I have had some time to catch up on my professional reading and I came across an interesting treatise by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. I know nothing about this organization other than they were able to get Linda Darling Hammond to write a piece for them.
The treatise is named Building a 21st Century U.S. Education System. The compilation is edited by Bob Wehling and Carl Schnieder. It is an interesting read and I’m looking forward to continued reading.
This week I read Chapter 5, written by Arthur Wise, who puts forth a different teaming model. Wise proffers a revolutionary approach to teacher teams that was most useful to me by reminding me that the Empowered High Schools Model is in fact a model for change. Wise encourages his readers to conceptualize a teaming model in which a National Board Certified Teacher leads a team of lesser credentialed colleagues. These colleagues may be new teachers and even student teachers. Wise aligns his model tightly to the teaching hospital model. Just like a teaching hospital, there is a tight relationship between the school and pre-service university training. I’ve summarized his model in a few sentences, I recommend you give it a more complete read. It is compelling, but it requires a true revolution in education. I suspect that Wise was channeling Kuhn when he titled his piece as being a “21st Century Paradigm.” Imagining this revolution is difficult. Within current contracts that are common throughout the country, it is virtually impossible to think of such a tiered system of teaching personnel. That being said, school boards across the country are supplementing the pay of nationally certified teachers. Maybe it really isn’t that far off. Nonetheless, Wise’s model represents a major sea change and would require top down restructuring of school systems.
From it’s inception, Empowered High Schools has advocated bottom up change. The EHS model can be built one team at a time and does not require complete revision of contracts and state law. By empowering teams with the tools and training that they need, similar outcomes can be achieved. We refer to the system as being “viral” in that these teams can exist within greater organizations with almost no impact. Carefully nurtured, these viruses can spread to the creation of other teams and eventually the host organization. Unlike the viruses in our bodies, the impact can be purposefully directed by encouragement, allocation of resources, and intentional co-development. This model of change does require administrators to trust the educators in their building and provide them with the tools that they need to make the right decisions. Data in the hands of educators is crucial. Data and autonomy is a major point where Wise’s model overlaps ours. By picking a limited number of teams at a time, it is easier for administrators to provide targeted amounts of development and resources to empower their teams. Our 9-step model of Professional Learning Team Development enables targeted professional development of teams. As these teams develop, introspective administrators learn that they can trust these teams and let them function independently because the teams are closer to action and are now fully equipped to make the right decisions. As the success of the teams becomes evident and colleagues see the benefits of abandoning isolated practice, teaming spreads. By allocating resources in the intentional development of these teams, Empowered High Schools achieves, from inside out, from the bottom up, the same type of change that Wise suggests.
If you’ve ever heard me speak, you know that I use metaphors all the time and I do so to expand the thinking of me and my audiences. I suspect that Wise used the teaching hospital metaphor for the same purpose. I’m not being critical of the use of the metaphor at all. In fact, I am deeply intrigued by it. However, I believe that a major crisis in U.S. public education and a complete revolution of how we offer education to the public would have to take place before his model would have a chance. With the horrendous funding crisis in our country which is causing states and districts to shut down their educational programs, this crisis might be at our doorstep. If in fact the paradigmatic crisis is here, then Wise’s model might be timely. I do believe we’re seeing a national crisis. It is embarrassing to think that our country is in this situation. For those who want to abandon or diminish public schooling (and they seem to be on both sides of the aisle) this might be the perfect storm.
In the meantime, and on a sunnier note, EHS has seen incredible “viral” gains without the need of drastic, revolutionary overhauls. Those of us working on the model have enjoyed working with others throughout the country. We have found, that for the pragmatists in our field, this model works. In the end, that’s what matters to us.
Thank you for reading.
Charles
This is a short post that I put on a different blog, but I think it’s important here, as well.
Information is a very valuable commodity. It is a way to learn and a way to draw people to your website. Unfortunately, information is being developed so quickly, that there is no way that you can stay on top of it all. Thats to say nothing about all of the information that already exists on topics that youre interested in. To stay current, one needs to follow blogs. Blogs exist all over the place about all kinds of different topics. Following a list of individual blogs takes too much time. Smart users will use RSS feeds. This video shows you how to get set up. It mentions both Bloglines and Google Reader. I use both and find that I like Google Reader the most. You may have to first get a free Google email account.
RSS Feeds from Common Craft
Enjoy and feel free to ask questions.
Charles
p.s. You have to check out some of the videos at Common Craft. They are genius. Someday, Ill post on using video to get your point across. Common Craft videos are great examples of the power of a simple video
Thanks to all the people we met at our presentation at the Ohio ACT Confirence in January!
One of the principals asked the following two questions. Below is my answer to the questions, but there is so much more our contributors can add.
So if you can help out, please add your ideas. Thanks–Howard McMackin
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Question 1 : What examples of inter-rater reliablity problems do you have?
Here are two types of inter-rater reliability concerns that we know must be addressed as part of our processes and a third, problem that is newly encountered:
1. Inter-rater Process for Performance Assessments (papers, speeches, using a method or strategy, thinking skill processes, etc.);
a. This process begins with each team teacher scoring a sample of performances from different students. Then the team discusses how each teacher has scores their samples. After teachers have clarified their interpretation of the rubric, the team follows a consensus building process to establish team rules for scoring. All teachers must strive to score exactly the same. It is more important that everyone agrees than to align to an external, validated performance norm—that can come later. (If team teachers use different criteria or interpret it differently, the data in performance reports cannot be compared.)
b. After scoring has been discussed and agreements established, all the teachers should test their understanding and agreement by scoring another single performance. In this case, all teachers score the same performance. After comparing their scores, they need to discuss any scoring differences and readjust. Once all the team’s teachers can score a test performance uniformly, they are ready to begin scoring and producing reports.
c. Because teachers forget or change their minds, it is important to retest inter-reliability periodically by pulling individual performances, removing names (if possible) and having each member rescore and discuss. Over time, the team will get better, but we have experienced dramatic setbacks when this step is skipped.
d. Although teachers may fight this process as a “waste of time”, they are usually surprised by the actual score disparities. Gradually, they learn what inter-rater reliability means. It enters their vocabulary and their sensitivity to inter-rater problems become routine. For instance recently, one teacher was getting much higher scores than other team members. The team’s first thought was a possible inter-rater problem. (However, the team discovered that the teacher had a better strategy.)
2. Math is not as objective as one may think:
Math teachers must follow a similar process as performance for insuring inter-rater reliability. Teacher must answer questions about what is more important:
a. Some teachers believe that only correct answers deserve credit;
b. Other teachers believe that the steps in the process are most important;
c. While others believe that a combination of the above should be used.
d. When real-world (such as science), multi-level contextualized problems are required, teachers may disagree on the correct process steps and how to reward creativity and process efficiency.
The team must resolve these opinions and adopt common criteria for scoring and assigning developmental benchmarks.
The discussion may be as heated or even more so than such discussions the humanities. However, once consensus is achieved, it is usually easier for each cooperating teacher to understand what to do and be less likely to revert. Usually, it is easier for math to know the range of problems that will be taught. While the humanities teacher must constantly sort through contextual differences, which may cause legitimate confusions, assignment to assignment.
3. Using same rubric for multiple levels:
In ESL, the district has one performance rubric for three levels of ESL. The rubric has only 4 benchmark levels. When the data was first collected, teachers marked the ESL 1s doing poorly and ESL 3s doing much better. Most teachers thought that the 1-4 levels were universal for all students. The district thought mastery was defined differently at each ESL level. Since there was no district guidance, the rubrics were misinterpreted by teachers.
The problem can be solved by either creating a larger rubric, such 12 levels (4 X 3 program courses). Then the district can float mastery across the standard or choose a single mastery level and create progress goals (instead of mastery) for the early courses in the program sequence of course.
Question 2: Can you give an example of a School Wide-Performance Goals?
We are still designing. However, we are close. Presently, we have Explore scores for all entering freshmen, because we use Explore as our baseline screener. We can reduce the 1-25 Explore scores to 4 ranges (like what we do with ACT–it 1-6, because it has two ranges higher than Explorer). We plan to label each student 1-4 to create four demographic groups. Then we can track how well each group achieves in our programs, using the existing program benchmark (rubric) system .
By doing this, we do not need the unknowable socio-economic backgrounds of our students such as father’s income and mother’s education. We will know which students entered according to four levels of preparedness (regardless of cause or correlation). Then we can measure student progress according to group, just like we do with gender and race. Since the groups are originally labeled by Explore ranges, it becomes easy to compare the group to the ACT/CRSS benchmarks in program standard rubrics.
Example possibilities:
We may make a set of school goals, which may look something like a variation on this:
At RMHS, each Explore group will grow 2 ACT benchmark levels by the end of sophomore year in each measured program standard.*
PLTs can then match their goals with language such as:
Sophomore Social Science will cause 60% of Group 2 students to achieve mastery in on writing standards.*
*Please understand the above are NOT actual goals, but purely examples of goal language construction.
