Assessment and measurement are not the same thing

Too many people confuse measurement with assessment as if they were the same thing.

They are not.

Some things are made to be measured. For example, I'm 6'1''. Height is a one-dimensional thing that can be reduced to a measurement in standard units. We need standard units for height or we would have all kinds of mass confusion.

Some things in life, however, are not made to be measured. While my height can be accurately described as 6'1'' without debate, my personality, character, intelligence, athleticism and learning can not be meaningfully reduced to a symbol. When we reduce something as magnificently messy as learning to a number, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal.

The most important things that children learn in school are not easily measured. The most meaningful things in life may, in fact, be immeasurable. The good news, however, is that the most important and meaningful things that we want children to learn and do in school can always be observed and described. This is precisely why it is so important to remember that the root word for assessment is assidere which literally means 'to sit beside.' Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.

Testsandgrades should be replaced with projects and performances collected in portfolios.

When student learning is made visible to parents through portfolios, blogs, student-led conferences and parent-teacher interviews then they are not nearly so desperate for less meaningful information such as testsandgrades.

This is my 16th year of teaching in public schools. I threw my gradebook away in 2006. For those who are interested in learning more about what school and learning looks like without testsandgrades, you can read my chapter from my book for free here. And you can read all of my blog posts about abolishing grading here.

Joel Westheimer's talk on citizenship and education

I had the pleasure of skipping hockey tonight to listen to Joel Westheimer talk about citizenship and education. Here is some of what I learned:

• Students may rarely see teachers being human because they see them so often just in their classroom teaching. Students rarely get to see teachers engage with other adults and agree and disagree in a way that model citizenship.
• In the last few decades, we have seen a narrowing of the curriculum to literacy and numeracy. We have moved away from broad goals of schooling to very narrow academic goals that can be measured on bubble tests.
• Imagine you were visiting a school in a totalitarian nation governed by a single-party dictatorship. Would the educational experiences be markedly different from the ones experienced by children in your local school?
• Should anything be different from schools in a totalitarian dictatorship and a school in a democracy?
• What responsibility do schools have to be democratic so that children can grow up to be adults who are democratic?
• Having standards is not the same as standardization. 
• Census testing is an unnecessary burden. Sample testing tells what we need to know and more efficiently. 
• There is no teacher who belongs to the group of teachers who don't care about whether children learn how to read, write or do arithmetic. Most teachers want more than the basics for every child they teach. The back to basics movement is a straw man argument that needlessly attacks teachers.
• The Alberta Teachers' Association's A Great School for All is impressive. 
• We don't remember teachers who successfully made their classroom more uniform or standardized with other teachers.
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) may be an unintended consequence to standardization of curriculum and assessment in schools. 
• There is a disturbing trend among teachers' professional learning communities. Standardization is trumping quality.
• Teacher's "subjective" grades are a better predictor of students' successes in post-secondary than the "objective scores" from standardized tests and the SAT.
• Opt out movement from standardized testing in the United States is picking up remarkable steam.
• Economists don't know much about the economy and yet they speak about education like they know what they are talking about.
• Less of life is about individual accomplishments and more about collective teamwork.
• In the workplace, people who work together are called collaborative. In school, students who help each other out are called cheaters.

Turning around challenging classrooms

Every year teachers encounter a wide variety of challenges in their classrooms. Sources of these challenges might come from a new set of children with their own unique needs, a new teaching assignment or a change in administration.

As I start my 16th year of teaching, it is my experience that teachers who are highly reflective and place a premium on professional development stand the best chance for surviving and thriving challenging classrooms.

Here are 3 things highly reflective teachers understand:

1. Blaming the kids will ensure that nothing changes. Teaching would be easy if weren't for the students. It's easy to blame the kids. It's easy because it means we don't have to reflect inward - rather we just have to look outward. Challenging one's own practices can be tough, but if you stop and think about each of the statements above, both logic and research will show that these are classroom problems, not simply student problems.

2. Question the 'how' and the 'why'. Many professional development conferences provide teachers with opportunity to ask questions such as “How do I mark better?” or “How do I get my students to do their homework?” At first glance these look like challenging and provocative questions, but they are still questions that promote more of the same. Far more powerful questions are “Why do I mark?” or “Why do I assign homework?” Investigating the motives for our actions, rather than merely examining our methods of implementation, is a better use of our time, particularly if the subject in question is a belief or habit that we’ve come to accept as a given truth.

3. If the teacher is bored or unhappy, the students are more so. For too many people, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: you will pretend to teach and we will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy. Teaching and learning should not be a chore that everyone can't wait to be done.

Turning around challenging classrooms and changing school through reflection and professional development is not easy but it's worth it. Below are links to all of the rethinking and reflecting that I have done over the last 16 years:

Rethink Discipline

Rethink Assessment

Rethink Homework

Rethink Standardization

Rethink Accountability

Rethink Lesson Planning

10 ideas about NDP victory in Alberta

I'm a 36 year old Albertan and I've never experienced a change in provincial government... until last night.

The NDP led by Rachel Notley displaced a tired and corrupt 44 year old Progressive Conservative government.

Here are 10 ideas about the NDP victory in Alberta:

1. Change is healthy

44 years under the same government is a long time. Many of the newly elected NDP MLAs are inexperienced and that's ok. For too long MLAs have been doing things right without doing the right things.

2. Income Inequality Matters

We know that income inequality in Alberta is widening and the middle class is shrinking. When wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, politics becomes more and more polarized. Some equality is important because if inequality grows too wide, the poor come after the wealthy with pitchforks. 

3.  Everything is impossible until it happens

Nothing good comes from fatalism. Democracy is built on dissent and honest dialogue. Alberta does not belong to any single political party or ideology -- Alberta belongs to Albertans.

4.  Jim Prentice's true intentions revealed

Many said that Prentice only returned to use Alberta as a political stepping stone and his resignation as leader and MLA before the ballots were all counted proves them right. Now Albertans are stuck with the bill for another by-election.

5.  Hope-mongering > Fear-mongering

We are all better off voting for something we believe in rather than strategically voting in a way that blocks something we don't like. We are all better off when campaigns are run on hope rather than fear.

