The schools are all open, the leaves are starting to turn and we begin a new year filled with hope, high aspirations and high expectations for the success of all students. A new school year affords us the opportunity for personal renewal and recommitment. It provides each of us with “fresh pages” to write the next chapter of our personal and collective school transformation story. What chapter will you write this year?

As an Education Service Agency (ESA) Executive Director, I have both the privilege and the responsibility to take a 30,000 foot look around our region to try to ascertain what seems to be working well and to help identify areas of both challenge and opportunity with respect to improving the teaching and learning that occurs in our schools. Toward that end, I attended the math blueprint committee meeting this summer at St Michael’s college. I left that two day summit committed to a set of personal actions steps that I could take to begin a serious dialogue with school leaders and others on the topic of mathematics learning for all.

It is in that spirit that I write to you today. Forgive me if I sound unduly critical, judgmental or too prescriptive in my remarks. It goes without saying that this is not my intent. I would be remiss if I did not report that I observe a lot of very good things happening in our area schools. The piece you are reading is not intended to be a research article for publication. Rather it is intended to serve as a stimulator for important dialogue that is long overdue between and among school leaders. I apologize upfront if it hits you as too “preachy or self righteous” As I enter my 40th year in public education, my passion and desire to see meaningful and sustainable change occur may occassionlly get the better of me.

My purpose in writing to you as school leaders is to move us beyond the creation of a little “cognitive dissonance”. What I hope to accomplish here borders on stirring the pot until it spills over. With all due respect my friends, this is a "call to action". 

If we are really serious about improving our schools and improving mathematics learning for all, we must be much more bold and courageous in our self assessments of our current state and more willing to open our practice up to the scrutiny of those who truly want to partner with us to make a real and lasting difference in the mathematics learning of our students. I think you will agree with me when I assert that together we really can change the performance profile of our schools and more on point the learning opportunity for every Vermont student. We already know what needs to be done to improve mathematics for all, what we need now is the moral courage and bold leadership to get the job done.

In the spirit of creating a constructive and action orientated dialogue I am proposing a set of specific actions that I hope you will consider worthy of serious consideration as you begin this new school year. To avoid being reckless or too simplistic, I have asked several respected math professional development providers to review this document and to offer their suggestions for additions or deletions. I would like to thank Marge Petit, Beth Hulbert, Mahesh Sharma, Brad Witzel, Loree Silvis, Karin Hess and Julie Conrad for taking the time to read the document and for the feedback they provided. Let me be clear, I accept total responsibility for any proposed action that remains half baked or unclear. Any misinterpretation or misrepresentation of a construct that follows can be attributed to me.       

I realize that I am stepping out on a limb by putting these ideas on the table for your consideration, rebuttal or endorsement. I am not a mathematician. I am a long time Vermont Educational Leader and I recognize that the contribution that I can make is in the building of viable partnerships committed to a common purpose. What I invite you to do is to respond to me and the broader educational community with what ever you think might help us close the mathematics achievement gaps that we have identified at all levels. If we work together, we can and will close these gaps at a much faster rate. 

In an attempt to identify promising practice and to stimulate our desire for continuous improvement, I challenge you to show us where you are making a difference in mathematics learning for all and then I urge you to invite us to your district so we can learn from and replicate your success.

Remember “hope alone is not a strategy”

 Actions to consider:

1) Create a culture of continuous improvement:

a) If you have not done so already, I urge you to create a culture of continuous improvement across your district. Unless all of your students are successful in mathematics, don’t be satisfied with the results that you have achieved.

b) In order to improve performance at all levels you simply must be willing to take a brutally honest look (Schmoker) at all aspects of your mathematics curriculum, mathematics program as well as your instructional delivery system.

2) Clearly articulate curriculum, assessment, and instruction aligned with the expectations in the CCSSM:

a) Audit your math program and your program delivery. Ask yourself the tough questions: Is your math program aligned with your math curriculum? Find out what is already working and build on that. Solidify what is working and then take it to scale. Root out what is NOT working and fix it or eliminate it. Ask yourself if what is occurring in all your classrooms represent best professional practice in 2012.

b) Map your current curriculum/program delivery. What is your espoused curriculum by grade level? Is your math program in actuality your math curriculum? What are the non-negotiable skills and current benchmarks for students at every grade level? Do you have corresponding/aligned assessments for all benchmarks? Is the instructional time that you have allocated to particular elements commensurate with the concepts, skills and procedures that should be taught at all levels? Be honest with yourself in your assessment of your point of departure, “it is what it is”. Find out where you are at with respect to your true current state and move forward from there.

3) Put in place strong supervision and evaluation to assure the articulated curriculum is the enacted curriculum:

a) Look at your actual taught curriculum, what are teachers actually teaching in every class every day? This is hard and tedious work to map out but you must determine this for every math class you offer Pre K-12. Is the espoused and taught curriculum aligned with the pedagogical philosophy you embrace and support?

b) How much time is allotted for math per day in every class/grade? How much of that allotted time is actually used for math instruction vs. management tasks?

c) Do you have “common definitions of knowing” (Sharma) for each of the elements of the math curriculum (language, concepts, procedures and skills)?

