Dr. "TKA" Kulla-Abbott's List: 21st Century Assessment of Learning

This past spring, two members of my administrative team at Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, New Hampshire had the opportunity to present our school’s competency-based grading and reporting system to admissions representatives from each of the New Hampshire Colleges and Universities. A very interesting conversation unfolded when the team passed out two competency-based report cards from two students at our school. Both students had earned a final grade of an “80” in their Forensic Science class, but both had very different grades in each of their competencies for that particular course. One had an “exceeding” grade of 95 for the crime scene management competency (students will demonstrate the ability to use and understand how observation is used in order to collect and gather evidence in scene investigation). The other student had an “inconsistent progress” grade of a 75 for the same skill. This evidence suggests that one student perhaps had a more complete understanding of the scientific inquiry process that goes into a forensics investigation, while the other still had work to do to bring that skill to competency.

Who Will Fly Your Plane? Understanding Competency-Based Assessment Systems
March 13, 2013
By Brian Stack
Last week I had the opportunity to deliver the keynote to a large group of school administrators from Oregon at their 2013 State Proficiency Conference, sponsored jointly by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators (COSA) and the Business Education Compact (BEC) in Portland. I began my talk by sharing with the group how I explained the idea of competency-based grading to a woman, Kathy, whom I shared a plane ride with on my way to Oregon. Kathy was very curious to learn more about competency-based grading. She is a mother of three and lives in the Portland area. Her oldest just graduated from high school and is now in the Air Force. She has another child in middle school and her youngest is in elementary school. As a result, she is very invested in educational reforms that promise to give her children a better future.

To help her understand the competency-based system, I asked her to hypothetically consider how the pilot school was organized that our airline pilot attended. We both agreed that in order to be able to fly our plane that day, he had to have been deemed “proficient” by his pilot school. We can only assume that his school taught him everything he needed to know about being a pilot. I offered her two hypothetical situations about the pilot school and I asked her to then consider which school she thought was better.

Assessment Disgrace
June 29, 2013
By Johnny Bevacqua
Originally posted on Figuring It Out by J. Bevacqua

I’m frustrated and angry.

 Just today I read a Mathematics 10 Provincial Exam Study Guide written by two Canadian educators (one from BC and the other from Alberta) published by a large, well known, publishing company.
In the section titled “To the Student”, there is an explanation of and rationale for provincial exams.  It states:
Most provincial exams are designed to evaluate a students proficiency  in the curriculum at different levels.  In some jurisdictions, for example, a mark of 50% denotes competence, and mark above 80% is considered to indicate excellence.

It is expected that students will demonstrate different levels of competence.  In fact, most jurisdictions design exams so that: 

20% of of students who write exam do not pass (score less than 50%)
60% of students who write the exam score between 50% and 80%
only 20% of students who write the exam demonstrate excellence (score above 80%)
For this reason it is important for individual students to set personal goals and use this goal to help them decide which questions are within their ability.  For example, if you expect to score at the 70% level, then 30% of the questions on the exam or test are not written for you.

This is disgraceful.
Where do I begin?

Competency-Based Grading and Common Core Math: A Perfect Match?
September 18, 2013
By Brian Stack
My Uh-Huh Moment
Over the summer I spent the day with my math team as we prepared for the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics into our school. We were working on an intense math problem when I had one of those uh-huh moments – the kind I used to describe to my students when I taught high school math in Andover, Massachusetts. The problem was a simple one to understand, but it had many layers of complexity to it for math teachers:
 
Imagine you are a peasant, and your ruler told you that you could have as much land as you could mark off by walking in one day. What is the most amount of land you could reasonably claim? Give your answer in square miles and be prepared to support and defend your work.
Among the questions that came to mind when thinking about how to solve this problem were these: How many hours can a peasant reasonably walk in a day? How fast can a peasant walk? How many breaks will the peasant need to take? Are their hills, mountains, or other physical obstacles that the peasant will encounter? What kind of tools will the peasant have to navigate with (i.e. a compass or a GPS)?

Reassessments and Retakes: A Necessary Part of a School-Wide Grading Policy
October 15, 2013
By Brian Stack
“Lawyers who finally pass the bar exam on their second or third attempt are not limited to practicing law only on Tuesdays” – Wormeli, 2011

We allow people to retake their driver’s license exam as many times as they need to in order to demonstrate competency. The same is true of other professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, and electricians who are required to pass a certification/licensure exam. Reassessment is a part of our real world. I find it ironic, then, that as educators we cringe at the thought of allowing reassessments in the classroom in an effort to “prepare kids for the real world!” I held this belief until a few years ago when O’Connor and Stiggins (2009) and Wormeli (2011) helped set me straight. Reflecting back, I now cringe at the harsh reality that from 2001 to 2006 I sent hundreds and hundreds of students into the real world without the opportunity to reassess to solidify their learning.

