Assessment Sanity, Scariness, and Proven Success

The Scariness: The State of Georgia is investigating potential tampering of state tests by teachers, especially in Atlanta schools. Over 250,000 erasures were made to tests last year, and even kids are reporting that teachers change their tests or give them answers. The punitive nature of our current once-per-year high stakes tests is driving teachers to perform unnatural acts. This is no way to run an education system that should be developing our kids into knowledgeable, well-rounded, creative, and productive citizens. High stakes testing with its related threats and punishments must change.

The Sanity: Finally! The USDOE announced that two consortia and a total of 47 states have been awarded over $330 million to develop new assessments for public schools. The assessments will be implemented in 2014 and are focused on measuring 21st century skills and modern ways to learn like using multimedia, project-based learning, and communication and collaboration skills. The tests will be adaptive, meaning that students will be given items based on their previous performance, not just boring, standardized items over and over.  Also, the focus of the project is to create online, formative assessments that measure students' progress throughout the year.

Theoretically, with appropriate formative testing,  schools wouldn't need to do a one-time summative assessment - teachers and administrators should always know where students are performing. Measuring progress and achievement in a variety of ways and across all important content areas is the only sensible way to assess student achievement and the effectiveness of curriculum and teaching approaches.

The Success: Cisco' Networking Academies is a program whose leaders really understand the value of formative and summative assessment. Over 900,000 students in 150 countries attend Net Acad classes at high schools and colleges to become certified network engineers. Students in the program are self-motivated because they know that after graduating from the program, which involves doing real-world work every day while students learn concepts and principles, they will get a job and be contributing to their nation's economic growth and development.

The program just achieved a huge milestone - its online curriculum and test system just registered 100,000,000 exams taken.  The exams include adaptive testing, simulations, and meaningful conceptual and contextual problems. At any time, students - and their teachers - know exactly where they are in their ability to perform intellectual and physical tasks.  Why can't we learn from this type of program?

As I've said before in this blog, I believe, and research shows, that we do know what makes effective education - we just need to put the right people in decision-making spots and measure what matters. I know it's not easy and it won't happen right away, but maybe the tide is turning.

The Rise of Video - Viral Education

Today I watched a great TED Talk about the rise of video for all communication by Chris Anderson. "TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print." The power of video can permeate all of education from kids learning with other kids around the world to bringing experts into the classroom. Video is powerful - non-verbals, tone of voice, tempo communicate a lot!

But the bigger opportunity is to open learning resources for kids and their parents (and teachers) to consume as needed. Imagine if students were given the standards that we all believe they should learn/demonstrate - and also guided to develop their own based on their talents and interests - and then let them, their parents, and their teachers design a personalized curriculum? It can be done now, with technology that already exists. In fact, home schooling parents ARE doing this.

This isn't the end of 'lessons' or teachers - printing didn't eliminate the powerful experience of listening to an expert speak about his or her passion - but video and videoconferencing provides a rich virtual environment of experiences that learners can take advantage of.

By the way, a personalized curriculum doesn't mean that millions of kids would learn independently, isolated - a school of one literally. It means that they are learning what they need and want to learn - in the way they want to learn - with technology enabling them to be connected to other kids learning the same things...but it doesn't have to be in the same school - or even the same country.

Imagine this! Let go of your pre-existing restrictive thinking...imagine what it will look like? Because it will happen!

And we still need teachers! Designers of learning experiences, guides on the side, tutors, facilitators of learning, assessment developers....all sorts of things!

Finally an Answer for School Leaders: Use the Power of Your People!

I recently read a wonderfully uplifting report about a promising new movement in educational transformation. APQC (the American Productivity and Quality Center), a 30 year old organization founded by visionary Jack Grayson that has done incredible work in industry, health care, and government, has completed a pilot study in 11 districts across the U.S. applying their approach to school improvement. The project, called Northstar, brought systematic thinking to district leaders to help them solve costly and time-consuming problems such as reducing utility costs, improving school bus safety, reducing drop-out rates, redesigning curriculum, and freeing up teachers for more instructional time. Their focus is on process improvement and performance management -- in other words, looking at the everyday work of school personnel to uncover opportunities for lowering costs, improving efficiency and effectiveness, and eliminating wasted time. 

Here's what I like about the APQC approach:

• First, it acknowledges that schools are inhabited by passionate and smart teachers, administrators, and staff who really want to do a good job educating children. How many news stories lately highlight that aspect of school personnel? It's not the people who are causing the problems - it's the system, policies, and processes.
• Second, it provides a collaborative process for cross-functional teams to identify top problems to solve, uncover root causes, and create solutions together. No heavy dependency on expert consultants and 'gurus' telling the leaders what pedagogical approach is the best, what technology to use, what software to buy -- no flavor of the month!
• Third, it provides a customizable process that APQC consultants can align with district leaders' and stakeholders priorities and organizational culture. The approach helps districts focus on what's important,  especially under today's budget constraints and high achievement expectations, and drive toward solid solutions that all stakeholders can buy into.
• Fourth, APQC builds capacity for the district to continue the process improvement and performance management approach to 'running the business' after the first few projects are successfully completed.

What I love about all this is the process perspective. Long ago I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Edwards Deming talk about process and I will never forget his memorable admonition to managers at General Motors, where I was working. When talking about all of the problems GM was experiencing, Dr. Deming said: "It's not the workers - they are not the cause of the problem (think, let's fire all of the teachers), they are doing the best they can given the system they are working in. It's up to management to provide a system in which smart people can be successful."

This approach is refreshing given all of the confusion in education today around the 'best program' to adopt. It puts solution development in the hands of the people who do the work, it leverages process and performance data, and it is guru-and technology agnostic! The APQC PPM approach has worked for 30 years in every other line of business -- it's time for school leaders to accept that they can learn something from those who have been successful in every other sector!

Instruments as Technology - Teacher as Conductor

I recently watched a wonderful show on PBS about the 125 year history of the Boston Pops Orchestra. and it reminded me of the most important role of a teacher - to be the conductor of learning. The Pops latest conductor, Keith Lockhart (who had big shoes to fill - Fiedler, Williams), said he was intimidated but eager to take on the role. He believed that as a conductor he knew his role was "to inspire his musicians; they can't be coerced." He has faith in the musicians and it's his role to create the vision and the story, and let the musicians create the result.

A friend of mine who is a wonderfully creative, ambitious, and technology-savvy teacher recently proved what I mean about teacher as conductor. Her district was considering a one-to-one laptop solution and gave her 3 MacBooks and 3 iPod Touch's for one month near the end of the school year. The goal was to prove to the School Board that the addition of this technology would improve engagement and learning in her 5th grade class immediately and that they should invest their technology budget in this solution.

Putting the challenge in her hands was the genius of the superintendent. Lyssa KNOWS educational technology and has been desperate to get it into the hands of her underserved students. She immediately went to work teaching every student the basics of using the equipment, the accompanying software, and exposed them to many online tools and websites.

She DIDN'T create a complicated curriculum. Instead she set goals for a final product to have them demonstrate their knowledge in the most creative ways. And off they went!

In one month the 30 kids in her class explored and then almost mastered over ten different online tools and every application on the MacBook. They taught themselves! They did their research and then created wonderful representations of their learning in a variety of formats. There were no discipline problems, there was intense engagement, and many stayed after school to get to use the computers. (Remember, she had only 3 of each device).

After one month, Lyssa presented, with her kids, to the School Board to make the case for technology. She showed their work and their testimonials, and the students themselves spoke about the intense engagement they felt - that they were finally free to learn the way they were comfortable. There were tears on the faces of the adults in that room to see those kids so passionate.

Lyssa was truly a conductor in this situation. She determined a vision for her students' learning, gave them access to their 'instruments' and guided them to individual outcomes that, woven together, created a powerful learning symphony.

For the kids, their instruments are the technology, the music is their learning.

Merging Personal and Public Learning Environments: Why Not?

I've just returned from the ISTE Conference in Denver and had many take-aways, but a big one was about the merging of formal and non-formal learning environments. During a  keynote panel discussion, Karen Cator,  Director of the Office of Educational Technology for the US DOE,  challenged the audience (mostly teachers and technology coordinators) to start accepting that kids are learning as much or more out of school than in it. This happens because many schools do not allow or make available the tools students want to use to learn with depth and breadth.  And students don't separate their 'learning lives' into artificial subject areas and standards. They just go after the information they need to address their learning needs.

What can we learn from them? What would happen if all teachers could figure out a way to propose problems, challenges, quests, and journeys to kids, teach them some strategies, immerse them in a learning environment and let them go?

Take a look at this video about a girl's Personal Learning Environment. She is participating in a project that her (obviously flexible, net-savvy, and enlightened) teacher is doing on networked learning. She is using an application called Symbaloo and you need two hands to count the number of websites, resources, and tools she uses to do her work (in a 3-minute video).

Be sure to listen to the last minute. I love her quote: "We like learning this way because we have more freedom...it's not that I don't have to do the work, I just get to choose how to do it." Freedom to learn the way they want...wouldn't we all prefer that? Been in a corporate or college class lately?