4) Use evidence from student work (including classroom discussions) to inform instructional decision making on an ongoing basis:

a) Stop looking at your math scores in isolation and START looking carefully at
student responses to math assessment tasks and the conditions under which those responses were generated. Look at your student results in math with a fine grain lens from every vantage point you can think of and from every part of your delivery system.

b) Assure that teachers have the skills and knowledge to analyze evidence in student work that helps inform instructional decision making. Provide teachers time to meet with their peers to analyze evidence in student work and support each other when making instructional and program decisions.

c) Develop your set of grade level or department anchor papers/products as your current exemplars of your best student work. Stay true to your anchor development process and strive to see those anchor papers/products improve each year. Remember observable improvement in student work is still the best metric we have for measuring both student and teacher practice improvement.

d) In grade level/department configurations carefully examine your student responses in relation to the assessment tasks (formative, progress monitoring, summative) they are responding to? What are you noticing? Do you see any patterns in their errors and in the nature of their answers?   Where is the breakdown, what parts are they getting, what parts are they missing? Are the student errors due to low expectations with respect to mastery, a lack of program emphasis, lack of reinforcement and practice, lack of understanding of the concepts, skill deficiencies or ineffective teaching? 

e) Does your staff have the skills to identify and understand these error patterns and the skills they need to close these achievement gaps? That is what “needs based” PD is really all about!
 
5) Assure that every student is receiving high quality instruction from a qualified instructor. Provide professional development in content and in knowledge of mathematics education research on how students learn specific mathematics concepts:

a) Carefully ascertain the skills and knowledge in math content and pedagogy for every one in your system who provides math instruction to students.  I mean every one, classroom teachers, math teacher leaders, special educators, supervising administrators, paras, peer tutors, parent volunteers etc. I know I know…..it’s a lot of work but you must do it. You and I both know that you have folks providing math instruction that are NOT qualified to do so.

b) Has your district developed a long term and short term math PD plan that is cohesive and coherent? Will it help make the “edges touch” at the classroom level? Does it align with the gaps you find in student performance and teacher practice?

c) All though it is controversial, you need to at least be open to a candid discussion about a math specialist model for your elementary schools. While it is not “problem free”, this has been implemented successfully in some Vermont schools already. Others are trying it out this year; you need to check it out.

d) In reality, we need to redefine the term "qualified" to mean having the knowledge, skills, understanding, strategies and disposition to effectively teach mathematics to all learners. The practice of assigning students to “unqualified” math instructors is actually causing harm!

6) Put a strong RTI/ MTSS system in place:

a) Collect and scrutinize math lessons that teachers and others are designing and delivering for students at Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3. Is their universal understanding of what Tier 1, 2 and 3 really mean? Have you done any math RTI (Response To Intervention)/MTSS ( Multi-Tiered System of Support) training in your district? Consider using a universal template for lesson design and implementation by grade level teams, PLC, Data Teams.

b) When you critique the lesson design that teachers are utilizing in your district ask these questions: How do these lesson plans align with the Common Core? How do these lesson plans align with your “espoused curriculum” at each grade level? What are you going to do to fix the variance? Trust me; you are going to find variance? Do the lessons that you review reflect coverage of the curriculum or mastery of agreed upon curriculum elements? Does everyone on the grade level or department team have agreement on what mastery means? Does the lesson design process that you utilize address math language, concepts, procedures and skills?         

c) Review every math IEP that is being implemented in your system this year. As a former Special Educator, Special Ed Administrator and University Lecturer in Special Education I can honestly say that there are lots of problem areas here. Find them and fix them. Look carefully at the math IEP goals. Do these goals reflect the same levels of expectations with respect to attainment of high standards, skill mastery, “Levels of Knowing”?  Are the IEP goals and strategies written by professionals who have a solid understanding of math content and pedagogy?

7) Develop strategies for providing teachers ongoing instructional support:

a) Start formal “lesson study” PD this year. Your VMI (Vermont Math Initiative) or MLSS (Mathematics Leadership Support Systems) folks can help you get this started. There simply is no good, defensible argument for letting teachers, (especially those who are not strong in math), develop and implement lessons by themselves without the benefit of peer review. Coherent lesson design and delivery should be done by the entire team and consistently implemented and critiqued using weekly structures and protocols that can be learned through Data Team training etc.    

b) If you are not doing so already, start videoing your math lesson delivery (at all three Tiers) and use those videos as a source of feedback for grade level team PD. Start with your “early adopters” but strive to make this a standard practice at all levels. When you do an “after action critique” of the lesson be bold enough to discuss the student errors and misunderstandings that you notice. This will be a step in the right direction to more “effective teaching”. 

c) Put a stop to the practice of teaching in isolation. You must build a much more robust feedback loop for your teachers. Let’s be honest, evaluation by the building principal (who may or may not have a strong math background) every three years or so simply will not cut it as a proxy for a “robust feedback loop”. It's time to challenge this white elephant!  Our teachers need, deserve and want more frequent, direct and useful feedback.

8) Increase the depth of your local capacity by having a mathematics teacher leader:

a) If you do not have any math teacher leaders at your disposal at the district or regional level develop a strategy to get them and have them in place before school opens next year.

b) Work with partner school districts who are interested in shared teacher leader models, teacher exchanges, regional professional development using shared staff etc in order to strengthen and build your internal capacity.

