of different assessment formats.

Comparing Student Data

     I wanted to compare scores from a nonstandards-based curriculum to scores on our new performance standards (3rd graders in my school from 2005 and 2006). What info can I mostly expect to find from this comparison. What are some other things I could do using this existing data to tell me if the standards-based curriculum is working or increasing student achievement in reading? Can I use some kind of stats to tell me more (enter the data a stat package-SPSS)?

     Whether you use SPSS or Microsoft Excel or just a hand-written data set, here are the keys to bear in mind:

     First, be sure to make a “same student to same student” comparison. In other words, it is of some value to compare last year’s third grade students to this year’s third grade students. Perhaps the differences in scores will be due to the differences in curriculum. But perhaps the differences in scores will due to the fact that they are different children. It is therefore far more persuasive to have pre- and post- test data that will – for the very same group of children – the gains that they make with treatment A (the previous curriculum) and then the gains that they make with treatment B (the new curriculum). You would expect both data sets to show gains – after all, the kids were in school. But your hypothesis is that the gains would be of a different magnitude.

     Second, if you are examining effects across many different classrooms, then it is imperative that we acknowledge that there is more going on here than the “presence or absence” or a new curriculum. In every curriculum or teaching reform, the fundamental issue is DEGREE OF IMPLEMENTATAION. I have seen new reading curricula implemented, for example, with some classrooms devoting 90 minutes each day, others devoting 120 minutes each day, and others devoting 180 minutes each day to the “same” curriculum. In other cases, I have seen many schools claiming to have the same new curriculum, but the actual use and implementation varied widely. When researchers tracked the actual degree of use of the new curriculum, they found that low levels of implementation were worse than no change at all, and only the highest levels of implementation were effective. This will help you avoid the “brand name fallacy” in which vendors attempt to claim that the brand name of the curriculum is the salient variable in student achievement, when you and I know that teaching, leadership, and daily implementation are far more important.
 

Grading and Testing

The Case Against the Zero

      I am so very weary with ideas and mandates that simultaneously make students less accountable and teachers more accountable for performance daily!!! Giving a student 50 points for 0 effort is not fairness! It is coddling! If a student does an assignment that has ten 10-point questions and misses 7, he will earn 30 points. But a student who never bothers to do that very same assignment at all should be given 50 points, 20 more than the student who truly tried to complete it??? Every single grade point should be earned by completing every single assignment. This is how teachers simultaneously dispense lessons about ethics and responsibility. Such necessary lessons extend far beyond mere mathematical fallacies.

      Thanks very much for your thoughtful and heart-felt message. We both agree on the need to instill discipline and work ethic in students. I also know that we both are seeking the most effective way to do this. I'm not an ivory-tower theoretician. I'm a teacher and parent genuinely seeking the best way to motivate and engage students to achieve higher levels of performance and personal responsibility. I wish that my 8th grade son, the youngest of four, had teachers as thoughtful and committed as you.
      So, let's see if we can find some common ground.
      For example, we both agree that we should not "give credit for no work" - so how about the use of the zero on a four-point scale rather than on the 100-point scale. This would convey the same message about the penalty for no work that we both agree is important, while not inflating the value of the D - truly awful work - in comparison to no work.
      How about a menu system in which the penalty for not submitting work on time is simply more work? When they fail to submit work, the "punishment" is not a zero, but actually doing work - and not copying from their peers who submitted work on time, but selecting different work from the assignment menu.
      How about a reward system for submitting work on time? In my classes, I used to provide 50 points for the first draft and 50 points for the final draft. But in the unlikely event that someone submitted a pluperfect essay on the first submission, I wrote "100 points - no rewrite necessary." Word quickly spread that the way to "get over" in my class was to do it right the first time.
      I'm genuinely seeking solutions here, and I do not have the conceit that I have solved this very vexing dilemma. Thanks for taking the time to engage this very challenging issue.

