Audio Webcast Program #4
Additional Audio from Audio Webcast Program #4:
Monitoring what gets taught: insuring an adequate opportunity to learn
Additional Audio 1 of 4: Arthur Coleman
Title: Students have a right to an adequate opportunity to learn the curriculum
Listen Online: (2:36)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: coleman.mp3 ~2.4 MB
Summary: Holding students responsible for scores on tests that do not measure what they were taught is a real problem. A bigger problem for educators who fail to adequately prepare students for the curriculum measured by state assessments. Indeed, when a significant percentage of students within various groups do not achieve proficiency and so fail to advance in school and in life, it is proper to ask whether their educational rights may have been violated.
Arthur Coleman is a civil rights attorney in Washington. He is the former deputy assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education. While lack of the opportunity to learn may be an issue of discrimination, to Mr. Coleman it is much more an issue of educational inadequacy.
Introduction: Teachers need assessment information to make sure that what they are teaching is being learned and to monitor and adjust their instructional plans to meet student needs. Principals need it to provide feedback and to shape school plans. School districts use assessment data to decide how to allocate resources to schools; and States need it to judge the overall effectiveness of the education system in teaching the public curriculum.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
Holding students responsible for scores on tests that do not measure
what they were taught is a real problem. A bigger problem for educators
who fail to adequately prepare students for the curriculum measured by
state assessments. Indeed, when a significant percentage of students
within various groups do not achieve proficiency and so fail to advance
in school and in life, it is proper to ask whether their educational
rights may have been violated.
Arthur Coleman is a civil rights attorney in Washington. He is the
former deputy assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of
Education. While lack of the opportunity to learn may be an issue of
discrimination, to Mr. Coleman it is much more an issue of educational
inadequacy.
Arthur Coleman
The question of standards reform in issues of discrimination on testing
are not just about the test itself; it's about the education that is
the foundation that leads to particular test results. And so you've got
to be looking at the educational inputs, you've got to be looking at
the curriculum and the instruction to insure a fundamental alignment
with what the test is supposed to be measuring. And at the same time
you've got to be looking at those elements within your school program
to insure comparably qualified teachers, comparable educational
opportunities in terms of the kinds of courses students are eligible to
take.
And, irrespective, frankly, of the discrimination issues, there are a
set of due process claims that have surfaced in cases around this
notion that if you're going to hold me, John Smith, student,
accountable at the end of my high school career on a measure like a
high school graduation test, you had better insure that the foundations
are in place on the front end so that I can be said at the end of the
day to have been fairly exposed to the material to which I am going to
be responsible, for which I am going to be responsible.
One of the very important elements, legally and I think as well as,
educationally as well, is the kind of early identification of potential
problems that are being made, and the kind of educational interventions
that are being provided along the way to, once you've identified this
student or this group of students is in trouble, what are we as public
educators doing to remedy that problem before the consequences of that
high stake assessment attach?
So, it's not about saying, "Oh, sorry, Johnny, you failed the test,"
you know, you know, "Better luck in your next life." It's about coming
to terms with where Johnny is and figuring out the right kind of
educational inputs and interventions that are necessary to help Johnny
achieve success.
Additional Audio 2 of 4: Arthur Coleman
Title: The opportunity to learn must be well monitored
Listen Online: (1:36)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: coleman2.mp3 ~1.5 MB
About this audio clip: Having clear, detailed and high expectations for what is to be learned is extremely important. Having clear methods for monitoring student success are also of key importance. Arthur Coleman, is former deputy assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education.
Context: No Child Left Behind requires yearly testing and reporting of student progress towards mastery of state academic content standards. This student achievement data must be disaggregated by categories that include race, economic status, Special Education status, and English Language Learner status. At the heart of No Child Left Behind is the expectation that every child will be given a meaningful opportunity to learn challenging academic content and to graduate high school with more than a piece of paper of sometimes dubious value.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
Having clear, detailed and high expectations for what is to be learned
is extremely important. Having clear methods for monitoring student
success are also of key importance. Arthur Coleman, is former deputy
assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education.
You need to have very clear statements of what students are expected to
know at particular grade levels, so that the expectation for those
responsible for the educational inputs have the clarity they need to
say, you know, "I know what Johnny needs to know at the end of fourth
grade. I can work to insure that he learns that." I'd also want to see
what are your strategies and what are your policies for remediation or
other assistance for students in need of help.
And one of the very clear foundations is good data. You'd want policies
that require and expect very good data on student achievement and
performance across the board, disaggregated, including information such
as the, how students with disabilities or English language learners are
included. Schools districts as a matter of programmatic accountability
no longer can simply say, "Well, our average is improving, we're
getting better." And, you know, to the extent that you can have one
rich data set that gives the most sophisticated, powerful picture of
what's really going on in the school system, then you've got the
foundation to sit down as an administrator to say, "Here's where we
need to make change and here's where we don't."
It's one thing to have good data, if you're going to sit back and not
do anything with it. But if you've got good data that can tell you, "We
need more work here with English language learners." Or, "We need more
work here with students in this particular location or in this
particular program." And you then take steps to help those students
achieve.
Additional Audio 3 of 4: Jack Jennings
Title: Constructing the curriculum by working backwards from high school exit exams
Listen Online: (3:08)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: jennings.mp3 (~2.9 MB)
About this audio clip: To ensure that each and every classroom in Maryland enact the publicly-authorized curriculum of knowledge and skills needed for success in life, the State has developed a system of end-of-course high school exams. From these terminal tests, Maryland is backward mapping a curriculum. It is also creating intermediate tests to keep students and teachers on target. In fact, the State is creating some of the very lessons teachers can use to prepare students for these tests.