6. Elitism leads to disconnection

Entitlements and elitism blinded the PCs as they slowly became more and more disconnected and irrelevant to Albertans. After Prentice was serenaded and sold as the savour of the PC party, he hand-picked and anointed cabinet ministers and meddled in candidate nominations. It all looked good on paper but failed miserably where it mattered most.

7. Alberta isn't a business -- we are a democracy

The economy is important, no doubt about it. However, Alberta doesn't hire a CEO, we elect MLAs to represent us in the Legislature. Government needs to be for Main Street not Wall Street.

8. Politics done differently?

What if David Swann and Greg Clark were offered cabinet positions?

9. An education minister and health minister who knows something about education and health?

Albertans have had a revolving door for education minister for too long. It would be refreshing to see someone like Deron Bilous or Sarah Hoffman as education minister. What if the Alberta government stopped ignoring professional organizations like the Alberta Teachers' Association and Alberta Medical Association and collaborated with them?

10. Wildrose on the right, NDP on the left, Alberta Party in the middle?

Some Albertans may not feel comfortable with the Wildrose or the NDP. With the Liberals in steady decline and the PCs in purgatory, Greg Clark and the Alberta Party's momentum may pick up as more and more Albertans seek out a moderate alternative.

I am not fearful of all this change -- I find myself hopeful and optimistic.

I'm in Sir Ken Robinson's book Creative Schools!

For the last 10 years, I have worked hard to make my classroom a better place for students to learn. My transformation required that I re-think many features of my teaching such as discipline, homework, lesson planning, accountability, standardization and assessment.

Changing school is no easy task. The last 10 years have been rigorous and vigorous, filled with set-backs and progress. 

My students' success has offered the most powerful proof that I am on to something. I have found validation and support by sharing my work through my blog, twitter and other publications.

In 2011, Alfie Kohn cited my work with rethinking assessment in his article The Case Against Grades.

Most recently, I am excited to see my work cited in Sir Ken Robinson's most recent book Creative School: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education. 

In chapter seven titled Testing, Testing, Sir Ken Robinson writes:

Some teachers have always used a range of assessment methods in class. The rise of testing has made that more difficult, but some teachers are pushing back in their own classrooms. There are challenges, but there can be enormous benefits too. For example, Joe Bower is a science and language arts teacher in Alberta, Canada, who, six years into his teaching career, decided that he could no longer abide by using grades as his primary form of assessment. 

"I have come to see grades as schools' drug of choice, and we are all addicted... Grades were originally tools used by teachers, but today teachers are tools used by grades." 

What Bower discovered was that the reliance on grading made him less effective as a teacher and had a negative effect on students. He points out that when many students are asked what they got out of a class, they'll respond with something like, "I got an A." While his school insisted that he give grades on report cards, he abolished all other grades in his classroom and delivered the report card grade only after asking his students to assess their own work and recommend the grade they should receive. The students' suggestions usually aligned with his, and there were far more cases where students would have recommended a lower grade than a higher one. The result of doing away with grading was that he eased the pressure on his students and allowed them to focus on the content of their assignments and their classwork rather than on the rubric to score them. 

"When we try to reduce something that is as magnificently messy as real learning, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal. Ultimately, grading gets assessment wrong because assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it is a conversation. I am a very active teacher who assesses students every day, but I threw out my grade book years ago. If we are to find our way and make learning, not grading, the primary focus of school, then we need to abandon our mania for reducing learning and people to numbers."

There is a better way Alberta!

Alberta's basic operations like health and education have been held hostage by the price of oil for too long. Albertans need to understand that there is a better way to manage our oil so that we can keep our promises to our children, our seniors and ourselves.

We need to manage our spending as much as our revenue.

Alberta needs fair and progressive corporate taxation.

Alberta's oil belongs to Albertans. Albertans deserve their fair share of the profits from our oil.

Alberta has been lied to for too long. Blaming scapegoats might get you elected, but at some point, Albertans will speak truth to power, revealing the real culprits.

Take less than 5 minutes and watch this:

David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg

I'm in Calgary at the Calgary Teachers' Convention and I am listening to David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg talk about The Roots of Success for All Children: It's in the context of their lives, not just in their classroom experiences.

David Berliner

• Despite what you might hear, teachers do not affect standardized test scores very much
• Teachers do affect student's lives but not their scores
• Standardized test are influenced by socio-economic circumstances and less by classroom instruction.
• Want to improve scores? Improve children's lives outside of school.
• As the context of children's lives changes, so do their standardized test scores.
• Children who live in chaos tend to be chaotic. Remove the chaos --  
• Societies affect on children's performance is intense.
• The Problem is Poverty.
• There are many school variables that teachers can't control: class size, administrators, collective empathy of the faculty, teacher turn over, students coming and going.
• We can not trust standardized tests to tell us what we want to know about our schools.
• Want to find the school with the highest test scores? Buy an expensive house.
• When governments cut education, they make inequality and inequity worse, and the poorest people pay the most.
• There is a huge difference in the number of books in the richest homes and the poorest homes.
• Affluent parents tend to speak more with their children than the poorest parents who are struggling to make ends meet.
• The best education systems care as much about what happens outside of the classroom as what happens inside.
• Standardized tests are insensitive to teacher instruction.
• Alberta needs to pay closer attention to the research on school improvement
• Here are all of my posts on David Berliner

Pasi Sahlberg

• In 2000, many school systems thought that they had found the secret elixir to fix all schools: Accountability through standardized tests. PISA's influence was born.
• Since 2000, the focus of school improvement has been focused intensely on teachers.
• The United States is a good example of how not to improve education.
• Finland's reaction to school improvement and PISA is unique and paradoxical.
• Finland did not react or allow PISA to affect their system until 2008. 8 years after they were lauded as the best in the world. Finland was reluctant to share their story.
• Two Global Paths of Inquiry: What makes education systems perform well? What prevents system-wide improvement?
• Traditional Policy Logic: Should we focus on quality or equity? We know that we don't have to choose.
• Canada does very well with high quality and equity, but we are going in the wrong direction.
• While Canada and Alberta has traditionally compared well with their equity and equality, they are going in the wrong direction.
• Finland has had an inclusive education system for two decades.