9) Nurture and support a “disposition of efficacy” in your schools:

a) Develop strategies that help students and teachers understand how important mathematics is to their future success.

b) "Smoke out" the belief systems of all those who have signed on to work on behalf of kids. Determine who really believes all kids can and will learn with the right instruction and appropriate grade level expectations, and then give those folks all the support and encouragement you can. These people really believe they can and will make a difference in the lives of their students. Help them realize those aspirations; put them in a position to make that difference.

c) At the risk of sounding paternalist, I am going to remind you of something you already know. You simply must deal with those folks who are holding the systems hostage, either by their belief systems or a lack of competence and or effort. If they do not believe kids can learn, what real chance do those students have to achieve? This is a serious equity issue that must be tackled head on.

10) Develop a research and policy agenda:

a) Last but certainly not least, I urge you to develop a research and policy agenda in your supervisory union that will support “best practice” and hold all elements of the system accountable for performance. You really are only as strong as your weakest link!

b) Inconsistent or incoherent policies don’t help you move the system forward.  Twenty-five years in school administration taught me that lesson several times over. If your master agreement or district protocols restrict or inhibit your ability to get into classrooms on a regular basis, then change those policies and practices. 


I have other ideas on how we might work together to improve math instruction in our regional schools but this is probably enough to get us started.  As always, I appreciate and welcome your thoughts.

In my last blog I wrote about summative assessment. I began that piece by laying out a series of questions commonly asked by lots of teachers: What is assessment, how does it inform professional practice, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, why do I need to know any of this stuff anyway, can’t I just continue to teach and test as needed? Is there a professional development connection to this assessment concept?

If you are a faithful reader of this blog series, you may recall, that I lured my readers into an initial discussion about assessment by selecting a provocative excerpt from a fairy tale, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

There was a method to my madness. I used the fairy tale as a hook to engage the reader in a cognitive process, What does this fairy tale have to do with instructional target setting and the collection of evidence regarding student learning?  As we reflect on the fairy tale vignette, what can we glean from Alice’s experience that might help us to more fully appreciate the importance and utility of clear instructional targets and well designed assessment practices?  One could surmise “If you do not know where you are going, any path will get you there."

Yes, my friend, that is the essential point. Once you articulate the path you wish to follow, you need assistance and supports to know if you are still on the right road as your journey begins to unfold. You also need some way to be assured that you ended up where you wished to go at the conclusion of your trip. In order to make these determinations, you will need and want both formative and summative assessments to guide you to a successful conclusion.

In order to make the general case, I offer another non-school extrapolation by way of example; if you take a plane from New York to Oakland, a safe landing at the Oakland Airport is the summative assessment for that particular trip. However, what set of evidence will let you know that you are on target for your final destination as the flight progresses? How does the pilot keep from over shooting the airport by 150 miles?? This is where formative assessment becomes invaluable. He needs a valid and reliable ongoing in-flight process to help him gather relevant information to guide him while your journey is still under way.

Here is the good news, whether you are talking about flying airplanes to Oakland or teaching kids to read in Barre; a formative assessment process can help you collect the necessary evidence you need in order to determine if you should alter or tweak your pre-selected path. In the airplane example, the pilot has an instrument panel that gives him a plethora of information to inform his judgment. He also has a co pilot and an air traffic control system he can utilize to help keep him on course. The key point to note is that this assessment system and the process of providing in flight feedback can only be helpful and fully utilized if the pilot is paying attention and making the necessary adjustments based in what the ongoing evidence is reveling to him. He still has to make meaning of the data in a timely manner!!

On a more concrete level, think of formative assessments as sign post that are strategically positioned along the road to help guide you to your desired destination. Exit signs and mile markers on the interstate serve that function for long distance travel in a car. You can use these guide posts and your GPS system to know how far away you are from your destination, whether you are on the right road etc.

When you go to your doctor for regular office visits and you share information in a transparent and reciprocal manner you are engaging in a formative assessment process with your physician. Both the learner (patient) and the teacher (doctor) contribute to the formative process of keeping you on track to healthy living. If you never see a physician and then you die of a previously undiagnosed disease, the autopsy by the medical examiner confirms your summative state of being, i.e. dead (summative assessment) but it is of little use in altering your unhealthy life style!  

Let’s bring this discussion back around to teaching and learning in an educational context. We can continue to add to our assessment terminology to build a common language to work with: "Summative assessments are assessments of learning that measure many things infrequently. Formative assessments are assessments for learning that measure a few things frequently."

State and provincial assessments are summative assessments: Attempts to determine if students have met intended standards by a specified deadline. They can provide helpful information regarding the strengths and weakness of curricula and programs in a district, school or department and they often serve as a means of promoting accountability. The infrequency of these "end of process measurements" however, limits their effectiveness in providing timely feedback that guides teacher practice and student learning. (Dufour, Dufour, Eaker and Many.)

In a thoughtfully designed comprehensive assessment system, a local school district would use information derived from the state assessments and they would create additional summative assessments that are vertically and horizontally aligned with their valued learning targets (i.e. standards). They would also develop formative assessments that provided them with frequent and robust feedback on student learning inside the instructional process. These assessments would be designed as part of the ongoing collection of evidence as assessment for learning.

The essential point to note at this juncture is that summative assessments are used at the end of an instructional period, (a chapter, a unit, a semester, a year) as part of an evaluation cycle to render a final or summative judgment with respect to a student’s status at that point in time. Summative assessments usually result in a grade or some other form of status ranking (i.e. a level of proficiency etc). Hence they are considered as “after the fact” metrics to determine if learning has taken place now that the instructional process has been concluded. Teachers utilize many forms of summative assessments, such as tests, quizzes, final exams etc to determine a student’s grade in a course.