Jack Jennings is the CEO of the Center on Education Policy in Washington and a member Maryland's Visionary Committee.
Context: Much of the conversation about high-stakes testing focuses on the negative consequences for students if they fail to pass graduation exams. However, many reformers suggest that the consequences and responsibility for these failures should be assigned further upstream. They suggest that the requirement to align standards, tests and day-to-day classroom instruction and remediation must be adequately monitored. Without this monitoring there is no way to know if schools are meeting their obligation to provide all students with the opportunity to learn.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
To ensure that each and every classroom in Maryland enact the
publicly-authorized curriculum of knowledge and skills needed for
success in life, the State has developed a system of end-of-course high
school exams. From these terminal tests, Maryland is backward mapping a
curriculum. It is also creating intermediate tests to keep students and
teachers on target. In fact, the State is creating some of the very
lessons teachers can use to prepare students for these tests.
Jack Jennings is the CEO of the Center on Education Policy in Washington and a member Maryland's Visionary Committee.
Jack Jennings
And so, and there has been a plateauing of progress in Maryland for the
last several years. So what we had to do was look at the schools and
find out, well, if they have this structure in place, what was missing?
And what was missing was that, while creating the structure, there was
not enough attention paid to helping teachers in the classroom in order
to improve their instruction.
So what we are recommending is that the state rethink its entire
assessment program and identify first what it wants kids to know as
they leave high school. And then map back a curriculum all the way down
to first grade in terms of what kids have to learn along the way as
they progress through school in order to be ready to graduate from high
school. Once they identify the curriculum, they should have a testing
program or an assessment program that measures students' progress at
each step as they go towards the completion of high school.
And so what we're recommending in Maryland is that the state have a
diagnostic assessment system which would be developed by school
districts to help teachers in the classroom so that they could measure
continuous progress of students according to these goals, and change
instruction. The emphasis ought to be on changing classroom instruction
and helping teachers. With the state's accountability system coming in,
but not being the driving engine. Rather, having teachers helped on a
daily, weekly, yearly basis by an ongoing assessment system.
And so what we're recommending is that the State of Maryland develop a
voluntary, statewide curriculum for every grade level in every subject
area. And that be the document that's available to everybody, so
that they will know, this is what the state expects people to teach, if
they want to. But, even if they don't want to, this will be what the
state measures on the testing program. And then we want the state to
work with school districts so that school districts will develop the
means to translate the curriculum into lesson plans for teachers, but
they should also coordinate all professional development so that it's
supportive of the instructional goals that are reflected in the
curriculum, that are going to be reflected in the test. So school
districts will have to coordinate their own resources better to assist
classroom teachers.
Additional Audio 4 of 4: Andrew Porter
Title: Keeping track of what gets taught
Listen Online: (2:34)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: porter.mp3 (~2.4 MB)
About this audio clip: Helping teachers evaluate the level of their own success is becoming much more sophisticated than in the old days when administrators used clipboards and checklists of "good teacher behavior" to monitor their faculties. Now that content is king, methods by which content is monitored will play a more and more important a role. A role that good testing and sophisticated data analysis will facilitate.
Andrew Porter is the director of the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University.
Context: Giving students an adequate opportunity to learn what they will need to know to graduate with a good start in life is within our control. Good tests will play an increasingly important role, providing us with the objective knowledge to distribute opportunities fairly and the information we need to improve teaching. Monitoring the opportunity students have to learn what is important and what is to be tested is an essential strategy for improving schools.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
Helping teachers evaluate the level of their own success is becoming
much more sophisticated than in the old days when administrators used
clipboards and checklists of "good teacher behavior" to monitor their
faculties. Now that content is king, methods by which content is
monitored will play a more and more important a role. A role that good
testing and sophisticated data analysis will facilitate.
Andrew Porter is the director of the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University.
Andrew Porter
What we need, I think is a program of teacher evaluation and feedback
that's formative in nature more than summative. That is to say that
it's a partnership with the teacher to help the teacher see what
they're doing well and what they're not doing so well, and then
provides the kind of support they need to become more effective in
areas that need shoring up.
Now, a lot of times we've taken content for granted. We've said much of
teacher evaluation in this form, this formative form, has been focusing
almost exclusively on pedagogical strategies. And of course one of the
reasons for that is a lot of times the burden has fallen on the
principal to provide this function; and the principal doesn't know,
he's not an expert in all the content areas. So content has been kind
of off the map.
However, in my research and that of others, it's clear that what is
taught is a better predictor of gains in student achievement than how
it's taught. And furthermore, we can't take content for granted because
you can go into an elementary school and go into a fourth grade
classroom, you'll find two teachers at the fourth grade level, in
mathematics. By Christmas, one will have already taught as much
mathematics as the other teacher will have taught by the end of the
school year. Enormous differences. Content simply cannot be taken for
granted. But we have not developed good systems for monitoring what is
taught. So this is a real frontier for us.
What would you tell your teachers?
"What is taught is extremely important, we can't take it for granted. I
can tell you right now there are important differences among you, even
those of you who are teaching the same course, or those of you who are
teaching the same subject in the same grade. Because we've got a lot of
research that shows you that, shows us that already. And I think what
we need to do is we need to take content seriously in this school."
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