Five things to learn from Finland:

1. Resourcing Policy: Schools with more needs, need more resources.
2. Early Childhood Care: This isn't really about education -- it's about childcare. 
3. Health and Wellbeing: Universal healthcare inside and outside of school. In the US, the number 1 reason why students miss school is because of problems with their teeth.
4. Special Education: A system that is proactive and preventative with students with special needs. Prevention is always cheaper than repair. 
5. Balanced Curriculum: Children need to learn about the arts and physical education as much as numeracy and literacy.

3 big ideas about teacher workload

Andrea Sands wrote a great piece in the Edmonton Journal about Alberta teachers who are taking part in a massive workload study. (I've written about teacher workload here).

As a classroom teacher, I have 15 years of experience actually teaching in public schools. I don't just write and talk about teaching -- I'm actually teaching. I don't just have something to say, I'm doing the work and I have something to say about it.

During my interview with Andrea, I tried to emphasize that it is not simply the quantity of my work that is problematic -- the problems I face in my classroom can be best found in the complexity of teaching. Simply put, I am expected to teach too many children who have too many needs.

Let me explain.

This is my 15th year of teaching.

I've mostly taught middle school, but I've also taught some special education.

At home, I am a father where I have a class size of two: Kayley is 7 and Sawyer is 2. While Kayley wants to play a farming board game where we plant, harvest and sell crops for cash that involves adding and multiplying, Sawyer wants to run around and throw the game pieces. You can imagine how different their needs are.

At school, I teach 126 students every day. I have thirty-three grade 6 students that I teach language arts and social studies, and thirty-three grade 8 students that I teach social studies. I see the grade 6s twice a day and the grade 8s once a day. Each class is forty-nine minutes.

At home I get pulled in 2 different directions while at school there are over 30 different students every 49 minutes, 6 times a day.

To be clear, these are not 126 similar children.

Some of these children:

• are living in poverty
• are abused and neglected
• have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• are reluctant learners
• are learning English as a second language
• are behaviourally challenged
• suffer from mental health issues
• come to school a couple times a month, or not at all
• are academically challenged
• are immature
• are not loved
• are uninspired

And yet some of these children:

• love school
• love to read
• are loved
• are curious
• are inspired
• attend regularly

Too many of my students draw from the first list -- not enough are described by the second. While all of my students are in middle school, some would fit well in elementary and some are ready for high school.

Individually, I feel confident and competent working with children from either list, but when faced with 30+ every class and 126 of them everyday, I am overwhelmed. 

Here are 3 big ideas I would like people to understand about teacher workload:

1. I meet all my students' needs only if some children don't show up. Many Albertans work hard, and some may work more hours in a week than teachers. My issue is not that I average 45 to 50 hours a week. My issue is that I'm expected to teach too many students with too many needs. My expectations for my students are only surpassed by the expectations I have for myself. Everyday I go to work hoping to get to every child only to go home knowing that I can't. Alberta parents should be upset about this as much as Alberta teachers are.

2. My working conditions are my students' learning conditions. Too many people want to frame this teacher workload discussion around how much teachers get paid and how much time they get off. I'm not asking for more pay or time off, although these are important, I am saying that because of the current deteriorating conditions in Alberta schools, quality and quantity of student learning is suffering. When we play politics with education by framing this as a labour debate (instead of an education debate), children lose. 

3. Teachers are so busy teaching they don't have time and effort to learn how to be better teachers. School has looked, tasted, smelled and felt like school for too long. In order for things to improve, things have to change, and sustainable change needs to be led by teachers who are supported through inspiring professional development. I know too many teachers who are so overwhelmed by their teaching assignment that they don't have the time or effort to learn how to change and improve their teaching.

In our cars, we have instruments that tell us when our fuel is low and engine temperature is high. 

In education, we have teachers who have their fingers on the pulse of their classrooms.

We ignore our car's instruments and teachers at our own peril. It should be no surprise that those who are comfortable with the way things are become angered by those who wish to influence change. Labelling these gauges as whiny allows us to criticize, distort or dismiss inconvenient information in favour of our existing beliefs while ensuring that things get worse for our children.

Teacher reflects on Alberta's new Student Learner Assessments

This was written by Catherine Dohn who is a grade 3 teacher in Edmonton, Alberta. Catherine tweets here and blogs here. This post was originally found here.

by Catherine Dohn

For those of you not in Alberta, you might not have heard about the new government Student Learning Assessments otherwise known as SLA’s. This is the pilot year where they rolled them out for all grade 3 students in Alberta and being that I moved to grade three this year, I was able to experience them firsthand.

Now Alberta Education went into these SLA’s with some pretty lofty goals. They were going to replace the dreaded Provincial Achievement Exams of old with something new and better. They would…..”better enabling parents and teachers to be aware of a child’s strengths or areas needing improvement. The SLAs are essentially “readiness” assessments that can be used to determine the programming needs for students for the school year, and support more personalized learning.” (Alberta Education Information Bulletin)

However, after being immersed in them for these last 2 weeks, I am now going to share what I have learned.

1. Awareness of Child’s Strengths/Areas of Improvement: well, being that I spend 5 days a week and almost 8 hours a day with my gang, I already had a pretty good idea of where they were at, both with their strengths and weaknesses. Funny enough, the first few days, I had a few tell me point blank “I am not really that good at reading, Mrs. D.” or “I don’t really like writing, it’s hard for me.” So those that were already walking in the door with challenges, both they and I knew this. The thing is that they and I spent quite a bit of time those first few weeks building up their confidence in these areas – finding strategies to help them tackle the areas they found hard. I worked hard helping them realize that while it might not be something they were not that great at, I constantly reinforced the idea that they might not be good “yet.” If they and I worked together, maybe we might find ways to help them get better so they could change that statement of “I am not good at reading” to “I am starting to find strategies to be a better reader.”

