“Shaking Up The School House” Focusing On Results Chapter 3 “Shaking Up The School House” Ruth Collins Blaine Jenkins Darci Rogers

Learning Focused Schools Focused on learning means focused on the stakeholders. Educators must create activities that engage students. When educators do this successfully, learning has occurred! Students are the customers. Educators must learn to meet their needs. Designing more effective tests (state level) and implementing practice tests (classroom level) will not ensure learning. These steps of reform do not focus on the “customer”.

Measures of Learning There are four means of assessing that learning is taking place. Curriculum Alignment Student Engagement Student Persistence Student Satisfaction We will look at each of these measures more in depthly.

Curriculum Alignment It ensures that student work is relevant to what the community expects students to learn (standardized tests). Some people view curriculum alignment as “teaching the test”. It should not be this way. Curriculum alignment should be judged on 5 conditions. The first three of these are most commonly used but the last two are where students see connections. The scope of content covered.  How far do we go? The level of sophistication and complexity of the knowledge.  Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 questions The sequence or order of presentation.  Pacing guides The richness of the content.  Depth, subtlety, and connectedness. The texture of the content.  How are students attracted to material?

Student Engagement No engagement  No learning! Engagement has nothing to do with students’ time spent on tasks. To be engaged is to be active! It does not mean that you are simply getting by. Enthusiasm and diligence must be present for engagement. The author proposes five levels of engagement: Authentic engagement  Students see the activities as meeting their needs for learning. They genuinely want to take part. Ritual engagement  Students are engaged in order to show obedience. They do it because they are asked to do so. Passive compliance  Students are doing the minimum amount of work in order to get by. Retreatism  Students here reject the assignment and the goals of that assignment. It could be because they cannot do it, they don’t understand what is being asked, or because they nor their parents see the importance of it. Rebellion  These students do not do the work and set their own new ending to the work (cheating is an example of this). Teachers can also be engaging. These teachers are sometime thought of “master teachers” because of their outgoing nature and the charisma they exhibit in the classroom. When teachers are engaged, students are more likely to be also. However, we must distinguish between authentically engaged and mere relief from boredom.

Student Persistence Persistence  The ability to stick with a task until it is up to par. Fear of failure can force student to persist in work. But, it cannot inspire excellence. Morally committed students (those who see meaning in their work) are more engaged.

Student Satisfaction Satisfaction  A sense of accomplishment and pride. It affects how they view themselves now and in their futures. Cautions Get all students engaged in intellectual tasks that result in learning academic skills and concepts

Defining Quality Schoolwork Quality schoolwork comes from combining the previously mentioned facets. Engagement leads to persistence which leads to satisfaction which leads to a quality product! The issue is for teachers to create this kind of quality work for their students to produce.

Assessing Quality Quality of work can be assessed on three categories: Input or contextual standards  number of books in the library, educational level of teachers, safety, space requirements, etc. Process standards  ability of the system to perform. Outcome standards  results desired by the end. It’s only in recent years that schools have begun to be evaluated based on the outcome (state test scores, drop out rates, failure rates, etc.). Teachers/Administration feel such a huge need to increase test scores that they are not able to focus on measuring actual student learning. Good test scores is not an indication of quality learning in schools.

Holding Teachers Accountable Accountability should be long term. This reflects the principle of collective accountability. Individual teachers should be directly, personally, and immediately accountable for ensuring that the work they provide is aligning with expectations. They should not be held accountable for things outside of their control. Faculty as a group should be held accountable for how a group of students perform.