Reflections of the students in the VCU Ed.D. program
One of my teachers sent this to me today and it was perfectly timed. We usually see things like this early in the year to kick things off, but I started thinking that maybe this is the perfect time to remember to focus on the relationship and what feelings of hope and future we give students as they move forward into next year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-f-pierson/student-teacher-relationships_b_3203159.html
As my cohort members and I presented our evaluation findings for our various programs, I was struck by the idea that we do not do enough of program evaluation in education. We are in the habit of purchasing and/or implementing new programs that have been developed and used successfully in other settings and thinking that their previous success will automatically make them effective for our division. However, there are multiple variables at play in these implementations. Different population demographics and sizes. Different levels of staff expertise, staff buy-in and implementation fidelity, and division support. Overall differences in the specific needs of the division. All of these things vary from division to division, making the idea of pulling a “canned” program like Accelerated Reader (AR) out of the box and having it successfully achieve it’s objective seem unrealistic.
Yet that is what we do in public education. Even though we are constantly touting the importance of quality assessment and data-driven decision-making, we do not typically take time to perform pre- or post- assessments on our current or prospective programs. Several of the groups in my cohort, including my own, determined that issues with their respective programs did not have as much to do with the program itself as with its implementation and the resources and focus given to it. The question then becomes whether these programs are being put into practice unsuccessfully by choice or because there are obstacles at the division or school level that are limiting the program’s effectiveness.
By making it a division-wide policy to perform some version of a Program Evaluation on programs they are considering using or a Process Evaluation after the second year of use on current programs, divisions could better ascertain if their programs are appropriate for addressing the given need, what resources are needed to make them successful, whether the division can realistically provide those resources, and what variables are currently causing problems with the success of the current programs. This would help divisions choose the most appropriate programs for their needs from the start, realistically explore what they need to do and provide (i.e. staff development, purchase resources, etc…) to make them successful, monitor if these steps are being taken with fidelity, and check the see if the program is having the desired effect.
In addition, an immediate benefit of these mini-evaluations would be a better understanding of the programs on the part of those who work directly with them. Given the time and financial constraints of public education, evaluations such as these would need to be performed in large part by the teachers and staff responsible for their implementation, possibly as summer “focus groups.” This would bring the evaluation to a grass-roots level that would serve to get a clearer understanding of current or potential issues from those directly responsible for using the programs as well as giving those primary users a deeper understanding of the programs, their intended focus, and the key elements for their success.
Ultimately, these programs represent an effort on the part of school divisions to reach out to students, often struggling students. So, an ongoing policy of evaluating programs and making sure they are as effective and appropriate as possible would be a valuable use of division resources in advocating for student needs.
I attended the Virginia Department of Education’s 2013 Spring Teacher Evaluation Institute last week. During the course of the institute, Dr. Leslie Grant, Assistant Professor of Education at William and Mary, made a comment about the power and importance of good assessment practice. She suggested that teaching and improving teacher’s skills at creating quality assessments is one of the most powerful professional development activities you can undertake as an educational leader and went on to say that the benefits can be as dramatic as moving the entire group (shifting the bell curve) one standard deviation (approximately a 10-point increase) in the course of a year. Not being a high-level stats person, I cannot get more technical than that, but the assertion still stands that by creating quality assessments that truly guage what students do or do not know and then using that knowledge to guide instruction, we can educate students much more effectively and improve student achievement. As she said, and this is a phrase I have heard in numerous other places through the years, if we have quality assessments, “teaching to the test” is not a bad thing.
Below is an article related to building quality assessments that gives some guidelines to use when creating good assessments. In addition, it was recommended to me that Teacher-Made Assessments by Eye-on Education is another excellent resource to use for improving in this area.
http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL_Institutional_Testing_Program/ELLM2002.pdf
I attended the Virginia Department of Education’s 2013 Spring Teacher Evaluation Institute last week. During the course of the institute, Dr. Leslie Grant, Assistant Professor of Education at William and Mary, made a comment about the power and importance of good assessment practice. She suggested that teaching and improving teacher’s skills at creating quality assessments is one of the most powerful professional development activities you can undertake as an educational leader and went on to say that the benefits can be as dramatic as moving the entire group (shifting the bell curve) one standard deviation (approximately a 10-point increase) in the course of a year. Not being a high-level stats person, I cannot get more technical than that, but the assertion still stands that by creating quality assessments that truly guage what students do or do not know and then using that knowledge to guide instruction, we can educate students much more effectively and improve student achievement. As she said, and this is a phrase I have heard in numerous other places through the years, if we have quality assessments, “teaching to the test” is not a bad thing.
Below is an article related to building quality assessments that gives some guidelines to use when creating good assessments. In addition, it was recommended to me that Teacher-Made Assessments by Eye-on Education is another excellent resource to use for improving in this area.
http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL_Institutional_Testing_Program/ELLM2002.pdf
Take this as a public service announcement for those yet to present their evaluation summaries from a lesson learned during mine. Maybe because I felt good about my Saturday Zen presentation or because I felt very knowledgeable about our evaluation material and data, I went into this most recent evaluation summary with a lower level of preparedness for the spoken part than I should have. I felt like I had done so much with the evaluation write-up and the executive summary that I knew the material backwards and forwards and could talk at length about it. The problem was that the goal is not to talk at length. The goal is to be concise and direct, communicate the information confidently and clearly, and keep the presentation and answers within a range that holds the client’s interest. On a typical presentation, people typically worry about not having enough to say. In this case, though, summarizing 64 pages into 5-8 minutes required more practice and preparation in order to think in advance about what was essential to communicating our findings clearly, concisely, and effectively.
I know that all of us have our evaluations running through our minds 24/7 right now and could recite data, numbers, discussion, and conclusions for hours. I did all of the typical prep work for the presentation, but the mistake that I made was thinking that knowing the material and giving it a cursory “fly-over” made me prepared to present that information in a manner that would inspire the confidence of a professional client. So, the lesson learned is that if I could present to my client again, I would have spent more time focusing on the “less is more” principle, boiling the presentation down to the essentials, and practicing, practicing, practicing to make sure that I was able to keep that focus and not run the risk of losing the client’s interest or understanding.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
