Dear Staff,
Here are the questions from Chapter 7 and 8. Please respond.
Chapter 7
Assessing Your Assessment System
How are we using our current assessments? Does everything work together? Are they meeting the needs of our students? Our students are like cars. If we don’t put gas in our cars, they won’t run. We must assess regularly, get the needed feedback, and act upon it or our students won’t be making progress.
Does everything work together? Again we can use the comparison of a car. All systems must work together or the car will not run. Even if just one thing is faulty, then our car is not drivable. So our assessments must work together and be student driven to make a complete program.
Chapter 8
What Our Elementary Principals Are Saying
Chapter 8 discusses administration. On page 91 one of the principals stated "I was hired at the beginning to manage a building. I sat in my office, moved paper, ran schedules, and handled parents. I got good at it." Unfortunately, that is the stereotype that sometimes is associated with administration.
With the No Child Left Behind and state mandated standards the principals are held accountable for their school's performance (they have always been accountable, but now school performance is of utmost importance). Administration is given goals and standards that they must work towards... they have others telling them what they have to do. They are like everyone else in that they may feel overwhelmed and ask themselves "When and how am I going to get all of this done?" They too, stress and worry about time constraints.
The book states that administration has to have a shift in mindset along with the shift in job responsibility. In order to raise reading scores, administration had to get out of the office more, do more instructional leadership, coach teachers, and do more assessment. Administration is expected to compile reports, have data, and show results. Administrtation needs the help of the faculty to accomplish this, but sometimes their message is difficult to accept. On page 94 one administrator said, "There is a real fine line between pushing your staff, leading your staff, keeping the pressure on, and just wearing them out." The book goes on to state that it was not easy for some of the administrators and faculty to shift their mindset and accept new responsibilities. The book states that attitude (positive or negative) can be contagious.
The book made it clear that change is possible, however it is not easy and it takes time. Basically what the chapter is saying is that administration needs the support of the faculty.
Please feel free to comment on chapter 8.
8 comments:
Mrs. Love this blog is awesome! Thank you for putting this together.
From Laurie Chapter 7
Sometimes I get frustrated that even though I'm doing all the assessments and putting in the fuel that the district wants my low students are not making the progress that Kenewick said that they made. My kids are working hard but are not zooming along as quickly as I would have hoped.
From Laurie Ch 8
I think we have a good start as a well oiled machine. We are getting there. But sometimes I feel that we are like kites in the wind trying this idea, no try that idea, and do this too and maybe we should add this idea. I'm having a hard time getting proficient at the first idea and we swich. I really want my low kids to improve. There has got to something that works.
I agree with Laurie on all the points she made. It does seem like there are a lot of great ideas, but not enough time or data to see them work effectively. It would be nice to see more communication, planning and unity within grade level teams and between "departments." The students that struggle are the ones that bounce around the building all day and it is hard to keep track of them and how they are doing with each teacher. I feel like there are a lot of high expectations held by all parties, ideas, and wonderful things being contributed by all, but not enough unity. It would be interesting for next year, to spend a few teacher work days mapping out curriculum for the year as grade levels to stay together in pacing for all subjects to increase unity, idea sharing and student monitoring as a group.
As far as the administration chapter, there are a lot of great ideas and programs being passed around and talked about, but there doesn't always seem to be an executive decision or strategy put into action on some of them.
Chp 7: The following is the district assessment protocol for both math and reading:
Benchmark (ISAT--1ce/year and IRI/Aimsweb--3 times/year)
Based on above assessment:
1) Benchmark students are put in 90 minutes of core curriculum with an additional 30 minutes of universal access supporting skill holes identified during core assessment and challenge assignments from the core curriculum as possible--tier 1
2) Strategic students are put in 90 minutes of core curriculum with core assessments. Houghton Mifflin diagnostic assessment are given to specifically identify sub-skill areas causing strategic assessment placement. 30 minutes of Universal access interventions is used to support identified low sub-skill areas and core assessment holes. 30 additional minutes of Title-l intervention support is added to regular education and progress monitoring is done 2ce a month to evaluate growth and intervention programs success--Tier 2
3) Intensive students also should have access to the core program with intensive interventions to support low sub-skills identified on Houghton Mifflin Diagnostic Screening. The State tells us 90 minutes of core instruction plus intervention. This is hard to do but we need to evaluate how, when and how much core we can offer even these students. Intensive students are high priority in the 30 minutes of universal access and also must receive a MINIMUM of 30 minutes of instruction time with interventions from Title l or Special Education. Progress monitoring should be done weekly to evaluate appropriate growth and intervention program success--Tier 1
If your low students are not making the growth you want, I think we should look at increasing instruction time and specific skill diagnosis and support.