So then these SLA’s came with 4 different pieces of assessment that involved a lot of reading and a lot of writing and I saw those students who had started to see themselves in a different light, start to shut down. The multitude of questions, with these expectations of higher level thinking was something my struggling students found challenging and I could not help them. I had to say things like “try your best” and “it’s okay, I know you are trying hard” So now I am back to square one with some of them and I will have to try to again build up their confidence in themselves after feeling like failures. Some of my shy, quiet students who would get quite anxious about things actually wrote things like “SLA’s I am done with you.” “If I have to write this again, I will freak out.” And yes, this would be even though I did not make a big deal out of all this, I kept saying it was just an experiment to see how we would all do and not to worry.

The other sad thing was that my more bright students, the ones I knew had a lot to offer, even they did not get the point of doing a task multiple times and then evaluating themselves on it again and again. I heard a lot of “didn’t we do this already with the last question?” and “why do I have to do this?” So yet again, these students did not really show what they are truly capable of because even they thought “what’s the point of all this?” and did what they could to just get done.

2. An Information, Reflective Piece: so the point of all these different literacy and numeracy pieces was this going to inform and reflect my students to better guide my instruction. As well, I would be able to take these out and use them as something to talk to parents about. I really look forward to these conversations in that if I show parents some of the numeracy questions with the self reflective pieces, I am sure I will spend more time explaining what the questions were actually asking and validating the point of this type of questioning. With so many parents already questioning the “new math” they don’t understand, this is probably not going to help me much.

The reflection I might have, if I was a new teacher to grade 3, is that I better prepare my students better for this type of assessment. So instead of spending time those first few important weeks building a relationship with my student, I start practicing with 7 and 8 year olds how to self assess, how to reflect because gosh knows those skills come built in at the beginning of a school year in grade three. (yes that was a bit of sarcasm, my apologies)

3. My Frustration – my biggest frustration was not the hours of extra work for myself – inputting students onto the system so they could actually do the test, figuring out the pieces and parts to administering these the best way possible, marking and going over each assessment piece. It was not how I put the rest of the school out at times – SLA’s meant no one could use the internet because doing the digital pieces that took every bit of wifi bandwidth our school had. No one could use laptops or computer labs because they were all booked up for us. Don’t get me started on the amount of trees I killed photocopying everything needed. My biggest frustration was seeing one of my students lay his head down on his desk and cry because he just couldn’t get what the question was asking, it was seeing one of my girls go “Mrs. D. I just don’t get what to do” It was seeing some of my students take close to 2 hours to get done on the computer because of glitches, freezing, having to shut down and hope it would not make them start from the beginning.

So to the powers that be, I have the following to say about what I learned… I honestly think this could have been done so much better. I am not sure why you couldn’t trust that I am a professional, that I am able to find and use assessment pieces that will truly reflect my students’ abilities. But I guess, like my students, I have areas of improvement too….

Parent-Teacher Interviews without a gradebook

Why does school create the conditions necessary
to make this cartoon both funny and true?

I had parent-teacher interviews yesterday and today.

I went through the entire two days without a gradebook -- we talked about children and learning.

Without the gradebook, we were liberated from talking about rows and columns filled with numbers and letters. Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation. Parent-teacher interviews should reflect this.

Without a gradebook, we were not distracted by reducing children's learning to numbers.

Without a gradebook, I had to actually know my students names and know something about them as a person.

Without a gradebook, I didn't get into needless arguments about whether their child and my student is an A, a 78%, or a meeting expectations. Instead of concealing student learning by reducing the child to a number or letter, we were able to talk about their child as a whole-person.

Without a gradebook, we didn't sit and stare at a laptop screen or spreadsheet. Instead, we were able to make eye-contact and talk face-to-face about (and with) their child.

I told parents not to bother wasting time looking at their child's marks on Pearson's PowerSchool. I told parents that if they wanted to know what their children are learning, what they are reading, what they are thinking, or how they are doing, then they should visit their child's blog.

Here are 3 reasons why the parent's response to all this was overwhelmingly positive.

1. Too many parents have a hard time getting their child to tell them about what they are learning at school, so they were excited to know that they could visit their child's blog anytime, anywhere and anyplace. They were excited to look at the blog through out the year and use it to initiate better conversations with their child. 

2. The best evidence parents can receive about their children's learning is to see their children learning. Parents were excited to know that their child's learning wouldn't be hidden in a binder in the bottom of their locker or on the teacher's desk. They were excited that their child's learning would be so visible.

3. Because my class sizes are ridiculously large (30+ students in every class), I told parents that I have a real hard time getting to each student, every class. They were happy to hear that they could help their child by showing an interest in their blog, and if they like, they could help their child improve their writing and thinking skills. 

If you are interested in replacing grading with more authentic ways of making learning visible to parents, you can check out my chapter Reduced to Numbers: From Concealing to Revealing Learning or here are all of my blog posts on abolishing grading.

Feel free to e-mail me. I enjoy working with teachers and parents to abolish grading to make learning more visible.

joe.bower.teacher@gmail.com

Pak Tee Ng (Singapore): Teach Less, Learn More

Here are 5 points that stand out for me:

1. Focusing on PISA scores, or scores on any other test, is not the same as focusing on student learning in the classroom. Too often, a focus on standardized testing can actually have a harmful affect on teaching and learning.

2. Education is an investment -- not an expenditure. Cutting education is like a farmer who sells his top soil.

3. Teachers don't need surveillance -- they need support. You don't improve the education system by firing individual bad teachers -- you improve the education system by creating good teachers and then trust them to do their job.

4. Teach Less -- Learn More. Pasi Sahlberg writes about Finland and Gary Stager writes about the Maker Movement. Pak Tee Ng reminds us that, "more of the same teaching is not the way to inspire better learning." Efforts to "teacher-proof" education via standardization is not the solution, it's the problem. 

5. You say you want this, so why are you doing that? Unfortunately, myths are often more satisfying to us than the truth - in education we are satisfyingly distracted by a great many myths. If we are to improve school, we have to allow it to change. And if we want to make the right change, we need to be evidence and research based.

5 ways to better support Principals

A national study on The Future of the Principalship in Canada takes a thoughtful look at what is happening to principals across Canada.

The study identifies five ways forward for principals to overcome the challenges they face and move toward their ultimate goals for their schools and students.