What Do We Win?
November 20, 2013
By jgoh
The global race to be one of the top five Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) countries is a debate all around the world at the moment. Countries are endeavouring to find that pedagogical panacea and structural reform that will give them an edge over Finland and many of the Asian countries. During the current race, I have often wondered whether anyone has stopped and asked, “What do we win?” Is there a massive global sheep station on offer or a world cup in education?

A Window Into the Classroom
by sblankenship • January 1, 2014 • 2 Comments



Many times, grading papers and student projects is something a teacher does in isolation.  In other words, no one other than the teacher sees the student’s work.  What if analyzing student work became a collaborative process in your school?  How would looking at student work provide a clear window into the classroom?  As we transition to more rigorous standards in my state, we have been collecting student outcomes to analyze the quality of lessons and units intended to address these new standards and expectations.

After our first semester of collecting and analyzing student outcomes, I have come to the following conclusions:

Our School’s Pathway to Competency-Based Grading
by Jonathan VanderEls • January 8, 2014 • 4 Comments


In our continued quest to gain more information about students’ learning, growth and progress, a standards/competency-based grading system has provided our school and our district timely, detailed information regarding the specific competencies that students have (or have not) demonstrated proficiency in.

Unmeasured Success: What Standardized Testing Doesn’t Assess
by Tom Martellone • March 23, 2014 • 4 Comments

This year, I’ve been working with my school staff to implement strategies that will raise student achievement and be reflected on MCAS, our state standardized assessment.  The staff have been working diligently to support student learning, and I am confident that we’ll see increased scores as one measure of our success.

We’ve also spent the past year revisiting our school mission and vision.  After working on a draft vision statement and letting it “rest” for a period of time, we’ve begun to revisit it and we’re now starting to craft a vision statement that really reflects what we’d like our school to become and to be known for in the community.  The discussion around this has been rich in nature, with staff wanting to make sure that our vision was reflective of our work with students.  At our most recent staff meeting, staff talked about educating “whole children”, making sure that children were not only well developed academically, but also socially-emotionally as well.

Another Brick in “The Wall”
by Jonathan VanderEls • March 18, 2014 • 0 Comments



This article was co-authored by Jonathan Vander Els and his colleague Ellen Hume-Howard, the Director of Curriculum at the Sanborn Regional School District.

Looking closely together at student work can unveil a treasure trove of insights to guide a school as they reflect on their purpose, assess their progress, and plan strategies for reaching all students more successfully. Their experiences are enhanced when teachers develop an awareness of where a student falls along a continuum of learning. Writing for instance is a content area that lends itself well to studying student work within a continuum, and has been the focal point in guiding our teachers at Memorial School as we align our work not only within each grade level, but vertically within all grade levels in our school.  However, getting to this point was a three-year journey that continues to evolve as we learn more about not only our students’ skills and needs, but also our own needs as a staff related to instruction and aligning our assessment of student work.

Don’t drive the barge, steer your sailboat!
by Amber Teamann • April 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

The large barge of the educational system is viewed as flawed by many. There are theoretical discussions that take place lamenting grades, schedules, and pedagogy. Terminology, vocabulary, & semantic sludge, left and right. These conversations take place in the halls, in the lounge, and on the interwebs. You can’t help but be aware of the growing dissension amongst the masses.

There has to shift amongst the silo’s in education. While yes, many of these facets are true, and may indeed be long overdue for a vast overhaul…conversations that leave educators frustrated, overwhelmed, or confused, help no one.

Giving students number grades each grading cycle is bad? Ok. My district requires grades, what do I do?

School start times need to be later in the day? We have 57,000 students, multiply that by families, and tell me how to make that happen?

The Advantage of Separating Behaviors and Academics Through a Competency-Based Grading System.
by Jonathan VanderEls • May 7, 2014 • 0 Comments

As I watched one of our teacher’s training sessions this past Wednesday, I considered how far we had come in grading practices in a fairly short period of time. Our school made the transition to competency-based grading four years ago, and despite some of “bumps in the road”, we really have never looked back.

Terry Bolduc, a fifth grade teacher at our school, is also one of our training team members for our staff. Terry was sharing with other classroom teachers at our Wednesday afternoon training session how her grading practices have continued to evolve. This particular session was related to how Terry continuously assesses students on their behaviors or dispositions, both through daily assignments, and weekly formative assessments. Terry was explaining that by doing this, there are a number of points of data that can support where a student is in each particular area.

Overtesting Students: Some Truths about Standardized Testing
by Tom Martellone • May 17, 2014 • 0 Comments

Many of us have heard the expression, “Too much of a good thing is bad for you”.  It is no wonder that when people, groups, or organizations take things to the extreme, that misconceptions come about.  Additionally, not every person is acquainted with every other person’s work.  For example, I don’t know everything that a doctor does, so therefore, if the doctor is prescribing a lot of medication to patients, it may or may not be warranted, despite what my perception is around prescribing the medication.

Looking at our Work through an Assessment Lens
by Jonathan VanderEls • June 11, 2014 • 0 Comments



Our staff recently had the opportunity to wrap up a year’s worth of professional development related to building Quality Performance Assessments. During the 2013 summer and over this past school year, I attended five days of training with four of our classroom teachers from our elementary school along with colleagues from other schools in our district. The training we received during these days became the focal point for our PD throughout the past school year, and has really helped us to tie together the significant amount of work we have been engaged in over the past five years.

