The Missing Measurement

Beating the Odds? Average Scale Score Gains measured in 4 Minnesota Classrooms based on NWEA Grade 4 (same school/year) results: SS +8 expected Spring to Spring Classroom 1: SS Classroom 2: SS Classroom 3: SS Classroom 4: SS

School Improvement Curriculum Instruction Parental Involvement

Curriculum Can be found in a 3 ring binder in the curriculum director’s office and sometimes in the department chair’s office Often based on a text book or text book series Most often left to the teacher to decide what to cover, emphasize, leave out or substitute Seems to be different for each teacher or hour (No one usually measures what actually is taught)—Is often changed because it does not seem to work

Instruction Is left up to the teacher to decide what to do Is often based on what the teacher is comfortable doing Is usually different for each teacher May or may not be appropriate for the materials being used (Teacher appraisal looks at what the teacher is doing---while the most important part of lesson design is what the students are to do)

Curriculum vs Instruction Modern curriculum materials (especially math based on NSF) use assumed lesson designs. All research is based on using the recommended lesson designs. These lesson designs put the student at the center doing explorations to construct specific understandings. There is often a disconnect between the lesson design designed by the textbook author and the lesson design implemented in the classroom (Teacher appraisal or even walk-throughs do not measure lesson design)

No Child Left Behind Requires schools to improve the student performance Requires an improvement plan based on improving curriculum and the delivery of that curriculum No longer allows hap-hazard design of curriculum that is different from room to room No longer allows hap-hazard lesson designs that do not work with the students walking through the door Expects that modifications to curriculum and curriculum delivery are based on data.

What Research Says! Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde. (2005). Best Practice, Today's Standards for Teaching & Learning in America's Schools, Third Edition They compiled recommendations from educational experts and found that:

LESS! whole-class, teacher directed instruction student passivity: sitting, listening, receiving and absorbing information presentation, one-way transmission of information from teacher to student prizing and rewarding of silence in the classroom classroom time devoted to fill-in-the blank worksheets, dittos, workbooks, and other “seatwork” attempts by teachers to thinly “cover” rote memorization of facts and details emphasis on the competition and grades in schools tracking large amounts of materials in every subject area or leveling students into “ability groups” use of pull-out special programs use of and reliance on standardized tests

MORE! experimental, inductive, hands-on learning active learning, with all the attendant noise and movement of students doing, talking, and collaborating cooperative, collaborative activity; developing the classroom as an interdependent community emphasis on higher-order thinking; learning a field’s key concepts and principles attention to affective needs and varying cognitive styles of individual students deep study of a smaller number of topics, so that students internalize the field’s way of inquiry choice for students reading of real texts: whole books, primary sources, and nonfiction materials heterogeneous classrooms where individual needs are met through individualized activities, not segregation of bodies varied and cooperative roles for teachers, parents, and administrators reliance on descriptive evaluations of student growth, including observational/anecdotal records, conference notes, and performance assessment rubrics diverse roles for teacher, including coaching, demonstrating, and modeling responsibility transferred to students for their work: goal setting, record keeping, monitoring, sharing, exhibiting, and evaluating

What Gets Measured Gets Done! Most school improvement plans Most curriculum adoptions Curriculum delivery systems Are Missing a Measurement tool!

Enduring understandings about any school reform effort What gets measured gets done. What happens in the classroom is the true indication of whether any reform effort has had the intended effect. Improvement in student achievement only happens when the learners become more successful.

The need for quality information “Organizations need to turn ‘information’ into ‘information that cannot be ignored’ and then confront the ‘brutal facts of reality’ in the data.” In other words given our mission and desired results, what data are needed and what do those data tell us, especially about what is not working well?” -- Jim Collins (2005)

The need for quality information “When teachers see what they are doing it is not often what they think they are doing.” -- Robert Marzano

Adopting a professional perspective to the analysis Professionals deal with results; they do not have license to violate principles and best practices. Their freedom involves the ability to innovate tactfully and creatively, given the desired results that obligate them and the principles and a body of best practice that the profession endorses as the general path to cause those results.” -- Wiggins and McTighe (2007)

In Classrooms that Beat the Odds The students are expected to be able to do the work The lessons are similar to the author’s intent There is high cognitive content to the lessons

What Looking at Learning measures: Who is leading the class How the class is grouped (whole, small group, individual, small group/individual) What are the students being asked to do? What is the cognitive reason for the activity (from the student’s point of view) What percentage of the students are engage in doing the activity?

What Looking at Learning measures: All of these things are measured on a second to second basis during the class Most observations take between 20 and 60 minutes to complete Any observations can be viewed singly or in an aggregate

Sample Graphs (taken from actual observations)

What we expect to see in a typical math lesson: