Nine Levels #5 (IPA Webinar) No comments yet
Empowered High School Model Level 5 from Illinois Principals Association on Vimeo.
Nine Levels #3 (IPA Webinar) No comments yet
Empowered High School Model Level 3 - “Summative Assessments” from Illinois Principals Association on Vimeo.
Nine Levels #4 (IPA Webinar) No comments yet
Empowered High School Model Level 4 - “Formative Assessments” from Illinois Principals Association on Vimeo.
Nine Levels #2 (IPA Webinar) No comments yet
The Empowered High School Model for 21st Century Schools Level 2 - Standards and Benchmarks from Illinois Principals Association on Vimeo.
Nine Levels Overview, #1 (IPA Webinar) No comments yet
The Empowered High School Model for 21st Century Schools Level 1 - Model Overview: Managing Continuous Program Improvement from Illinois Principals Association on Vimeo.
Video Presentation Available Through Illinois Association of School Administrators No comments yet
The Illinois Association of School Administrators which is the Illinois superintendent’s group contracted with me to put together a short video about RtI implementation at the high school level. They were the recipients of RESPRO grant funds and are putting together a wonderful library of resources for superintendents.
This video is a quick shot of just a few of the things that we cover in our presentations on RtI. I was trying to avoid the 30 minute threshold and actually went longer than intended. It should give you a sense of some of our material.
It was a fun experience. Howard, Joe and I had just finished presenting for the Illinois State Board of Education’s Superintendent’s Conference and the IASA was literally across the street from the conference. They have a wonderful facility and a very warm and friendly staff. We would like to thank Executive Director Richard Voltz for his time and great conversation about RtI and data in the state. Also, Don Hahn was a great producer. I literally just sat down and started filming. It’s a neat technology from Sonic Foundry. I basically talk into the camera and show my Power Point.
Check out the site and let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks for reading.
Charles
Why Use Benchmarks? No comments yet
Lately, I have been asked some very sophisticated questions about why benchmarking is important, when is it required, and how we can measure performances that require unobservable thinking processes.
When standards matter:
The most common reason to benchmark is that common assessments are not always the same as summative assessments. Summative assessments are designed to measure the student’s ability to meet a standard or multiple standards by using subject content. Common assessments regularly only measure content. We need developmental performance data standard by standard. This is well explained in our presentations and videos.
See: http://www.empoweredhighschools.com/DdC-Summative%20Assessment.html
When strategies vary:
However, there is a more sophisticated problem. When the strategy used to master the skill or process is obvious and common, then the scores on the assessment may be predictive of how a student will perform on an external test or interim test (aligned to the external test). For instance, a certain number of math problems on a summative assessment may be predictive of performance on other tests. Therefore, benchmarking is not absolutely required. (However, benchmarking once or twice a year may help administrators track school-wide progress in a manner that all parties can understand.) Another more perfect example is music. If a student can masterfully perform a piece of music, which has a known level of sophistication, we can know exactly how well the student can play. Whatever rating system is used it need not be translated into benchmarks –at least, not for the music teachers.
When we try to measure the developmental growth of a student’s ability to write or measure reading comprehension, measurement becomes difficult. First, objective measures do not work as well as performance measures in these cases. Having a student answer multiple choice questions about writing rules is not as predictive of the student’s ability to write as having the student write and rewrite an essay. Measuring how a student comprehends what is read is even more difficult to measure. Since we cannot yet look into a student’s brain, we must, instead, observe the strategies the student is using. We can measure the student’s ability to demonstrate his or her proficiency at using a reading comprehension or writing strategy.
Measurement process looks like this:
Standard -> strategy-> formative scores -> summative benchmark scores-> interim assessment-> external test
In this case, the subject teacher can teach and measure the student’s formative ability to operate the strategy by using a uniform, scoring system agreed to by the PLT or school-wide PLC. After formative practice and re-looping, the student demonstrates the ability to use the strategy on a uniform, summative, performance assessment. The summative assessment is benchmarked to the standard. The PLT gets a performance report on how well each student is progressing by benchmark. It is important to understand that there is an assumption that being able to operate the strategy means the student can do the skill or standard, but it is the best we can do. When the student is assessed on an interim measure, the data can be used to determine if the correct strategy was used. (The reliability of the interim assessment to predict the external test score is a reliability problem for the vender, administration or the school-wide, inter-disciplinary PLC.)
