"Staying the Course"

For the past several months I have heard consistently from across our organization just how busy we are – the “new normal” some suggest. Without question we are!

Over the past years we have been careful to introduce programs, training, practices and tools to assist each staff with the intent of greater focus, alignment, and results. From every indication, we have been successful and effective in doing just that – building capacity. With steady growth in most, if not all, our schools at each grade level and in each subject we can conclude that capacity building is heading us in the right direction. Well, not so fast.

We just completed the first common formative assessments across our system. For those not familiar with the term or practice I will digress just a minute to catch you up. From our work in Total Instructional Alignment – the deconstruction and reconstruction of the North Carolina Common Course of Study (NCCCOS), identification of essential vocabulary, development of pacing guides to name just a few of the activities and artifacts generated from this alignment work, we transitioned to the means to assess authentically teaching and learning.

To that end, we created Benchmark Assessments that were administered three times last year leading up to End of Grade and End of Course assessments.

The common formative assessments are an even closer and frequent examination of teaching and learning designed to inform both the teacher of effective practice as well as the learner in their progress toward meeting or exceeding standard.

This is a lot – but the power of alignment and focus through constant and consistent feedback that informs all in the process of learning is necessary. Logical next steps, right?

Consider that prior to last year our system for the most part relied exclusively on the End of Grade or End of Course assessments to determine if a student had, in fact, learned what they were suppose to over the course of the year. We literally had little or no evidence along the way to suggest, inform, guide, or lead us to conclude how a student would or could perform on these assessments – let alone intervene or re-teach a concept or skill. Now at last, our educators have the tools to measure along the journey of learning not just whether they reached the destination.

The implementation of both common formative assessments and Benchmark Assessments are different constructs than most of our educators have experienced. In fact, as I interview staff informally I frequently hear how the common formative assessment take time away from teaching and classroom activities. Huh?

Feedback, authentic feedback in real time that informs both the teacher and learner as an indicator of learning is teaching.

One quick story about a staff member on performance on the first common formative assessments of the year – she was stunned, her students as a group only demonstrated proficiency in two of five standards. Distraught until she was informed that the two standards mastered were for the end of the grade not the first three weeks of school. What? Yes, this teacher learned after three weeks into this school year that her students demonstrated mastery of two standards. What great news – not bad news. By the way, she also had two students that mastered four out of five – inconvenient? I don’t think so

Because something is different doesn’t make it bad or of little value. Common formative assessments are different. They require different thinking, thoughtfulness, planning, and analysis. Come to think about it, isn’t that what teaching is suppose to create in learners.

Based on the initial common formative assessments results, we can expect greater growth and achievement. In fact, if we accept the shift in how we are using assessment data to inform our work as well as to notify each learner of their progress we will indeed be further along than we were a year ago – we can, we will, and we must stay the course.