Way Forward 1: Teach and Learn for Diversity

“Diversity” encompasses an enormous array of cultural backgrounds, needs, interests and opportunity structures for Canadian students. Schools work to recognize and meet the needs of all kinds of diversity, and three key “ways forward” emerged from the comments of school leaders:

• Support new Canadian families, particularly in English language learning 

• Strategically engage and teach First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) students and develop better partnerships with families 

• Strategically address growing mental health issues in children and young adults 

Way Forward 2: Collaborate and Build Professional Capacities in School Staff

Although some principals in this study discussed the importance of collaboration in their schools, many more appeared to carry the leadership burden alone. Participants noted the following strategies related to collaboration:

• Implement mentorship programs

• Foster leadership development to encourage school principals to draw on the strengths and talents of their teaching staff, moving toward distributive leadership models 

Way Forward 3: Build Family and Community Relationships

School principals and teachers need new ways to connect with parents and communities. There are both short-term and long-term “ways forward” to foster family and community relationships:

• In the short term, support professional development that will help school leaders with negotiations, dispute resolutions, and boundary-setting 

• In the long run, work to build community-level partnerships 

• Advocate for integrated service models that house an array of family services in the school to benefit students and families directly, as well as to strengthen relationships in the community 

Way Forward 4: Use Technology for Creative Learning and Good Citizenship

School principals and teachers see both opportunities and social costs in the growth of information and communications technologies. In society and mass media, technology is largely taken up in an uncritical manner. This inspires the following “ways forward”:

• Recognize and assume a significant leadership role in teaching children and young people to use technology responsibly and thoughtfully 

• Continue professional development for school leaders and staff regarding technology in the classroom 

• Balance technical skills with sensitivity to the pedagogical and social consequences of technology for students’ learning, social development, and well-being 

Way Forward 5: Promote Continuous Leadership Learning

Participants mentioned the need for more reflection and more collaboration with colleagues and clearly desired opportunities to work with their teachers to improve practices. Despite this, a specific vision for leadership development was not evident in these findings. Nonetheless, researchers drew the following “ways forward” from the participants’ responses:

• Continue articulating leadership frameworks and competencies for school principals 

• Advocate for conditions that will not crowd out leadership learning with managerial competencies

Eliminate tenure and it gets a little chilly at school

This was written by Tamar Wyschogrod who is a mother, writer, journalist who is from New York but now lives in New Jersey. Tamar blogs here. This post was originally found here.

by Tamar Wyschogrod

Without tenure, every teacher is the pawn and puppet of whoever happens to be the most powerful person in the building today. Without tenure, anybody can shoulder his way into the classroom and declare, ‘You're going to do things my way, or else.’

That’s from the wonderful blog Curmudgucation, written by Peter Greene [if you’re appalled by the attacks on public education that pass for reform these days, you really should follow his blog]. His point is that tenure gives teachers the freedom to do their jobs right, without the threat of dismissal hanging over their heads.

This reminded me of an incident related to me by a math teacher I know. I’m sharing it because I think it illustrates perfectly how tenure’s guarantee of due process empowers good teachers to do the right thing.

The state of New Jersey had recently introduced a required algebra test, and the administration in our district hadn’t been very pleased with the results. So they decided to bring a consultant into the high school to make recommendations on boosting the test scores. The thing is, many students don’t take algebra in high school, where it’s a ninth-grade course. Some take it in middle school. In fact, in our district, many students take algebra in eighth grade, and a smaller number in seventh.

So the consultant came in, did his thing, and presented his recommendations to the high school. But the district, presumably in an effort to get its money’s worth out of this consultant, decided that his recommendations should be adopted in the middle school as well. So the fellow was duly trotted out at a meeting of the middle school math faculty, where he proceeded to repeat his dog and pony show.

The thing is, there’s one obvious difference between teaching algebra in high school and teaching it in middle school. Generally, kids taking algebra in ninth grade are not the strongest math students; kids taking it in middle school are. This math teacher, who’d been teaching the middle school’s top math students for years, was appalled by the recommendations being offered. It was obvious to a teacher with a wealth of experience that the methods being proposed would be a real turn-off to strong math students who learn the subject more quickly and easily.

So the teacher spoke up and forcefully challenged the recommendations – persuasively enough so that they were not adopted in the middle school.

“Good thing I have tenure,” the teacher added as the story drew to a close. “I would never have spoken up otherwise.”

This little tale is the perfect illustration of tenure’s role in the delicate public school ecosystem. On one side, you have an administration that’s understandably concerned with the results on a state-mandated test. They decide to throw some money at the problem in the form of a paid outside consultant, who may or may not have some great ideas on improving algebra performance in high school. But once the decision has been made to spend money, the administrators seek to maximize the return on their dollar, as administrators are wont to do. They assume that they’ve purchased a one-size-fits-all solution, and the more widely it’s implemented, the greater their test-points-per-dollar return on investment. After all, algebra is algebra, right?

Enter the classroom teacher, who has taught algebra to enough different groups of students to realize that, while algebra is algebra, not every student learns algebra the same way. The solution being imposed from on high is not one-size-fits-all and will be a disaster in the honors and accelerated math classrooms at the middle school, into which kids have been placed precisely because they are adept math learners.

With tenure, that teacher can take a chance. Pushing back on administrators is risky business, after all. It’s not easy to tell the boss he’s wrong. But with the knowledge that respectful dissent cannot be a firing offense – because of tenure – the teacher can go out on a limb, challenge the powers that be, and make the case against adopting a pedagogical strategy doomed to fail.

But without tenure, the teacher sitting in the back of the room at that meeting has to wonder: “Is it worth risking my job to fight this? Clearly, the principal and superintendent are already convinced that this is the way to go. If they wanted the teachers’ opinions, they would have asked us. Maybe I can change their minds. But what if I can’t? What if my opposition is taken as insubordination? Do I really want to take that chance?”

That’s the chilling effect of job insecurity. Without tenure, the voice of the experienced teacher is muffled; kids lose out.

The obvious objection is going to be, “But that’s how it works everywhere else. In most workplaces, people don’t have a guarantee of a high level of due process. Why should schools be any different?”

The answer, of course, is that not all jobs are created equal. If your business makes widgets, and some consultant recommends a stupid change to the process, the chilling effect will at worst result in the business’s diminished profitability. So what? If the company chooses to keep in management someone who takes bad advice and creates a climate where employees are afraid to speak up, so be it. If they eventually go out of business because of their unresponsive management style, someone else will make widgets.

But – let’s say it all together, now – children are not widgets. We can't just flush this batch and hope to do better with the next one. For their sake, the bar must be set higher. Tenure is part of the checks-and-balances system that allows teachers in the classrooms to be assertive advocates for good pedagogical practices. It’s no guarantee – and yes, tenure might sometimes serve as an obstacle [though not an insurmountable one] to dismissing a bad teacher. But tenure can be modified to streamline the dismissal process for the small percentage of bad teachers. Abolishing tenure outright, on the other hand, would silence all teachers.

Teachers can lead government renewal

This was written by David King who is a former Alberta Minister of Education. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers' Association website.

by David King

The report of the Task Force for Teaching Excellence exemplifies the malaise in Alberta’s government today. Reading it saddens me. At the same time, it suggests the urgent need for the Alberta Teachers’ Association (and others) to undertake new and important projects.

The report raises issues basic to the long-term well-being of Alberta.

First, Alberta’s recent education policy and program initiatives (the work of the Inspiring Education process, the minister’s mandate letter from the former premier, the “new” Education Act, recent provincial budgets, curriculum initiatives) are not forward-looking, notwithstanding the willingness of education partners to put the best possible face on the government’s intentions. The conceptualization of education in all of this is outmoded, including the role of the teacher; the nature of transformative pedagogy; student needs in the middle of the 21st century; the balance between personal/private and social/public interests and needs; and the relationship of the economic model to public education.

The government is engaged in ad hoc decision making that appears to reflect ideology more than wisdom.

Second, these initiatives are not grounded in democracy: they are grounded in the idea that decisions should be made as close to the grassroots as possible, but that it should be the person at the pinnacle who makes the final choice about who gets to make decisions. Democracy holds that the citizens—the grassroots—should make that choice.

Even without a commitment to democracy, self-organizing systems and variable accountability models are emerging everywhere people work together, powerfully suggesting that hierarchical command-and-control models are obsolete. Yet the government continues to promote them. The biases of the government (presumably imposed on the task force) run counter to widespread positive experience about collaboration, decision making and implementation in these times.

The authors of the report know that the government is working the wrong side of the street, so the terminology of the report suggests that “Alberta’s education system is to become truly collaborative and inclusive” (p. 75 and elsewhere). How does this happen when the Alberta Teachers’ Association (as well as CASS, the ASBA and others) are effectively excluded and when “collaboration” is organized on a patronizing model? We need to remember that the creation of the task force, the terms of reference, and the structure for appointments, as well as the appointments themselves, were all vetted by a committee of caucus, if not the whole of caucus, and by Cabinet.

The tone of the report favours further centralization in the hands of the provincial government, and further marginalization of key actors—not only teachers, but also school boards, superintendents, principals and parents. To support its bias for centralization, the task force has wilfully neglected some important information about current practices and cherry-picked research.

In addition to any of the specific concerns that arise from such recommendations, the more dangerous result is that such centralization is contra-indicated in times of turmoil and uncertainty. The wise course of action is greater autonomy within broad parameters of accountability. For example, recommendation No. 1 is “That the Teaching Quality Standard be revised to align with Inspiring Education.” As someone who believes that much of what is in Inspiring Education is mediocre, alignment is not something I look forward to.

The task force might have done better work if it had been allowed (and encouraged) to express ideals, instead of being limited by the pragmatic restraints of a tired and unimaginative government. For example, could the task force have been free to recommend that “the Ministry introduce [instead of ‘consider the introduction of’] a mandatory one-year paid internship/articling program for all beginning teachers”? As it happens, I know something about internship: Alberta inaugurated one during my time as minister, suggested by good research. The Initiation to Teaching Project was suspended after one year because of financial considerations. But the experience did not compromise the ideal, and the research results are even stronger now. An internship is not simply desirable: it is also affordable, if we take the long view. Why didn't the task force have the courage to be forthright about this or other changes that would be demonstrably helpful?

In a similar vein, the task force makes no assessment of whether inadequate resources and/or inappropriate or excessive prescriptiveness in the past 10–40 years have contributed to the system’s challenges. Nor does the task force assess the financial investment necessary to implement its recommendations, or assert any claim that the government has a moral obligation to fund appropriately.

With this overview, a very careful analysis of the entire body of work—research as well as recommendations—of the task force is required.

Ultimately, however, teachers and all other Albertans must acknowledge that the government is working inside a broken model. The insiders are not prepared to abandon the model or change it as much as it needs to be changed. A change of leadership, or a change of party, is not going to make a difference. It falls to the ATA and others to begin the work of creating a new model of engagement and decision making, for better education and better life in Alberta.

Let me remind you what fascism is

A teaching mantra: less us, more them

This was written by Gary Stager and Sylvia Libow-Martinez who writes and speaks about progressive education. He is the co-author of Invent to Learn. Gary blogs here and tweets here. Sylvia's website is here and tweets here. This post is an excerpt from his book Invent to Learn.

by Gary Stager and Sylvia Libo-Martinez

Anytime an adult feels it necessary to intervene in an educational transaction, they should take a deep breath and ask, "Is there some way I can do less and grant more authority, responsibility, or agency to the learner?"

Understanding is the result of existing knowledge accommodating and explaining new experiences. If we focus on a handful of powerful ideas and create experiences where students naturally need to stretch their understanding, students learn more. The role of the teacher is to create and facilitate these powerful, productive contexts for learning.

One simple way to do this is to make your teaching mantra, "Less Us, More Them." Piaget suggests that it is not the role of the teacher to correct a child from the outside, but to create the conditions in which the student corrects himself. Whenever you are about to intervene on behalf of a teachable moment, pause and ask yourself, "Is there a way I can shift more agency to the learner?"