Teachers and teams can use summative assessments in a “formative manner” to alter future instructional efforts the next time they teach that unit. The noteworthy point to make however is that the summative assessment results come at then end of the instructional cycle and it is too late for the students that generated those results to benefit directly from these data while instruction was still under way!!  Their “game is over” with respect to that unit. Unfortunately a few teachers use summative assessment results as a form of punishment. They hand out the test results and say to their students, “I taught this unit, this is what you earned on your test, perhaps next time maybe you will do a better job preparing for the exam”. Conversely, many other teachers may look at the summative assessment results and say; “I taught this unit, seventy percent of my students earned a D or an F, perhaps I need to redesign this series of lessons and do more formative assessment along the way to be sure the students are mastering the essential skills and knowledge to be successful on my culminating exam”. 

Take a step back and consider what some of the assessment experts have to say on this topic. Wiggins and McTighe (1998) provide a nice conceptual framework to help capture the big ideas in this assessment conversation.

    •    "By assessment we mean the act of determining the extent to which the curricular goals (learning targets) are being and have been attained. Assessment is an umbrella term that we use to mean the deliberate use of many methods to gather evidence to indicate that students are meeting the standards."

If summative assessments are designed to be evidence of assessment of learning, what burden or demand does that place on formative assessment to round out the picture or to complete the puzzle?
Here comes the million dollar news flash…………..formative assessment, assessment for learning is not intended to be used for grading purposes!!! Yes you heard me correctly.

Formative assessments are not tests that come at the end of instruction. Quizzes, short cycle assessments, pre and post tests that result in grades are all mini versions of summative assessment if they are intended to evaluate performance after the fact.

Formative assessment is a process not a test…………………

Formative assessment is a process that takes place while instruction is still under way…….

Formative assessment is designed to provide both the teacher and the learner with necessary and useful feedback during the instructional process in order to help them alter or change the instructional pathway in-flight………

Consider these formal definitions of formative assessment:

Assessment for learning: “Those assessments that happen while learning is still underway. These are the assessments that we conduct throughout teaching and learning to diagnose student needs, plan our next steps in instruction, provide students with feedback they can use to inform the quality of their work, and help students see and feel in control of their journey to success.  Each one reveals to students increments of achievement and how to do better next time. On these occasions the grading function is laid aside”.  (Richard Stiggins)

Formative Assessment:  “Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes”  FAST/SCASS definition 2006

Formative assessment 2: “Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics.” (A more succinct definition James Popham)

Formative assessment 3: “Formative is a planned process in which teachers or students use assessment based evidence to adjust what they are currently doing.”

(A still more terse definition Popham)

Provocation: As you read these definitions of assessment for and of learning which type of assessment is more like the doctors visit for a “check up” and which one is more like the autopsy report?  Ask yourself, are you nurturing (formative) or burying (summative) your students based on your assessment evidence?

Wrap your head around these definitions and then read my next blog. I want to engage you in a “so what” conversation about this formative assessment topic.

I leave you with this thought…….If we “did assessment” the old fashion way………i.e. like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle might have done, we would do a lot of assessing and very little testing, and the assessing that we did do would be used to adjust our teaching/learning process rather than to grade our students at the end of an arbitrary instructional sequence and then to label most of our students and all our schools as failing.

Bob Stanton

-Alice in Wonderland- 

When we continue around the circle of an “integrated professional development system” we find ourselves confronted with the assessment questions. What is assessment, how does it inform our professional practice, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, why do I need to know any of this stuff anyway, can’t I just continue to teach and test as needed? What do those NECAP results have to do with me anyway? Is there a professional development connection to this assessment concept?

Before we begin to grapple with today’s topic, Summative Assessment, I want to remind you where we left off in this blog series.  In the last two blogs, I talked about Valued Learning Targets and the Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities. I assert that we must begin our instructional deliberations by planning, as Steven Covey would say, "with the end in mind"; we must come to agreement on the valued learning targets we will pursue with due vigilance. If we do not articulate and solidify our agreed upon destination, we will inadvertently follow the path of Alice in Wonderland: "If you do not know where you are going, any path will get you there."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Alice: Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is - oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome - no, that's all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Mabel!

How do we move from the land of fairy tale to school improvement you ask? Are they really two sides of the same coin? I paraphrase Rick Dufour, who confronts us with four thought provoking questions, to mirror the discussion that I am trying to frame in this blog series:

• What do we want all students to know and be able to do? (AKA: "Valued Learning Targets" - Stiggins and "Agreed Upon Standards - The Guaranteed & Viable Curriculum" – Marzano
• How will we know if students have learned what we intended them to learn? (AKA: "Formative and Summative Assessment" - Ainsworth)
• What will we do by design to facilitate student learning? (AKA: "Instructional delivery system; Schooling by Design" – Wiggins & McTighe)
• What will we do when all students do not achieve the valued learning targets we have established? (AKA: How do RTI, DI and the Pyramid of Intervention fit into this puzzle?)   

Let’s begin with some assessment terminology so we can have a common language to work with.

"Summative assessments are assessments of learning that measure many things infrequently. Formative assessments are assessments for learning that measure a few things frequently."

State and provincial assessments are summative assessments: Attempts to determine if students have met intended standards by a specified deadline. They can provide helpful information regarding the strengths and weakness of curricula and programs in a district, school or department and they often serve as a means of promoting accountability. The infrequency of these "end of process measurements" however, limits their effectiveness in providing timely feedback that guides teacher practice and student learning. (Dufour, Dufour, Eaker and Many.) 

By definition, the NECAP, our state wide assessment is a summative assessment. This does not mean that it is bad or useless, it simply means that it has a specific purpose; it serves as the primary means for us to determine externally if our students are making progress towards the attainment of our state standards (i.e. learning targets). Watch out for the curve ball; a good summative assessment can be used in a formative manner. I will have more to say about that in the next blog on formative assessment.  In a thoughtfully designed comprehensive assessment system, a local school district would create additional summative assessments that are vertically and horizontally aligned with their valued learning targets (i.e. standards). They would also develop formative assessments that provided them with frequent and robust feedback on student learning inside the instructional process. These assessments are designed as part of the ongoing collection of evidence as assessment for learning.

Wiggins and McTighe (1998) provide a nice conceptual framework to help capture the big ideas in this assessment conversation.

• "By assessment we mean the act of determining the extent to which the curricular goals (learning targets) are being and have been attained. Assessment is an umbrella term that we use to mean the deliberate use of many methods to gather evidence to indicate that students are meeting the standards."
• The holy grail according to Wiggins and McTighe is the "pursuit of understanding". In fact, a central tenet of their premise is "that understanding can only be developed and evoked through multiple measures of assessment".

Larry Ainsworth (2006) offers this useful construct to help us understand what summative assessment looks like at the classroom level.

• "Classroom summative assessments, given by individual teachers or common summative assessments given by grade level teams or departments can occur at the end of a unit, quarter, term or semester. Since these assessments take place after all instruction and student learning have ended, they are summative in both design and intent. They report the final results of student learning to the teachers, their students, to parents and to administrators.  They are typically used to support the assignment of a letter grade or the determination of levels of proficiency."

Given what we now know about the design and purpose of summative assessment, how should we use this information and the results of summative assessment to improve our instructional delivery system?  If summative assessments are designed to be evidence of assessment of learning, what burden or demand does that place on formative assessment to round out the picture or to complete the puzzle?

What are the implications of this evolving body of knowledge on assessment literacy for teacher and administrator professional development? How should this information be contextualized so that Math, English, Music, Science, Social Studies, Foreign Language teachers etc, understand that this assessment information needs to be fully embraced and understood by all? 

What are you going to do with this information to improve your schools?

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over. 

Bob Stanton

Heads up blog readers, I need to establish some context before I can proceed with my pithy, albeit provocative remarks.  In case you had not noticed, this week’s entry is part of a “blog series” that is intended to put some meat on the PD conceptual framework that I laid out in my earlier blog entitled; Integrated Professional Development: “An idea whose time has come” (9-2-09).

In the spirit of full transparency, you should know that I intend to write a short piece on each component of the Integrated PD conceptual framework beginning with the shapes on the outer rim (see diagram). As you look at the schematic above, you will notice that the last blog entry dealt with the topic of Valued Learning Targets (the 12 o’clock position). This blog, which focuses on the Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities (6 o’clock position), is really a continuation of that foundational concept regarding learning targets.

In my last blog, I posed a series of questions including these two fundamental questions; who decides what kids are going to learn? What is the connection between what we teach, how we teach and whether or not kids actually learn anything new?

I suggested that these questions were probably on the agenda when Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle metaphysically sat around the campfire in the cave and philosophized about the relevancy question. As we fast forward through time, we note that these same questions also popped up again in 1983 when we were treated with a scathing attack on public education entitled “A Nation at Risk”.

Based on the furor the Nation at Risk generated, academics, educators, parents, tax payers and, yes, politicians decided that once again they all needed to weigh-in on the topic of what should be taught in our nation's schools.  As a first year principal, I really appreciated all the input I was receiving from the public regarding what and how to teach! Even the President had an opinion on the topic that he was willing to share. He also wanted to be seen as the “Education President” so in 1989, President Bush #1 convened the National Governors Conference and those wise folks cooked up a national reform agenda entitled Goals 2000 that they hoped would spur us beyond mediocrity.

In an attempt to be provocative, read that as helpful, they developed several broad goals that were supposed to be achieved by the year 2000 and result in a generation of young people who would be prepared for the 21st century. Alas, as the education efforts of the 90’s rolled out in attempt to meet the Goals 2000 challenge, several politicians began calling for more radical steps to reform our failing public schools. National standards and national testing were among the ideas proposed. Can you see where this train is heading?? β€¨

Several states wanted to beat the feds to the punch and avoid a national curriculum and consequentially we saw the development of the standards-base movement springing up from the grass roots level. In 1996, the Vermont Department of Education got into the game and created an organic and inclusive process and then convened a group of approximately two thousand Vermonters who produced the first iteration of the The Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities. In my humble opinion, the document had several redeeming features as well as a few fatal flaws.

