Educator Evaluation Beacon

DESE

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.

Linking SMART Goals to DDMs

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DESE’s Technical Guide B provides sample language for SMART goals that align to the building and piloting of measures of student growth. Here’s an example (from p. 44):

“By the spring of 2014, the _________ department will develop and pilot (Quantity) (Content Subject) common assessments in grade(s) ________, that meet the criteria established by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for District Determined Measures (DDMs), as measured by an updated department data inventory.”

DESE’s Student Survey Working Sessions Available Locally

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The educator evaluation folks at DESE will offer working sessions on student and staff surveys in western Massachusetts on November 14 and 18. These surveys are to be piloted this winter and be administered statewide in the fall of 2014.

At these sessions, Ron Noble and company will seek feedback from teachers and district administrators about a broad selection of sample questions.

The training will be located close to Route 91.

ESE Project Lead: Build DDMs with Teachers

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Samantha Warburton, one of ESE’s Ed Eval project leaders, brought an encouraging and sensible message about District-Determined Measures of Student Growth (DDMs) to a crowd of educators at Holyoke High last week (July11).

Districts ought to start the process, she said, by asking teachers what will be most useful to them to measure. Teachers, she added, already assess their students in myriad ways. The next step is to find ways to measure those skills and concepts that are useful to teachers. Only after these steps have been achieved do districts need to start worrying about validity and reliability. If districts are not happy with a DDM after piloting it, they are free to jettison that assessment and move on to a different assessment for year two.

Ms. Warburton also spoke about the range of assessment options that may be piloted at this early stage of implementation. Districts may use shorter-term tests such as common formative assessments that teacher teams have already created. Portfolios of student work in writing, math, and the arts can be piloted as DDMs as well.

Her message was an encouraging reminder that DDMs need not be completely valid or reliable this first time through; rather, it is a time to experiment with how these assessments can best meet teacher needs.