Educator Evaluation Beacon

Pros and Cons of Merging Student Learning Goals and DDMs

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The similarities between student learning goals and measuring student growth– DDMs– have led to confusion in some districts– and an opportunity for streamlining in others.

Before exploring the pros and cons of using the same set of data to assess progress toward student learning goals and student growth, it’s important to review the place of both in the educator evaluation system. A teacher’s progress with student learning goals contributes to Performance Rating (Exemplary, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory), while measures of student growth are used to arrive at Impact Rating (High, Moderate, or Low).

Pros: By collecting data sets that track progress on student learning goals and measure student growth (DDMs), teachers should be able to decrease the time allocated to assessment and the time needed to score student work.

Cons: The objectives of the student learning goal may be very different than those of the DDM. The first may be short-term, whereas a DDM ought to be long-term, usually a school year or semester. And the grain-size may be different; the student learning goal can address a more narrow set of learning a standards than a DDM. Finally, there is the possibility that one set of data might ‘count against’ a teacher twice.  If that single set of data is disappointing, it can drag down a teacher’s performance and impact rating.

What do you think? How is your district approaching this issue?

Resources for Writing to Text

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In preparation for PARCC testing, many districts are administering writing to text DDMs across the grade levels. These tasks ask students to read and analyze several documents and then draft an original response to a prompt about those documents. Now that districts have student work to score, a host of questions arise:

  • Who will score the work?writing hand
  • When will they score it?
  • What scoring method will be used to increase the validity and reliability of the results?

As an answer-all-questions guide, I recommend using the RI Calibration Protocol for Scoring Student Work.

It’s important to remember the value of this work for teachers– when provided ample time and strong facilitation, teachers scoring student work engage in important discussions of standards, instruction, and assessment.

School Counselors Measure Student Growth in Worcester

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMany thanks to the Worcester County Guidance and Personnel Association, who invited me to speak to their monthly gathering.  Thanks to preparation support from Gwynne Morrissey, I was able to clarify misapprehensions for the 45 counselors in attendance and share completed DDMs written by peers in the Pioneer Valley. Viewing these examples helped counselors envision what is possible and see that the end product need not be long or overly complex. Guidance Successful Transitions DDM; Common App DDM; SelfControl SelfRegulation DDM

Apparently, many of their misunderstandings spring from trainings that presented conflicting information. They’ve heard from DESE, outside vendors, and district leaders. These misunderstandings concern not only DDMs, but core components of the educator evaluation system as well.

The counselors in attendance are doing important work with their students: one team is teaching the signs of suicide and how to address the topic. They measure student growth meaningfully when they seek to discover how much students have learned from their lessons about suicide prevention.

I emphasized the importance of measuring what counselors and their schools care most about while capturing data that is useful for improving their instruction.

ESE Funds the Construction of Strong DDMs

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CES  is one of six collaboratives awarded a grant by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to build hiGymnasts.UC_.Berkeleygh-quality student growth measures in specific subjects.

Our work at CES will focus on two content areas: History/Social Studies and Physical Education/Health. We will work with teachers from our member districts as well as interested, qualified educators from around the state. Initial invitations will be sent by the month’s end. Please contact me with questions or suggestions.

That First Step: Jumping in to Student and Staff Feedback

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Aaron Feuer of Panorama Education, speaking with a group of curriculum directors at CES last week, provided a range of options and recommendations for districts beginning to survey staff and students.

  • Opt-in model: teachers who want to participate may, they can control who they share the data with.  The district administers surveys for use at school and district-wide level, while the classroom-level data are emailed to each teacher, but they don’t have to open it. (Some teachers opt into surveys when they find it to be more positive than observation data.) District leaders can choose to use these data for PD—here’s how our students see us; how do we move forward?
  • Start with staff feedback only this year. Benefits: Principals model the feedback process, make it less threatening, prepare the ground, eases tensions, and set the stage for student surveys.
  • Most important: trust between teacher and evaluator in looking at student feedback

Do you have another solution for launching student and staff feedback?  Will any of the options described above work for your district?