Last, educators have asked, “Can the local summative, performance assessment actually be a better measurement than standardized testing when attempting to understand how a student can do very complex, cognitive performance? My opinion is that highly trained, experienced educators can cause students to perform at high levels of performance. Sports, art, and drama coaches do it all the time. However, no one is looking over their shoulder. Can you prove that your performance assessments are better measures? Politically, I do not know if we will ever have a choice. A school must have some external measure to validate what is done. You cannot ask the public to believe, if there is no evidence that you are right. However, I would hope over time that our country can develop complex performance assessments, such as is done by International Bachelorette or the Westinghouse Scholars and its national science scholarship contest. Westinghouse Scholars uses a true complex, performance assessment to measure the best science students in the country. Some schools build six year programs around these measures. I am sure that the science teachers, who coach these students, could teach us how to measure rigorously using performance assessment. IB offers an even more practical solution for performance assessment.
This is a very short explanation. I hope it helps a little.
Thanks for reading,
Howard McMackin, Ph.D
Senior Partner,
Empowered High Schools
Problem-Solving 101 by Ken Watanabe No comments yet
This may be one of the most important posts I’ve written on any of my blogs in a very long time. Howard and I have spent a great deal of time in our presentations preaching about the need for educators to adopt a problem-solving mentality. A scientific approach to scanning for problems, digging into them for root causes and then creating solutions with feedback loops for improvement. Our audiences seem very interested in this line of thinking.
Realizing that I might need some places to refer people for additional professional development, I did a Google Search. Quickly, I was overwhelmed. Then, by accident, I was reading an RSS feed from 800-CEO-READ and found a reference to Problem-Solving 101 by Ken Watanabe. I quickly ordered the book and began reading it upon arrival. It’s a must read! It is a great resource for training teams how to do problem-solving. Normally, I buy this sort of material from Harvard Business Press and then have to spend hours wrapping my brain around how I can translate it into educationese. This will not be necessary with the Problem-Solving 101. The content is quickly adaptable for teams and very straightforward. You will not overwhelm your team leaders with an overabundance of details.
Now, don’t miss his website. It’s awesome. He has a number of videos that you might want to preview before buying the book or use as teaching aides.
Thank you for reading.
Charles
Leadership Interview No comments yet
As we continue to refine the Empowered High Schools Model, we regularly reflect on the importance of leadership as a determinant of the model’s success. Throughout the model, there are demands for different types of leadership for different places in the process.
This morning, while reading about Moleskine notebooks, I came across this great interview with the CEO of Delta. As you’ll see, the reporter did a great job of eliciting some excellent answers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26corner.html
If you’re a fan of leadership, I’m not sure that you’ll find anything earth shattering, but it may help solidify your leadership perspective. Besides, Richard Anderson’s life story is pretty compelling and worth reading about.
If you come across other great interviews of leaders, let us know. We would like to start putting them together to support the shared learning of the fans of the Empowered High Schools Model.
Have a great weekend.
Charles
Carnegie Foundation - New Vision of Educational Research No comments yet
Anthony Bryk, the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching outlines a bold new vision for the role of educational research in his recent “A Message From the President.” We at the Empowered High Schools share a very similar vision for education that adopts many of the approaches used in other sectors of our society. Just like medicine, public health, and engineering, a whole new role for entrepreneurship and innovation needs to be found for our industry. Until the spirit of entrepreneurship is unleashed and nurtured, the real gains that are needed in education may take decades to materialize.
One of the greatest hurdles is the inability to have expedient sharing of knowledge. Combined with a broader based profit motive, there is considerably more sharing between organizations in commercial sectors than in education. Aside from technology and publishers, there is not enough economic power to truly drive innovations in an efficient, market driven manner. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot of money made off of education, there is. However, it is much harder for practitioners to bring their ideas to a market place without the support of those who control the market. There are two few conferences and conventions and those are cost prohibitive for an entrepreneur to get adequate coverage. We hope that the tools of Web 2.0 can narrow this cost gap. Sadly, aside from a few niche areas, educators haven’t taken to Web 2.0 to the degree necessary to bridge this gap. Those of us who are tightly wound up into Web 2.0 are regularly amazed at the difficulty of developing even rudimentary conversations on the hottest topics in our profession.
Medicine, science and technology have an advantage over education in their abilities to incubate new interventions. An example is the ability of professors and researchers at universities to partner both with outside interests and with the universities to create new knowledge and to benefit from it financially. Patents are shared and “rain-maker” professors are given preferable compensation packages. Everyone benefits. A similar model could be devised in education. Both professors and teachers alike could conduct work that inspires innovation and entrepreneurship.
These are dreams, they are not well thought out and obviously have flaws, but it is time to start imagining a new vision for education in the U.S. This vision doesn’t need to be enormously disruptive. The two ideas presented here could grow into fruition with little to know disruption to the daily lives of teachers and students. Yet, provided with powerful new innovations both groups could benefit immensely.
Thank you for reading.
Charles