Chief among the flaws was the fact that no one really paid any attention to it. In an attempt to be "all things to all people" and avoid controversy at every step, (to paraphrase wise old Abe Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time") it was viewed as too vague and esoteric to be useful for instructional planning. It had broad ranges of vague standards K-4, 5-8, 9-12 that were supposed to serve as a curriculum framework. In 2000, the Vermont Framework was revised and streamlined and less people were now fooled. The vital results and the learning opportunities section began to make some sense as possible fodder as a curriculum framework but it was still too vague to be a useful resource for daily lesson planning. The learning target concept was not even on the radar screen.

In 2001, the feds had seen enough from these fragmented state by state efforts and the result of that frustration led to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) and the school accountability pressure we are contending with at the present time. One of the major ramifications for Vermonters, is that we needed to overhaul our Vermont Framework again to make it more grade level specific in order to meet the national grade 3-8 testing requirement. The irony here is that this external pressure for more accountability may have been just what we needed to start to wrap our heads around the learning target idea.  I suspect that clarity about 'the forest and the trees" finally emerged for some people who began to understand that we needed to actual assess the standards (i.e. learning targets) we wanted students to hit. Discussion about GLE’s actually began to seep into conversations regarding instructional planning, While many of us belief there are far too many GLE’s to assess, the bigger issue has to do with GLE grain size and bang for the buck. I will talk more about that idea in the next blog.

My hope at the present time is that you will start to see the Vermont GLE’s as one more source for the identification of learning targets. I also hope you will look at the work of Richard Stiggins who advocates for five broad areas of learning target identification as well as the work of Wiggins and McTighe dealing with mission related goals, enduring understandings and essential questions. The Vermont Framework is a good place to start if you want to embrace the concept of learning target identification, but it really is just the tip of the iceberg to a powerful idea that you simply must grasp if you want to make a difference in student learning.                  β€¨

I stated in my earlier blog on integrated professional development, these dots all connect and they all must be considered synergistically by this new generation of professional educators, the cave dwellers of the 21st century!  

So who decides what kids are going to learn? Who really should decide what 21^st century kids “need to know and be able to do”? What is the connection between what we teach, how we teach and whether or not kids actually learn any thing new?! Is the educational delivery system that we utilize today even relevant in the current market place? Is there a causal link between learning targets, the student engagement problem and the “why do I need to learn this stuff” lament so often heard in the classroom?

These questions were probably on the agenda when Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle metaphysically sat around the campfire in the cave and philosophized about the relevancy question. I contend that these questions are still extremely relevant today. What is your take on these questions, what are you doing to try and help your students make connections between today’s learning targets and the instructional methods that your teachers employ? Do your students have any input into the selection of their learning targets? If not, how will they come to value them? If they do not value the learning targets they are asked to pursue, what makes you think they will put in sufficient effort to achieve or attain these prescribed targets?  What is the professional development response to this dilemma?

Can we develop and nurture more effective and responsive teachers or are we waiting for the next generation of cave dwellers to show us the way out of our school accountability malaise?! As a reflective, Socrates might have said to himself and then to his fellow cave dwellers, “just because I taught it does not guarantee that you boys learned it”! How do we know if students actually learned anything and how would we know if they can apply their learning to new and novel situations?! Is there a connection between the articulation of learning targets and the collection of evidence about student learning?

Thirty-five years ago, I read a powerful little book by Barbara Bateman called The Essentials of Teaching (1971).  It outlined the essential things an educator needed to know and be able to do if they actually wanted to “teach” students something they did not already know how to do. I have utilized this little book in many ways over the past thirty- five years to try to constantly understand and improve my own approach to teaching and the teacher training that I have been involved in for three plus decades.

To quote Bateman, “this book is not the product of a position about teaching, it is quite literally the process of trying to reach a position. What are the main things a teacher must be able to do? Surely for some occupations, perhaps dentistry, automobile repair or bridge building it is easy to list major skills or prerequisite behaviors. For me, it was difficult, beyond anything I envisioned, to do this for teaching. Often I thought how difficult it would be for fish to discuss the main features of water.”

I suggest that you check out this little book or your own “little books” that shape your views of teaching and learning so that you can describe the “features of water” for today’s classroom.

According to Bateman, the first essential of teaching is: “get the attention of the learner”.

The best way to get some ones attention is to present a learning target that they are actually interested in hitting.  Consider the reason and manner in which you pursue your leisure time activities or hobbies! When you look at it objectively, it really isn’t a mystery why so many kids are disengaged and off task at school, they simply are not interested in achieving the learning targets that they are presented.  No one bothers to attend very long to tasks that they have no interest in pursuing. Grant Wiggins contends that authentic performance tasks work because they have relevance for students and they are worth pursuing! How can we learn to effectively negotiate the balance between what must be taught (i.e. content standards) and what students would actually like to learn?

When we can begin to see the connection between engaged students and truly differentiated classrooms, we start to make the causal links that were referred to earlier.

Some teachers get off to a good start by engaging students in a dialogue concerning the things they are interested in learning and then they kill that enthusiasm by presenting material in a manner that would knock a koala bear right out of his gum tree. Other teachers fail more quickly because the prescribed educational offering they force down students' throats has no connection to students' interest, passions, readiness or learning styles.

As you pursue the challenges of engaging your students in learning this fall, I urge you to consider a more recent professional resource that you might wish to consult as you consider the art and science of establishing learning targets.  Check out any of the many books written by Carol Ann Tomlinson (i.e. How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed- Ability Classrooms) or, better yet, take a LAPDA class on DI.