Pre- and Post-Testing

      We are designing pre and post testing to measure reading, math, and writing growth over 4 week periods. Is it best to use the same measure for both pre and post tests? Or should we change the post test measure so students don't remember the pre test items? Should the same writing prompt be used for both pre and post testing? Some teachers are concerned that students will lose motivation to write if the post test prompt was used as a pre test prompt.

      Pre and post tests should contain items that are parallel - that is, similar in format and difficulty - but not identical. In math, that's pretty straight-forward - keep the item format nearly identical, but change the numbers. Writing is more tricky, because as your colleague notes, student performance is a combination of writing and their knowledge of the prompt. One way to maximize the impact of writing (and minimize the impact of student knowledge of the prompt content) is to increase the number of prompts - perhaps giving students a choice of three prompts for both the pre- and post- test. When students have choice, they have better engagement. Moreover, when teachers are looking at essays with different prompts and content, they are more likely to focus exclusively on the matter at hand - writing - not the student's knowledge of content from the prompt. There are a number of resources on improved classroom assessment, and I would particularly consider the work of Tom Guskey, Jane Bailey, Bob Marzano (see especially his new book on Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work), and Rick Stiggins. One of my books, Making Standards Work (3rd edition) might be useful to you as well, particularly on the issue of creating assessments that are engaging for students. I'm also publishing new book on assessment this fall that will chapters by Marzano, Stiggins, Guskey, and several other leaders in the field.
      I do want to caution that when we try to make classroom assessments too perfect, we make some unfortunate trade-offs. For example, you get higher statistical reliability with more items, but I've seen students and teachers get crushed by 80-item 2-hour tests because a professor told them they need to be "reliable and valid." But a psychometrically perfect assessment that alienates kids and teachers and is so long that the results are not delivered to the students in a timely way is simply a waste of time. Better to do mini-assessments - 12 or 15 items - that may not have the statistical perfection of 80 items, but where students get same-day or next-day feedback, and teachers use the data in real time to improve instruction. You might get more "perfect" assessments by purchasing them from test companies, but then you're simply paying for the professional development of the employees of test companies instead of using those resources to help teachers design and evaluate god assessments. When teachers create the assessments collaboratively and score them together in a fair and consistent manner, they not only gain the value of accurate and timely feedback for students, but they also are much more likely to have alignment between instruction, curriculum, standards, and assessment. Teachers will also be emotionally and professional engaged in assessment rather than having assessment staked on to the top of an already overflowing plate.

Scoring Student Work

      At our school the policy on math problems is to take off 2 points per problem if students don't include the “label.” This means if the student doesn't write the word “tickets” in a problem asking how many tickets were sold, they are docked two points—their grade can go from a passing grade to a failing one if they don't label all the problems. The teachers do not, however, give partial credit for including the “label” if the student gets the math wrong but writes the label. They say that the student needs to write the label as part of the math concept, but again, don't give partial credit for including the label and getting the math wrong. They say that taking off for the labels is an important part of “following directions.” However, the report card has a separate conduct grade for “listens and follows directions.” Someone from the administration suggested I ask you about this policy, especially in light of the fact that administrators from this school attended a seminar under your direction in Utah this summer.

As a math teacher myself, I understand the quandary. We want students to know the math and also to understand the context of the problem. I used to tell my students, whether they were in elementary school or graduate school, “Mathematics is about describing the universe using numbers, symbols, and words, and we're going to use all three of those this year.” I tried to make it clear that this is about communication—not just about calculation—and it sounds as if your math teachers have similar feelings.
      Now to the grading issue. I love your idea of distinguishing between academic content and “listening and following directions” but we would all acknowledge that on a test and in life, students must do BOTH—it's not an either/or proposition. Therefore, the report card is a great idea and the math teacher who insists that students label their problems has a good idea. I don't even mind if they take points off—BUT BUT BUT—those deductions should be in PENCIL, and the student should, prior to turning work in, conduct a self-assessment. In some cases, I have seen a checklist by the teacher's desk and in other cases (including all of my classes) there was a checklist on top of the test that the student had to complete. It included things such as “Name on paper” and could also include “Labels on each answer.” If a student still fails to label the answer correctly, the appropriate response is not a failing grade, but the requirement that the student do it again—that's why the deduction is in pencil. The lesson I want them to learn is not “I'm a failure in math” but rather “I'd better label my answers or it's a lot of extra work so I might as well do it right the first time.” When the student answers the problem correctly, the deduction can be removed. It's the BEHAVIOR of labeling the problem that I want to reinforce, and my experience suggests that in some cases, it takes more than one-trial learning for that to take place.

Research in Support of Collaborative Scoring

      I am dealing with a group of high school teachers who are very angry about having to do some collaboratively scored writing, and reading assessments. They see it as "teaching to the test" and have even gone so far as to write an open letter in the local papers claiming that the central office is taking all of the creativity out of the classroom by doing this work. I will be meeting with this staff on November 18th and would love to have some of the research you had discussed at the Accountability Academy (particularly to information on writing, and the impact of collaboratively scored assessments and anything else that would bolster our case) at my fingertips. Could you please let me know where I can get my hands on these studies or possible other sources?

      There is an abundant body of research on the value of literacy and writing in particular. Frankly, it's just common sense that students who do more nonfiction writing, along with editing and rewriting, will improve thinking and reasoning skills, and that will improve their abilities in science, social studies, mathematics, and everything else that they do in life. But if people need to see published resources, I would recommend the following:
      Reeves, D.B., "Standards are not enough: Essential transformations for successful schools," National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin, December 2000.
      Darling-Hammond, L., The Right to Learn, Jossey Bass, 1997
      Reeves, D.B., The Leader's Guide to Standards, Jossey Bass, 2002.
      Calkins, L., The Art of Teaching Writing, Heinneman.
      Here are some ideas to compromise with teachers on the issue of maintaining their creativity while simultaneously maintaining a commitment to excellence:
      1) Allow teachers to choose the prompt so that the writing assignments fit into their subject. Everyone uses the same scoring rubric, of course, in order to maintain consistency of expectations. But the subject matter of the prompt can be selected by the teachers.
      2) Allow teachers outside of language arts to use an abbreviated scoring rubric, focusing primarily on organization and conventions. Some of the complexities of the traditional rubrics can be overwhelming for people outside of language arts.
      3) Allow team scoring, so that the same assignment receives credit in both science and language arts, for example, and teachers score them together.
      4) Give up time in faculty meetings for collaborative scoring so that teachers know that the administration is willing to give up its meeting so that teachers will have more time. The same can be done with perhaps half of the building and district professional development hours.
      These are all reasonable compromises that show your good faith. The essential question that every teacher must address is this: Is what we have been doing in the past working? Are our students writing well enough to have opportunities beyond high school? Ask some local community college and university and technical school faculty to talk with you about this issue. They will uniformly report that even students with good work ethic and decent test scores are writing abysmally, and that this is hurting the career and academic opportunities for these students. The remedy for this is more writing, more editing, more feedback - and all of those things in more subjects. Do you have more 9th graders than 12th graders? In virtually every high school in the land, the answer is yes, and that is because students do not succeed in 9th and 10th grades, and then drop out. These students are not stupid, but they lack essential skills for success in school and in life, and our failure to intervene to give them those skills results in a lifetime of adverse consequences for them.
      One final note: The thesis of the “we can't be creative” argument is that because of the demands of standards, you just can't be creative but only must teach to the test all day. If that thesis were true, then the evidence should indicate that teachers who do mindless test drills all day long have higher test scores than teachers whose classrooms are marked by creativity, thinking, engagement, analysis, rigor, communication, and, of course, writing. After all, their reasoning goes, you just don't have time for all those good things if you are doing test drills, and the test drills are the only way to have high scores. In fact, the evidence is the opposite of that hypothesis. I'm advocating FOR creativity, and writing, thinking, engagement, and analysis are all parts of a creative classroom.

Improved Reading Skills and Standardized Testing

      Thanks very much for your question. There is no higher compliment an author can receive than a careful and challenging reading of his book. I'll address each of your questions below, in remarks right after your questions:

      I am currently reading your book Accountability In Action. I have a few questions so that I may better understand. On page 191, there is reference to improved reading scores improving science scores even though some of the science curriculum was sacrificed to spend more time with the reading and writing components. Some of the high stakes tests have science components that enable the better readers to succeed by making the science questions of the sort that the science information is supplied in a text form. The students are to glean the information out of the test material to find the correct answer. Our Stanford 9 exams were largely of this sort. This would of course enable the better readers to score higher on the exam. But what of the tests that rely on questions that refer to material that was learned in the classroom and not supplied in the test material? To which of these two kinds of tests does your data refer? Are scores higher even for those tests in which students must know the material prior to taking the test? If so, how can this be?

      In this case, students were also required to take tests in science and social studies content. The same was also true of schools in Virginia that replicated these results. Even when schools reduced their science curriculum to one day each week, the science scores increased. This is strikingly similar to results in a California study where the Stanford-9 science test was used. The students who overemphasized literacy— particularly nonfiction writing (including writing ABOUT SCIENCE) with editing and rewriting—had higher Stanford-9 science scores than students who simply "covered the curriculum." The other component of improved science scores is a focus on the right thing. Students need time every week to ask questions, develop hypotheses, make systematic observations, record those observations on tables, charts, or graphs, draw inferences from those graphs, and then write a report about it. This is better achieved in a single 90-minute science block each week than a frantic attempt to cover rocks, clouds, and volcanoes in 45 minutes every day. I'm not discounting science at all—I am emphasizing the most important parts of science—creating hypotheses and testing them, and gathering data and drawing appropriate conclusions from those data points. But none of that matters if kids can't read the question. No doubt about it—literacy is more important.

      Secondly, our district is asking our teachers to follow a "pacing plan" by which all of the teachers must teach the same lessons the same day the entire school year. There is very little wiggle room in this plan. What are your thoughts on this?

      There is room for compromise. I agree that we need to agree—perhaps once a month or once a quarter—about where we should be. That assures equity for all students, regardless of teacher or neighborhood. But on a day-to-day basis, I need the freedom to stop, recognize a mistake, re-teach, rearrange my schedule, ask my colleagues for help, and meet my students' needs. Let me give you an example that happened to me frequently. You'd think I would have figured it out after all these years, but it happened ALL THE TIME. I would plan a unit for 6th grade students on exponents—a critically important concept to get them ready for algebra in 8th or 9th grade. I'd find that half of them had poor multiplication skills, and you can't do exponents or test the reasonability of answers without knowing multiplication. Sometimes I'd have to spend four weeks on a lesson I thought would take one or two weeks. That sort of thing happens to teachers all the time, and if I just said "Sorry, you missed it, we're moving on," then half my class would have been discouraged, demoralized, and worst of all, not been proficient in math. So I had to have the freedom to figure out how to take extra time in math, how to ask friends in music and PE to help me out, how to integrate math problems into social studies and science. I'm not saying it was perfect, but there is a lot to be said for admitting a problem (my students were not where I thought they were) and figuring out a solution (take extra time, collaborate with colleagues) rather than just charging ahead with the schedule.

      And finally, we are being told to teach at grade level no matter what the student abilities are. We have many 8th grade students with 6th grade level math and reading skills, yet we are told not to teach to their current level, but rather teach to their grade level. In your book (p. 189), there is a great quote: "It's not how you start here that matters, but rather how you finish." May I have your opinion on this?

      It's not "either/or" but "both/and." In the example I mentioned above, I did get my students to exponents, just as I would get an 8th grader to chart linear (y=mx+b) graphs and nonlinear exponential graphs. BUT I COULD NEVER HAVE DONE THAT IF I DIDN'T ALSO TAKE EXTRA TIME TO ENSURE THAT THEY COULD MULTIPLY. So sure, I did "grade-level" work and believe very much in that concept. But if my student is several grades below where they need to be, I must have the time to catch up. To be specific, I know of schools that spend three hours each day on literacy - two hours reading and one hour writing; and 90 to 120 minutes on math. That means that some other things give way. But it's the only way we can get our students to a level of proficiency that is necessary.
      Finally, do not try to have them proficient at EVERYTHING. Rather, consider the "Power Standards" approach in which you and your colleagues identify which standards (typically about 12 per grade per subject) are the most important for the next level of instruction. That will save a lot of time and keep your curriculum and classroom assessment focused in the right areas.

      I am having difficulty convincing all of my staff that allowing test retakes and giving credit for redone homework is appropriate. They are hung up on the responsibility/citizenship issue and I also believe it is because they don't want more work. I'm doing professional development on this topic in 10 days and need any guidance you can give me. I could mandate this but I would like to use data or anything else you can help me with.

      Thanks very much for your very thoughtful question. First, I want to express my complete agreement with your staff. We ALL agree that responsibility and citizenship is a good idea. Kids SHOULD have appropriate consequences for failure to do homework, complete projects, and doing badly on tests. The only question is how BEST to encourage responsibility and citizenship and what the appropriate consequences should be.

      This is very important - we are not starting with the perspective of "I'm right and the teachers are wrong." We're starting with the perspective that you, your staff, and I all love kids, care about them, and want them to grow up with a good sense of responsibility and citizenship.

      Now that we are starting from common ground, let's ask some questions:
      1) Are our present practices leading students to improve their rates of homework completion and classroom success? If so, then let's just check the data - what was the percentage of failures five years ago? Three years ago? Last year? If our strategies are effective, I would expect that the failures - particularly failures due to the failure to complete homework, are declining significantly. But that's not, in fact, what I see around the country. The typical grading practices - zeroes for missing work, refusing to take late work, refusing to allow students to resubmit work, use of the average - are not providing improved performance. In fact, teachers complain to me all the time that students are not completing work, that they are disengaged and non-responsive. In other words, if our goal is improved citizenship and responsibility, what we are doing now apparently is not working very well.
      2) What alternatives have we tried? In almost every school, I find wide variation in teacher grading practices. There are some teachers who, quietly and almost anonymously, have been experimenting with different practices. Before you consider anything I have to say, conduct a "treasure hunt" by analyzing those classes where failure rates have declined and achievement has improved. Look in different departments around the district where success is high - drivers education, music, computer programming? What do those areas have in common that we can learn from? One thing that I know is true in all three is that when you make a mistake, it doesn't lead to failure, but rather to listening to teacher feedback, respecting teacher feedback, improving performance, and ultimately passing the assessment.
      3) What will be our criteria for decision? Can we at least agree that even if people are skeptical, we'll let the evidence be our guide? I've worked in very remote parts of Africa where people did not believe that vaccinations were effective. They didn't want to see my studies or hear a lecture on western medicine. But they were willing to look at children who lived or avoided horrible life-long disabilities because they didn't get polio (it's still rampant in parts of the developing world). The evidence, not my beliefs or their beliefs, ultimately allowed for more vaccinations. So in our schools, can we agree that even if we're not sure, we'll at least try some experiments, and then let the evidence decide? I think that teachers are smart - they care about kids and love them. But they are skeptical because they don't like to see another "hot idea" come and go. So, let's take our time, try it out, but let's also have the intellectual integrity to let the evidence and not personal feelings, decide.
      4) Can we agree on some fundamental boundaries? Even if we disagree on policy, can we agree on values such as fairness? Can we agree that grading practices should not be based upon subjective appraisals that can be influenced by gender, race, economic status, or parent activism? Can we agree that the central purpose of feedback, including grades, is the improvement of student achievement?
      5) What's in it for the teachers? Can we agree that if we can improve policies that will reduce our failure rate, that we would have happier, more engaged, and better behaved students? Can we agree that if we have fewer students repeating grades and courses, we'll have fewer angry and bored students?
      6) What's in it for the school and community? Can we agree that if we have fewer students repeating math and English, that ultimately we'll have more opportunities for art, music, technology, service learning, and other things that both students and teachers find engaging and worthwhile?
      Once we have settled these questions, let's try some experiments. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but perhaps different teachers would try different things. Some might just eliminate the zero. Some might stop the average. Others might try a "menu" system such as I use, where the consequence for missing work of blowing a test is selecting other items from the menu. Others might experiment with rewards for work that is on time or early rather than punishment for work that is late.
      In other words, I'm not asking you to use MY system, but rather that you use your good judgment and the thoughtful good will of your colleagues to: a) admit that what we are doing now could be improved and b) experiment with different ideas that improve achievement and reduce failures and c) agree that the final school-wide decision will be based on evidence and not personal prejudices.
 