Less Us, More Them (LUMT) doesn't exempt teachers from the learning process, or minimize the importance of their expertise within the learning environment. LUMT raises expectations and standards in our classrooms by granting more responsibility to the learner. In this environment, it is natural to expect kids to look up unfamiliar words, proofread, and contribute resources for class discussion without prodding from the teacher.

To start making your classroom more student-centred, demonstrate a concept and then ask students to do something.

Walk around and support them when asked. Bring the group together to celebrate an accomplishment or seize the next teachable moment. We need to operate as if students own the time in our classrooms, not us. Kids rise to the occasion if we let them. When students own the learning process, they also own the knowledge they construct. Self-reliance results when we relinquish control and power to our students.

The problem with getting students to think for themselves

The problem with getting students to think for themselves is that they might think for themselves.

Why some schools are giving letter grades a fail

This was written by Erin Millar who is a journalist and author with a lifelong interest in education, innovation and creativity. For nearly a decade she has written for leading Canadian and international publications including Reader’s Digest International, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Times of London and others. This piece first appeared here.

by Erin Millar

Krista Wolfram credits an innovative new assessment program with helping catch her daughter’s difficulties in school early. When Antonio Vendramin, principal of Georges Vanier Elementary school in Surrey, B.C., announced to parents in November that the school would no longer award letter grades, Ms. Wolfram was skeptical. “Some of us were scared of change,” Ms. Wolfram, whose daughter is in Grade 2, recalls. “I grew up with As, Bs and Cs.”

Instead of reporting to parents only two or three times a year, teachers began regularly communicating using an online student portfolio system called Fresh Grade. Ms. Wolfram quickly discovered that her daughter was having difficulty with her writing. “Every day her teacher would snap a photo of her journal or a video of her writing with her phone or iPad,” Ms. Wolfram explains. “I could see exactly where she was struggling, and I could work with my daughter and her teacher to help.”

Because Ms. Wolfram was able to intervene early, her daughter was writing at her grade level by the time she received her report card just before spring break. “If we had to wait until her report card to find out, she would have failed writing,” she says. “I wouldn’t have known she was struggling.”

The Surrey Board of Education pioneered a pilot program eliminating letter grades in several elementary schools in September and now more than 40 classes at 13 elementary and six secondary schools have joined the experiment. Nine more schools are set to join soon, and the results will be reviewed this summer.

The Surrey school district is not alone. Schools around the world are experimenting with new ways to assess student achievement that do not rely solely on high-stakes reports that use numerical marks and letter grades. The movement is in part a response to calls from employers for the school system to emphasize skills such as creativity and communication, not just knowledge of traditional subjects. But even as recent research suggests that descriptive feedback better supports students in developing these soft skills than traditional grades, parents, educators, and higher education institutions are struggling to adapt. If there are no grades, how we will know whether students are prepared for jobs or further study?

The idea that traditional measures of academic achievement don’t support learning isn’t new; in 1998, the British education researchers Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published a widely-cited article demonstrating how increasing descriptive feedback raises student academic achievement. More recently, the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has published numerous studies showing how grades and standardized tests don’t predict later life success such as employment and income level.

In response, school boards in Canada are implementing new approaches to assessment. Elementary students in Ontario no longer receive letter grades on their fall report card. Quebec has reduced the number of formal reports to parents, opting for more descriptive feedback.

In June, the Calgary Board of Education announced a plan to eliminate letter grades up to Grade 9, a measure that was hotly debated. The new report cards would have used four phrases − exemplary, evident, emerging or support required − and not included written comments from teachers. Many parents were concerned about the proposal. Cathy Ward, a spokeswoman for the Calgary Board of Education, says that while some schools have begun transitioning to new ways of assessment, the board is reviewing the plan and no firm decisions will be made until they consult further with parents and teachers.

At Fraser Heights Secondary School in Surrey, English teacher Leah Samson no longer uses numerical marks to give students feedback on assignments. She devotes considerable class time to teaching students how to assess their own learning and give effective peer feedback. She also has regular one-on-one meetings with students to discuss their goals and progress. Instead of Ms. Samson telling students how they are doing, they are expected to articulate to her what they learned in class, how it relates to their learning goals and where they’re struggling.

Ms. Samson is still required to give students a letter grade at the end of each semester, but the letters have taken on a whole new meaning to her and her students. Struggling students have a much clearer idea of how they can move from a C to a B or an A. “Once grades are removed, students are learning for themselves rather than learning for their teacher.”

The move away from grades matches a growing belief among employers that traditional assessment is not the best way to help students develop the skills they need to succeed in today’s world. In national and global surveys, employers don’t complain about applicants lacking specific knowledge or technical skills, which are easy to test and express in a letter grade; they want employees who can analyze critically, collaborate, communicate, solve problems and think creatively. A 2012 McKinsey & Co. survey of 8,000 students, educators and employers in nine countries found that there was a gap between what educators thought students needed to succeed and what employers really wanted. “Education providers will say that all skills are important, whereas employers will place much clearer prioritization on soft skills – where the likes of team work and work ethic come out quite strongly,” Mona Mourshed, director of education at McKinsey, said.

Traditional assessment largely focuses on measuring students’ ability to regurgitate information and was designed for certification and accountability purposes rather than to support student learning, argues Maria Langworthy, chief research officer with Ontario education expert Michael Fullan’s research group. “Think about working in a knowledge-based economy where the sort of end products we produce are intellectual, things like software, design, social policy,” she explains “There’s no multiple-choice test that can capture the value and complexity of those sorts of products.”

David Staples, the Wildrose and their war on teachers and learning

Here is Bruce McAllister and David Staples
 talking with Alberta teachers.

David Staples is a columnist who has an interest in education.

Bruce McAllister is a Wildrose MLA and education critic in the Alberta Legislature.

Together, they are waging war on teachers and learning by demanding that teachers teach in a way that mandates children play a passive role in school. Together, they argue there simply is not enough memorization and tests in school.

Standardized Testing

When the Wildrose and David Staples cite a real world need for annual standardized testing, I ask some questions:

1. As a columnist, can you share the standardized multiple choice test that the Edmonton Journal makes you do to keep you accountable and transparent? As a politician, would you be willing to take Alberta's Diplomas exams and have your results published for all to see?