I agree that Houghton Mifflin unit assessments have flaws but without an assessment at the end of each unit how do we truly evaluate our teaching and student understanding of concepts. I would love volunteers from each grade level to evaluate each assessment and identify the best and most important areas from these assessments to keep and sections to toss out and/or re-write. Anyone interested? Stipend possible?
I love the diagnostic assessment from Houghton Mifflin and CORE offers many others we are not taking advantage of. I would love to help you administer these. If follow-through teaching on skill development identified on these diagnostic assessments are done during intervention, I believe we will begin to see improvement. I also am excited about the way we are using our progress monitoring to help us to tighten-up our intervention program instruction. The data has to be evaluated and available to all teachers working with these students and adjustments made in teaching. Discussions between Title-1, Special Education and regular education teachers are essential to make the adjustments necessary. I walked into Mrs. Long room the other day and saw her sitting side-by side with one of our Title-I para's helping her plan a 4th grade math intervention. PERFECT!
I think you are all using assessment data more than ever before. You have a lot of things in place that will make our "cars" run smoothly but we have a few areas to tighten and clarify. I believe our PLC's are the only time we have right now to work together as a team to make these changes needed to make the final tune-ups in our "cars". Help me--what else can we do?
Chp 7: The following is the district assessment protocol for both math and reading:
Benchmark (ISAT--1ce/year and IRI/Aimsweb--3 times/year)
Based on above assessment:
1) Benchmark students are put in 90 minutes of core curriculum with an additional 30 minutes of universal access supporting skill holes identified during core assessment and challenge assignments from the core curriculum as possible--tier 1
2) Strategic students are put in 90 minutes of core curriculum with core assessments. Houghton Mifflin diagnostic assessment are given to specifically identify sub-skill areas causing strategic assessment placement. 30 minutes of Universal access interventions is used to support identified low sub-skill areas and core assessment holes. 30 additional minutes of Title-l intervention support is added to regular education and progress monitoring is done 2ce a month to evaluate growth and intervention programs success--Tier 2
3) Intensive students also should have access to the core program with intensive interventions to support low sub-skills identified on Houghton Mifflin Diagnostic Screening. The State tells us 90 minutes of core instruction plus intervention. This is hard to do but we need to evaluate how, when and how much core we can offer even these students. Intensive students are high priority in the 30 minutes of universal access and also must receive a MINIMUM of 30 minutes of instruction time with interventions from Title l or Special Education. Progress monitoring should be done weekly to evaluate appropriate growth and intervention program success--Tier 1
If your low students are not making the growth you want, I think we must look at increasing instruction time for these students as suggested by Carrie Cole and the Kennewick Schools. We have to be very creative to find the time for this but I know we can do it. I see it being done all across the Nation. Specific skills diagnosed with these assessment are the key to help us support our students in diagnosed areas of need.
I agree that Houghton Mifflin unit assessments have flaws but without an assessment at the end of each unit how do we truly evaluate our teaching and student understanding of concepts. I would love volunteers from each grade level to evaluate each assessment and identify the best and most important areas from these assessments to keep and sections to toss out and/or re-write. Anyone interested? Stipend possible?
I love the diagnostic assessment from Houghton Mifflin and CORE offers many others we are not taking advantage of. I would love to help you administer these. If follow-through teaching on skill development identified on these diagnostic assessments are done during intervention, I believe we will begin to see improvement. I also am excited about the way we are using our progress monitoring to help us to tighten-up our intervention program instruction. The data has to be evaluated and available to all teachers working with these students and adjustments made in teaching. Discussions between Title-1, Special Education and regular education teachers are essential to make the adjustments necessary. I walked into Mrs. Long room the other day and saw her sitting side-by side with one of our Title-I para's helping her plan a 4th grade math intervention. PERFECT!
I think you are all using assessment data more than ever before. You have a lot of things in place that will make our "cars" run smoothly but we have a few areas to tighten and clarify. I believe our PLC's are the only time we have right now to work together as a team to make these changes needed to make the final tune-ups in our "cars". Help me--what else can we do?
Opps--why did my post end up twice.
Sorry everyone!
Chp 8
As the new addition to Henry's Fork office, I see the true demands of Mr. Davenport and Martha. It is amazing what they are asked to do!
Without assigning blame in anyway to anyone I do feel badly for Mr. D and the amount of time he is expected to sit with students in his office who do not behave. I wonder if we could alleviate a lot of his "in office" time by helping out with more follow through in our own classrooms at least during our morning and afternoon recesses. I have wondered what a detention teacher/classroom at lunch might look like also and how we might staff it. Any ideas?
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