As I stated in my earlier blog on integrated professional development, these dots all connect and they all must be considered synergistically by this new generation of professional educators, the cave dwellers of the 21^st century!

For the past several years, LAPDA has been providing professional development to help school districts meet their training needs. What has become apparent to me, as I watch teachers stream into our training sessions, is that everyone who attends does not necessarily see the big picture. In my humble opinion, the question to ask before you show up for the training should be; what really is the point of this training and how does it connect to my professional practice?

A new school year is now under way and the vast majority of teachers and students are excited about their reunion.  While this dynamic student/teacher relationship is essential, it is not sufficient to change instructional practice and it alone will not increase student engagement and learning.  What too often has been missing in the school improvement equation is clarity of purpose around the instructional targets that we are trying to hit.  Richard Stiggins contends that our students can hit any clear target that they can see and that will stay still. Grant Wiggins reminds us that the targets we hold up must also be perceived as targets worth hitting.  He advocates for Schooling by Design not schooling by fiat, convenience, habit or accident!

Today’s students need and want robust tasks and challenging assignments.  They need performance assessments that respect their intellect, peak their curiosity, kindle their creativity and challenge their skill set. “Bring it on”, is often what you hear kids say on the athletic field or in the arcade center, why is this engaged demeanor often left outside the classroom door? Why do so many students see school as a place to socialize but not as a place to pursue meaningful work that will increase their cognition and enhance and augment their natural desire to learn?

When you design your instructional program this year, I urge you to use the Vermont Framework as a beginning point for the instructional targets that you want your students to hit, but by all means, do not limit yourself to these targets as the “end all be all” of a well rounded education! “Valued targets” as the name implies, include those unique interests and talents that students bring to the table, they also include 21st skills and the “right-directed aptitudes” that Daniel Pink has articulated in his book a Whole New Mind. The outer ring of this schematic prompts you to begin your planning with the “end in mind”. You must know what targets you want your students to hit and you must design assessments that are aligned to those targets. Without that intentionality, you can not say that you have a reliable body of evidence to judge a student’s attainment of skills and knowledge (the inner circle).

In the next series of blogs I will write about the remaining circles and triangles that make up this framework.  My partnership with math expert Mahesh Sharma has helped shape my thinking around integrated PD planning and delivery.  Many of the ideas represented in this diagram come from Mahesh, and together we will focus our efforts to help you see how the rectangles, circles, and triangles connect. 

I wish you and all of your students great success in the coming school year.

I encourage you to consider this ASCD advocacy statement that is part of the Whole Child initiative currently under review in congress:

“The 21st Century Imperative"

Most schools continue to use a model that was designed to prepare students for life in the middle of the 20th century. Ensuring students have a strong foundation in reading, writing, math, and other core subjects is as important as ever, yet these skills alone are insufficient for success in the 21st century. We know children must learn to think both critically and creatively, evaluate massive amounts of information, solve complex problems, and communicate well to meet the demands ahead of them. However, these are the same skills that will ensure we transform the conditions of learning today. This is the 21st century imperative”.

From its inception, the Whole Child Initiative has advocated for action at the local, state, and federal levels to advance a whole child approach to learning. Since Wednesday, whole child supporters have sent more than 300 letters to members of Congress asking for their support of the Secondary School Innovation Fund Act, introduced this month by 2008 Whole Child Leadership Award winners Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Representative Dave Loebsack (D-IA). This legislation is closely aligned with the Whole Child Initiative, and ASCD helped craft the original version of the bill, known as the GRADUATES Act. This new legislation would provide competitive grants to middle and high schools and school districts to provide high-quality research and evaluation, expand the success of emerging models, and support successful strategies, including

• Multiple pathways to graduation, early college high schools and dual enrollment, and early warning intervention systems.
• Personalization, improved transitions and alignment, expanded learning time, postsecondary and work-based learning opportunities, and a rigorous curriculum aligned with postsecondary education and the workforce.

More than one million students drop out of high school each year, jeopardizing their futures and costing our economy billions of dollars in lost wages. This legislation will help stem the flow of high school dropouts by implementing scalable innovation that benefits all students.

This is provocative language for sure. It certainly begs the question, what are you and your colleagues doing to help prepare students for the 21st century? As you look forward to the next school year and start to make plans for the future what are you planning on doing to transform your high schools for the 21st century? What is your personal commitment to the Whole Child concept? What role can LAPDA play to help you step up to this daunting challenge? Please give us a call or send us an e-mail to let us know how we can help!

Based on his long tenure as a baseball coach with a very impressive record of achievement, I had made an assumption about the culture that supported this fellow’s baseball program. I asked him this question; “Is there a strong feeder program that supports your high school club?" 
"No, not at all," he said, "in fact there is only one little league team in the whole town these days.” I was very surprised to hear his response and then he hit me with a comment that really got me thinking.  
“Baseball is a game of failure," he said. “This is the reset generation, when things get tough in the video world or you are going to lose the game, you simply hit the reset button and you get a clean slate.”  
I know from my own experience that baseball does not work that way. The coach went on to say; “Kids today do not want to fail publicly; they are not willing to strike out with the bases loaded and then take that slow walk back to the dugout.”