Our district, Sanborn Regional School District in Southern New Hampshire, has admittedly taken the plunge with a number of best practices designed to increase our understanding of curriculum and our ability to most effectively instruct students. This work included teachers developing “crosswalks” between the NH GLEs and the Common Core about three years ago. This was done through professional release days and was led by our Director of Curriculum, Ellen Hume-Howard. We made the switch to assessing students’ performance only through the Common Core over the past two years. Teachers’ transition to these standards was seamless because of the support provided during the transition and the teachers’ understanding that the work we were engaged in together was helping them help our students. In fact, teachers requested that all other standards be dropped from their grade book because they understood the Core standards and the others weren’t needed for guidance any longer.

Dare to Dream of Change
by John Marschhausen • July 8, 2014 • 1 Comment

We must recognize differences as we assess students – there is no single test to measure every student’s mastery. How we provide instruction, inspire creativity, embrace diversity and empower greatness must be personalized . . . education can’t take place on an assembly line. We are not preparing students for the industrial age; we are cultivating students to be problem solvers, creative thinkers and inspired leaders.

There are some non-negotiable skills we must expect all students to master – it’s good to have standards. However, as we continue to celebrate our independence as a great nation, we must align our system of education with our system of values.

The American education system is built, in large part, on conformity. We standardize, assess and group by age. We expect sameness. America is built to embrace diversity not sameness. We celebrate individuality, creativity and personal freedom.

It’s time for us as educators, parents and students – in the spirit of our Founding Fathers – to give students the tools to follow their passion, to make their dreams a reality and to help provide the self-evident opportunities for every young person to pursue a future of success and happiness.

Follow me on Twitter @drjcm

Our Carousel of Progress
by John Marschhausen • January 14, 2015 • 0 Comments

 

He was a master storyteller, and I was suddenly a superintendent turned student – captured by my vacationing 16-year-old while captivated by a video of Walt Disney giving insight into his Carousel of Progress – a show he shaped.



Just watching this innovator talk, I was learning.

 

Introduced at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, millions of people have watched Walt’s creation; the Carousel of Progress has had more performances than any other stage show in American theater. In its most simple form it’s a story about American progress.

 

If you have ever visited Disney World you know that progress is part of the Disney DNA . . . no two visits are the same. Disney is always evolving. As I stood with my eyes fixed on that monitor while on vacation at the close of 2014, my mind began writing the Hilliard story of 2015 – because progress is also in our DNA. We continue to find ways to better prepare students for tomorrow; there is no destination in education, we operate in an ever-changing world.

 

Education must be both simple and complex.

Are We Marking Assignments or Assessing Learning?
by Chris Wejr • February 18, 2015 • 0 Comments


CC Image from Joseph Thibault https://flic.kr/p/6Fg2z2
Originally posted at The Wejr Board blog.

There has been much focus on shifting our assessment practices in education and, particularly in BC, moving toward more Assessment For Learning (or formative assessment) in schools.  This is such an important conversation and needed change but at some point along the way, Assessment OF Learning (or summative assessment) has been given a bad rap.  To have sound assessment practices in a classroom and school, we need a solid balance of ongoing formative assessment (click here for more info) as well as an effective way to verify that learning has occurred (summative).  Formative assessment should be where we spend most of our time, but summative assessments are still very important.

Setting the PACE: Teacher Assessment Practices in a Competency-based Education System
by Jonathan VanderEls • May 26, 2015 • 0 Comments



(Wordle created by Ellen Hume-Howard)

I continue to be amazed and impressed by our staff’s progress over the past five years related to our implementation of a competency-based education system. Our grading, assessment and instructional practices have changed significantly during this time, as our teachers have continued to push forward in their quest to impact student learning.

Over the past two years, our focus has been on assessment. Our staff’s knowledge and growth related specifically to the assessment of students’ competency has grown significantly. Memorial School, an elementary school in Newton, NH, is part of the Sanborn Regional School District. Sanborn was one of four districts (Sanborn, Epping, Rochester, and Souhegan) to participate in a first-in-the-nation accountability strategy called PACE (Performance Assessment for Competency Education) that was recently approved by the US DOE. This joint venture between the NH DOE, the Center for Collaborative Education, the Center for Assessment and the four participating school districts entails a reduced level of standardized testing (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in NH) and involves the creation of locally developed, rigorous, comprehensive performance assessments by teams of teachers. These high quality performance assessments are designed to support deeper learning, and will be integrated within the units of study that students are currently engaged in, thereby creating no disruption to the learning process.

I recently came across the practice having a “data room“ in schools. These rooms provide teachers and administrators quantitative information (in graphic form) to facilitate ”informed” decisions. I have to admit, the site of the “data room” gave me that “something doesn’t feel right” sensation in my stomach. How has it come to be that, for some, data rooms in school are...