Revision of Work to Achieve Proficiency

      I understand that students are given at least three opportunities to revise work and achieve a grade of proficient or exemplary and that they receive an F if they fail to achieve the standard. My question is, what do you do with those students who still have not achieved the standards by the end of the year and have received multiple F's? Do you "socially promote" them or retain them, or is there something else in place? Please also give me the rationale for whatever it is that you do with these students.

      First, I would not be bound by the "three" rule - I've had students revise work as much as nine times - they had to learn that I was serious about quality work and that I would not "give" them a D for work that was not satisfactory. In general, I won't accept work below "B" level work, which leaves me exposed to two complaints -- students work harder than in any other class, and I have grade inflation. My response is that when students are working harder for higher a grade, that's not grade inflation, but "performance inflation."
      Neither retention nor social promotions are effective. The only reasonable response to poor student performance is IMMEDIATE intervention that is decisive and effective. This requires frequent assessment, RADICAL changes in schedule where appropriate (180 minutes of literacy per day is not unusual in schools that are making dramatic improvements), appropriate use of free time (home rooms, study halls, academic advisories, and lunch) to give students freedom of choice on how to use that time only when they have earned it. "The price of freedom is proficiency."

Standards-Based Report Card

      If I am spending a good deal of my class time on standards-based assessments, how do "exemplary," "proficient," and "progressing" translate to report card grades, which I will be expected to give? I would guess that "exemplary" is A and "proficient" is B, but if a student has not moved beyond "progressing," what does (s)he get? I don't see us moving away from traditional report cards any time soon.

      I agree that the culture of many communities requires letter grades, but at the very least we can make them accurate and effective, criteria which few report cards meet today (see the work of Guskey, Stiggins, O'Connor, and Marzano, as well as my own work, on this point). For example, one of the worst practices is the use of the arithmetic mean, or average, so simply translating "exemplary" into an A and "not meeting" into an F and then averaging the results pretty much defeats the purpose of effective grading practice. In one school, for example, there were six student assessments each quarter. An "assessment" might be a lab, paper, project, etc. Their system was:
                        4 "exemplary" and 2 "proficient" = A
                       4 "proficient" and 2 "progressing" = B
                        3 "proficient" = C
                       No D's allowed.
      Anything less than C work resulted in the "IP" - "In Progress" - and students were given two weeks to achieve at least C level work; otherwise, they received a failing grade. Notice that the emphasis in this system is on quality of work, not speed of work. The consequence for turning in work that was below standard was not a zero or an F, but rather the requirement that the student respect teacher feedback and submits the work again. Conversely, the reward for getting work done well the first time might well be the completion of a class before the end of the semester. A growing number of schools are giving students incentives to "get it right the first time" by working hard, respecting teachers, and learning the material. The reward? No finals, early finishes to class, and what students crave -- freedom of choice.