Educator Evaluation Beacon

Teachers Tackle DDM Construction

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Spent today working with English Language Arts teachers on methods for measuring the growth of their students’ reading and writing skills (#DDMs). Because the results will be used to evaluate teachers, it’s challenging to find a balance between genuinely measuring a young adult’s improvement and fairly capturing the teacher’s impact on that student. Here are some concerns:

Avoiding a Low Impact Rating

No teacher who takes pride in her work wants a low impact rating. And yet, as growth measures are used for the first time, they can generate numbers that do not accurately reflect what students have learned.

Capturing Student Growth

Here are some practices these teachers propose for raising the odds that a measure of growth will reflect student improvement over the course of the year (Note: these suggestions are specific to writing to text in the high school):

  • Administer the first task as early in the year as possible
  • Omit lengthy directions (to see what students can do independently)
  • Define measurable, concrete aspects of the task in the rubric

 

Slick Method for Assembling DDMs Across a District

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Northampton Public Schools are asking teachers to submit  DDM information via a DDM Google Form – Northampton. The information they provide raindrops-on-smooth-banana-leaf-landscape-1-screensaveris  automatically tallied on a google spreadsheet, in a format that can be sent to DESE in June. The district is willing to share their work if there’s interest. Let me know through a comment or email: ddouglas@collaborative.org.

Locally-Crafted DDMs Available Here

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schoolnurseWe are happy to make available measures of student growth created by local educators. You can access them by clicking here. The collection features examples from the arts, physical education, special education, and nursing. As teachers craft DDMs in their field, high-quality examples are extremely helpful.

A big thank you to the folks who shared their work. If you have a finished DDM, please send it to: ddouglas@collaborative.org.

Waterman Gives DDMs a Human Face

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Craig Waterman brought  a great deal of expertise to Monday’s Office Hours as well as a healthy dose of humor and flexibility. Here are some impressions of the event contributed by Louise Law (Frontier Regional Schools), Gwynne Morrissey (CES), and Diana Roy (Ludlow Public Schools):

  1. DDMs are still a work in progress across the state and DESE wants to see what districts have by June. Districts will have flexibility to revise those DDMs as they see fit.
  2. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid of a few students having a “low” rating on a DDM. However, a teacher getting a low impact rating means that many students were making low growth across multiple measures across multiple years, which is, in fact, worth having a conversation about.
  3. There are creative ways to measure student growth – like using holistic growth rubrics.
  4. DDMs have to allow all students an equal chance for growth, which has particular impact on special education students and English Language Learners.