Have I lost you already?! If baseball is not your thing, let me make a few quick connections to illustrate the point I want you to consider. Baseball is indeed a game of failure. If you can manage to get a hit three times out of ten attempts, you will be a 300 hitter and you will end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Stay with me on this. Baseball, like life, is filled with paradox. It is a game that moves really fast and it also moves very slowly. When you strike out with the bases loaded, everyone in the park can mark the moment. Time literally stands still as you slowly amble away and the next fellow saunters up to the plate. It takes mental toughness and perseverance to get back in the batters box the next time, knowing full well that everyone is watching and wondering if you will have the same results this time around. You do not get to take anyone else into the batters box with you and there is no reset button, but each new "at bat" gives you a new opportunity to contribute to the team’s success. If you are going to be an asset to your team, you will need to shake off your last at bat and give it your best effort this time around.

Unlike the video world, baseball is a team sport; a strong baseball team works together with symmetry and grace. To quote my old high school baseball coach, everyone needs to work in unison, “nine men moving as one.” A successful baseball team is strong up the middle, the pitcher and the catcher have a reciprocal relationship, the short stop and the second basemen understand that they need to move in harmony, the center fielder anchors the outfield and pulls the team together on the outside edge of the tapestry. A truly great pitcher understands that he can not harvest his talent unless he has a great catcher to receive his pitch.

What does this have to do with school improvement you ask? Let's begin with the willingness to strike out publicly. Great schools are willing to take risks and to let go of the “familiar and safe", in order to discover “what works”. Principals and teachers need to understand that their success is interrelated. When one fails, the ripple effect is felt across the school yard. Like the baseball pitcher and the catcher, teachers and principals have a reciprocal relationship. Max Depree writes about this dynamic in his excellent little treatise on leadership. In his book; Leadership is an Art he has a wonderful chapter entitled “Theory Fastball” If you take time to read it, you will get a deeper understanding of this reciprocal relationship that I am referring to in this blog. This reciprocal relationship dynamic applies to teachers and students as well. 

What is the complimentary/reciprocal relationship needed between students and their teachers if academic achievement is to be valued, pursued and obtained? How does the teacher inspire the student to pursue valued learning targets? Who gets to decide what those targets should be? How does the teacher/coach inspire the student to put forth their best effort in order to achieve goals that are bigger than themselves? How does the teacher convince the student that failure is the inside layer to outward success? How does the teacher skillfully deliver feedback that is specific enough to improve performance but gentle enough for the student to hear it? They do it much like an expert hitting or pitching coach. Real achievement and satisfaction comes when the student accomplishes something they were previously unable to do and they prove to themselves that it was not a one time fluke. Teachers can coach students into the batters box but then they have to stand by and let the student perform independently in the public arena. That is the moment when both great teaching and coaching is truly manifested.

Very few people have become a great musician, artist, skier, golfer, swimmer, climber etc on their first attempt and none of them achieved their success without clear feedback. This feedback can come from a talented instructor or it can come from the natural environment. Sustained achievement over time requires awareness, willingness, discipline, perseverance and concerted and focused effort. This disposition and commitment to improvement and growth is valued in the world of work and it is essential in healthy personal and professional relationships. The best thing we can do for young people today is to coach/mentor and support them to achieve goals that require more than a quick flick of the reset button. Call me “old school” if you must but maybe baseball has something to offer us besides a really nice way to spend a summer afternoon.

So, what is the problem? Most building principals are charged with the responsibility to supervise the instructional program that is delivered in their schools; but how does the busy and some times poorly equipped principal determine which specific instructional strategies teachers should actually use in their classrooms? How will the principal determine if the strategies selected in each curriculum area are being implemented with fidelity? Who can and will help the principal create a robust feedback system that gives teachers the information and support they need to implement the strategies they are learning effectively?

LAPDA has stepped forward to help fill this void with respect to the creation of this vitally important feedback loop. Last year, staff at LAPDA developed and launched the first iteration of the Principal’s Toolkit Workshop Series as part of a broader leadership development initiative. This year we refined the Toolkit workshop series again and we offered fewer strands (math, writing and science) but we took each strand to greater depth. We also invited principals who enrolled in the series to bring their teacher leaders and curriculum directors with them to the training.

We recruited and supported three workshop strand leaders who are highly respected professionals with expertise in both content and pedagogy. Each presenter was selected because they understand and respect the unique instructional leadership role the principal must play within their school. Each workshop session included a facilitated dialogue session with the presenter and the “Cohort Group” to extend the ideas discussed in the workshop and to discuss implementation strategies. Each workshop strand was created for teams of Instructional leaders comprised of the principal, teacher leaders, mentors or teacher peer coaches.

The math and writing “Toolkit Strands” begin in late October and the math strand was completed in December. The science strand began in January 2009 and it will conclude this spring just after the writing strand is completed. All Toolkit workshop strands were open to Elementary or Middle School Principals and their instructional leadership teams. Principals were strongly encouraged to bring a team of two or three lead teachers with them and most were able to do so. Participants were required to attend all three workshops for the strand they selected. Each workshop session ran from 8:30 to 3:30PM in the LAPDA Meeting Space in Montpelier. The evaluation results from all three strands have been very positive, and we are convinced that we have identified a very powerful and effective school improvement venue.  Impact data will be collected at all participating sites and we will us that information to refine the series again before offering it for a third time in 2009-10.
We hope your school will send a team next year.