2. As a columnist, can you share the standardized rubric that the Edmonton Journal uses to score and judge your columns? As a politician can you share the scoring guide that citizens use to score and judge your work?

4. As a columnist or a politician, can you show me the column you wrote or the bill you voted on where you are not allowed access to the Internet, fact-check or talk to anyone? 

5. As a columnist or a politician, if there were no standardized test scores, what would you know about education?

We need to stop thinking we can meet all
children's needs by pretending all children
have the same needs.

It is hypocritical for adults to demand students and teachers be held accountable in ways that they would not hold themselves to.

Standardized testing is what constitutes an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of assessment that is used by people outside the classroom to judge and control what happens inside the classroom without ever visiting the schools.

Teachers are not afraid of accountability -- but they do oppose being held accountable for things out of their control. Teachers also know that there is nothing transparent about having children fill in bubble-tests.

The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is to see their children learning. The best teachers don't need tests because they make learning visible via projects and performances collected in portfolios.

This is a shift from test and punish accountability to more authentic public assurance. The Alberta Teachers' Association also outlines a vision for A Great School for All, and the Alberta Assessment Consortium offers A New Look at Public Assurance.

And here's my story about how I teach and my students learn without grades.

"Old" and "New" Math

Staples continued his war on learning with a column that featured Ken Porteous who is a retired chemical engineering professor from the University of Alberta. Porteous writes: 

The discovery approach has no place in arithmetic at the junior elementary level. There is nothing to discover.

If there was ever a need for a single statement that one could show people such that their response would predict whether they knew anything about how children learn -- this is it. 

To carry this mindset out to its (il)logical conclusion, I guess there is nothing left to discover in this world...

Teachers and other early childhood development experts who understand how children learn define their careers by children's Aha! moments. These are the moments when metaphorical lightbulbs illuminate on top of children's heads. Anyone with a clue about how children learn knows that these Aha! moments rarely, if ever, happen because kids were simply told to have them. Aha! moments are not passively absorbed or memorized -- they are actively constructed by the student with the artful guidance of a teacher.

The best teachers have teeth marks on their tongues because they know that when kids are simply told the most efficient way of getting the answer, they get in the habit of looking to adults instead of thinking things through for themselves. They understand that learning happens when the child is ready to learn, not necessarily when someone is ready to teach -- teachers call these teachable moments.

I am a huge supporter of teacher professional development where teachers learn how to be better teachers, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that a back to basics approach that romanticizes the past will make things better for our children.

Let's not pretend that traditional math instruction didn't confuse and turn a lot of students off of math. When adults think back on their schooling, it's easy to succumb to something called Nostesia which is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia which distorts rational thinking.

Wishing tomorrow to be just like yesterday won't make today a better place. We aren't going to get more children to love math by pretending that school already doesn't have enough lectures, direct instruction, worksheets, textbooks, tests and memorization.

Staples and the Wildrose would like Albertans to believe that they are waging war against the government and education consultants but the truth is they are also attacking teachers who work hard to engage students in a way that has them play a more active role in constructing their own understanding with the artful guidance of their teacher.

While some teachers and parents may agree with Staples and the Wildrose, it's important to note that many teachers in Alberta feel that they are doing more harm than good. When Staples and the Wildrose mislead the public by telling teachers how they have to teach, they make it harder for great teachers to do their job.

Here's my take on the math wars, and Alfie Kohn's article answers the question: What works better than traditional math instruction?

Columnists are not Journalists and (most) Politicians are not teachers

Staples is a columnist -- which is not the same as a journalist, and I fear that too many people don't understand the difference.

He is not required to check his biases or opinions at the door -- in fact, as a columnist,  he has a better chance of selling newspapers and collecting page-views online with his biases and opinions fully intact. Staples is biased because that is his job.

Research isn't sexy and it doesn't sell unless it's accompanied by sensationalism, and when it comes to sensationalism, Staples sells the Wildrose. Making claims that teachers are no longer teaching children basic arithmetic may make for a snappy headline and a wedge issue to gain cheap political points for the next election but it couldn't be further from the truth.

As a side note, when I tried to share my math post with Bruce McAllister on his Facebook page, he deleted it and blocked me. You'd think that the opposition party would have a keen sense of appreciation for opposition, but I guess not.

"I wish a columnist and politician with no teaching experience would just
 come in and tell me how to teach," said no teacher ever.

And yet Staples isn't always wrong -- he knows just enough about education to get in trouble. His columns are filled with half-truths that are supported by cherry picked research, revisionist history and preconceived notions. He props up math PhDs, engineers, testing consultants, bureaucrats and others who have expertise in areas other than teaching young children math.

Canadians love their Olympians, but nobody confuses a hockey players' expertise for a rhythmic gymnastics coach. Similarly, a PhD in mathematics or engineering is not a PhD in early childhood development, psychology or math education.

Mathematicians are not (necessarily) Math Teachers

The best math teachers understand math and how children learn math -- these are two different skills. It is irresponsible to simply assume that someone who is good at math knows anything about how to teach it.
Just because you know how to skate or shoot a puck doesn't mean you have a clue how to properly teach young children how to skate or shoot. If you want to coach organized hockey in Canada, you are required to be educated through a certification process. One expectation is for coaches to learn the content of hockey, and another expectation is to learn how to teach children to skate and shoot.

The teaching part is so important that even if you played hockey at a high level, you would still be required to take the certification program. Knowing how to play hockey or how to do math is necessary but not sufficient for coaching or teaching -- this is why we have coaching and teaching certification programs.

Getting advice on how to teach or play hockey from someone who has never taught or played hockey is kind of like getting advice from a virgin on how to get laid. Opinion needs to be based on experience and expertise -- Staples and the Wildrose have neither.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for columnists and politicians -- what I'm saying is that columnists and politicians need to be kept in their place, because when David Staples and the Wildrose confuse having an interest in education with being experts, they mislead people.

Sir Ken Robinson: How to Change Education

Sir Ken Robinson wants education to get back to basics -- but his definition for "basics" may not be what you think. Take 24 minutes to ponder.



Here's my favourite quote from this video: