Rethinking Assessment

How can we measure our students in a manner that allows them to demonstrate knowledge without it being a purely individualized and secret memorization test?  This is one of many dilemmas our system of education is addressing as we push through this powerful wave of technology in education.  Whether you are implementing the Common Core Standards or looking to engage students and raise the rigor of the curriculum in your school, assessing student performance remains crucial to any effective instructional program.

Doug Reeves, in his chapter titled A Framework for Assessing 21st Century Skills in the book 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, edited by James Bellanca and Ron Brandt,  makes a compelling argument for a radical shift in how we are measuring student performance and why we need change our current practice.  Dr. Reeves points out quite clearly that when people outside of education ask the question of "How do we know kids are learning?" our response, especially in the last 10-15 years, tends to be to show the results of a state, standardized test and see if the child is "proficient" and is meeting academic standards.  Ask any education expert and you will here that to base a student's knowledge on a two day test is a measure of what that child knows on those two days.  It may not necessarily reflect all they "know" and understand about the topic.    In essence, Dr. Reeves suggests that in order to fully move our practice into the 21st Century, we need to rethink assessment and move away from our current concept of testing.  In fact, "the very nature of testing - with its standardized conditions, secrecy, and individual results - is antithetical to the understanding, exploration, creativity, and sharing that are the hallmarks of a 21st Century framework for assessment." (pg 306)  The struggle we face is our need for accountability through data in order to know who to blame if things do not go as planned.  But more importantly, there is a disconnect between what 21st Century businesses are looking for in employees and the experiences our graduates have gone through in their education.  The work place is not always filled with nice, easy problems to be solved.  Most certainly you do not get to pick A, B, C, or none of the above. 

As schools, we need to prepare our students by placing them in assessment situations that mirror the everyday, rapidly changing, globalized community they are now a part of.  Assessments need to be in conditions that are more non-standardized.  The idea of comparing one student to another and identifying their class rank is quickly diminishing as the key indicator of future success in our world.  Instead, how one is able to function as a member of a problem solving team is becoming more and more desirable.  Reeves is clear to state that this does not mean abandoning certain skills that must be mastered by students, often in rote fashion.  However, his framework asks us to move way beyond the Learn part assessing student knowledge.

Reeves' assessment framework includes 5 elements and questions to guide students and teachers thinking through the assessment:

• Understand: What is the evidence that you can apply learning in one domain to another?
• Share: How did you use what you have learned to help a person, the class, your community, or the planet?
• Explore: What did you learn beyond the limits of the lesson? What mistakes did you make, and how did you learn from them?
• Create: What new ideas, knowledge, or understandings can you offer?
• Learn: What do you know?  What are you able to do?

These concepts/practices are not novel to education.  How we apply this type of thinking, is more critical.  Formative assessments have gained much more prominence in the role of learning.  Reeves now is taking this even farther where these questions are presented prior to the beginning of a lesson/unit/project to serve as guides to our thinking.  All elements need to be addressed.

Reeves goes on to further define and explore the transformations "required of assessments: from standardized to fluid conditions, from secrecy to openness, and from individual to collaborative assessments." (pg. 318)  He is quite clear in his point that "educational leaders cannot talk about the need for collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity and at the same time leave teachers and school administrators fenced in by obsolete assessment mechanism, policies and assumptions." (pg 318)

I have written extensively about bringing 21st Century instruction full force into our Hawaii Catholic Schools.  To effectively mange this transition, we need to take an honest look at our practices of instruction and assessment.  This piece on assessment by Doug Reeves really hit home.  The questions and strategies that he offers make so much sense.  If we ask the right questions, we can get our students to think, create, analyze, etc.  That is our role as Educators.  I guess I am wondering if we can really meet 21st Century needs in a 19th Century structure.  Maybe we need to think about changing the structure?  Thanks Mr. Reeves for a great read!

Source:
21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, Bellanca, James and Brandt, Ron (2010, Solution Tree Press): Chapter14 - Doug Reeves, A Framework for Assessing 21st Century Skills

Developing 21st Century Skills in our students

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is growing more and more prevalent in our schools.  Based on what I have read and observed, this is a very good thing for students (when implemented effectively!).  This is also a shift in practice for many of our teachers.  For years now we have made sure that preparation for the nationalized tests is all about drill and kill, "got to pass that test so we can stay out of restructuring."  In my humble opinion, the NCLB hockey stick has set education progress back a good number of years.

Jump to 2013 and we find ourselves in the midst of one of the greatest shifts in education practice ever.  With the movement to a national Common Core set of standards that are conceptual in nature, local education systems now have more freedom to make use of local, relevant content to teach their students.  The accountability of NCLB is still in place (though I prefer a growth model to a hockey stick!) and we now need to shift our thinking in how we are engaging students in the content.  PBL gives us one of those options.

The centerpiece of PBL is asking the right questions and then inquiring as to relevance of data, reliability of data and formulation of new ideas to be shared with others in written, oral, and tech centered presentations.  What makes this approach more relevant is that our current global situation has so many real world issues for students to inquire about and create potential solutions.  In the anthology 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, John Barell writes a chapter titled Problem-Based Learning: The Foundation for 21st Century Skills.  In this chapter, Barell asserts that the actual nature and state of the current world necessitates a shift in education from memory and reproduction to one of inventiveness and creativity.  He postulates that PBL is a much better match for the human brain.  Since the early phases of human development, we have been solving problems in order to survive.  Naturally, if we create scenarios designed to activate those portions of brain, we will get a higher degree if engagement from students and their retention of what they are "learning" will rise significantly.  Add to the scenario a structured level of choice and we now have a recipe for all students to engage and thrive.

In his chapter Barell gives specific examples of planning outlines and strategies that teachers can use to create strong inquiry based units for students.  Barell does not shy away from the fact that this type of teaching approach requires tremendous preparation on the part of teachers.  He is clear that the teacher does not simply come up with a plan and cut kids loose, but provides fundamental direct instruction where needed - say research skills, certain background information, proper writing skills, etc.  but all of this is taught through the context of inquiry based scenarios. 

Barell describes the development of "ill-structured" societal scenarios that exist in our world today:  feeding the poor, containing financial contagion in the European region, global warming, over fishing, supplying water for escalating populations, etc.  These scenarios require students to pose questions, conduct research, decide on the relevance of the research (and its validity), and produce possible actionable scenarios.  Students then need to present their thinking using tools that help them get their message across in the most clear fashion.  To me, what an exciting class!! 

To work with students in this manner and foster those higher order thinking skills, teachers must plan with the end in mind.  Formative assessments embedded throughout the unit that include observations and interviews and specific instruction where needed are a necessity.  Rubrics must be in place so that students are able to measure their own movement toward standard.  Skills for working cooperatively must be taught and classroom management must be clear and consistent.  Teaching of this sort requires a high degree of expertise.  Administrators and school systems need to be making plans and allocations to support this paradigm shift in how we teach our students.

"When asked what he and others had wrought at the constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Ben Franklin replied, "A republic. If you can keep it" (as cited in Platt, 1992)." (pg. 197)
 Barell concludes by stating that in order for us "to keep our republic, we need to educate for thoughtful engagement with all of its many challgenges."  (pg. 197).  Are we ready to accept the challenge?

Hawaii Catholic School Leaders in the 21st Century

Twenty-one of our Hawaii Catholic School leaders spent the day engaged in dialogue and collaborative professional development in order to strengthen our communication and create a  Professional Learning Community focused on supporting the growth and development of our Hawaii Catholic Schools toward thriving status!  Achieving our goals as laid out in our Systems for Success roadmap is directly linked to our ability to come together and improve our efforts of collaboration as a network of schools!  Take a look at our Wordle describing the characteristics of a 21st Century Leader!

Hawaii Catholic Schools Leaders are...

Change and education in the 21st Century

Clearly the business of education is in transition.  Those of us who are engaged in supporting teachers  and students are constantly bombarded with the latest research about what works to engage students in effective learning situations.  Last Friday we looked to strengthen our collaborative bonds through a series of presentations by our own HCS teachers focused on 21st century practices taking place across our network of schools.  We are still gathering feedback from this event through Backchannel chat room dedicated to our event.  This is a means of instant feedback for presenters and organizers and meant to model a tool that teachers can use with students during instruction.  

Recently I read an excerpt from a book titled 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn that was written by Howard Gardener.  In his piece, he talked about the kinds of "minds" that exist throughout the human species.  He has written extensively about the Disciplined, Synthesizing, and Creative minds and how educators, with an understanding of how our students process and organize  information, can structure instruction and maximize opportunities for deep learning with our students.    He has now identified two other minds that are more nebulous and less measurable from a quantitative standpoint: the Ethical mind and the Respectful mind.  Our world is growing more and more social and these two minds start to hit on parts of the human psyche that many in education have not been asked to address because we can't measure them on a multiple choice test.

What struck me is that the Ethical and Respectful minds are cornerstones of Catholic education.  We have instructed our students while always keeping our faith at the center of a well rounded academic program.  So as the education world continues to change and explore new tools to engage our students in effective instruction that engages these 5 minds that Gardener speaks to, Hawaii Catholic Schools already have a built in avenue for reaching our students on an ethical and respectful level.

The 21st Century brings more and more research and findings about the children we are teaching and how their brains are so much more capable than we ever realized.  Our challenge lies in the question of whether those of us who have been doing this for awhile can open up and actively embrace not only the changes that are taking place, but the rapidity with which things are changing.  I've mentioned this before in that it feels like we are changing the tires on the car while driving down the highway.   The interesting piece is that there really is no other option.  We must change on the fly, be willing to attempt new methodology and while we are working on improving our classroom pedagogy, make sure our students are developing and learning the skills necessary to succeed in this fast-paced, ever-evolving environment!  If we do not embrace this change in instructional delivery, we may not be in existence in the future.  that would be great shame!!

21st Century + 4 Cs + Catholic Identity = an HCS education

Hawaii Catholic Schools 21st Century Skills

How do we know we are developing 21st Century Skills in our HCS students

We are bombarded daily with the clear reality that the demands of modern students and parents are shifting.  The value of what people want for the money they spend has exponentially increased in recent years.  If people are going to spend money, they want to know exactly what they are getting out of it.

For some, paying for their children to attend school where the Catholic faith is woven throughout the day is good enough.  Clearly, based on what we have seen across the country, the number of people willing to do that is shrinking.  So what more can we offer?

Safe environment?  Certainly one would think that is a cornerstone of our Catholic schools, yet we know that kids are kids and that no school is immune to the developmental phases kids move through and the trouble that can arise out of growing up. 

Quality and personal communication?  One would think that because our schools are smaller than our public counterparts and our larger private counterparts that this would be one of our greatest assets.  It seems to be so, but are parents going to pay money simply to really know how they're child is doing in a more efficient and personalized manner?  The fact is that public schools are being held to a high standard for communication and it costs nothing but tax dollars.  It seems to me that people choosing to pay for school expect a higher level of communication from their child's school and, quite frankly, they deserve it.

So where does academics fall into this list of high expectations?  Sometimes I feel that because a student shows up at our school we assume they are somehow different than other kids and will automatically work hard and engage.  That just because the parents want the child to attend a quality institution, the child will automatically follow suit.  Now, that probably is the case with most students, but, why then, are we losing students - across the country - as Catholic institutions?  Why are some of our schools flourishing and others struggling?  Why does our student population contain a growing number of non-Catholics?

All of this is meant as a discussion initiator.  We are, as Father Thompson put it at the beginning of the school year, at a point of change in our system of education - both as Catholic institutions and in the broad spectrum of education.  We must change how we are engaging students and reach out to our communities to let them know that we hear their voices.  We must raise the bar for our instructional practices and do everything in our power to support our teachers through this transitional period while providing an education parents are willing to spend money for.

Professional development has never been so important, in my mind, as it is now. By investing time and resources into the professional growth opportunities of our teachers and school leaders, we can better meet the needs of our changing population of students and their families and the changing landscape of education.

Please post your thoughts and comments online!  Constructive criticism and the facilitation of healthy dialogue are the intentions of this blog.  Sharing our thoughts and ideas in a professional forum can generate the effective questions that will propel us forward as we strive to provide the highest quality education for students here in Hawaii!

A good time to stop and reflect

Just wondering who else is feeling that sense of wonder when glancing at the calendar at seeing that we are into November already?  Where did the time go?  Didn't we just start school?

Thanksgiving and Christmas are on top of us and we still have so much to accomplish!  If anyone else is feeling like this, please respond in the blog and share how you are coping.  All of us can benefit from each others' experiences!

We are entering this season of thanks and gratitude.  As we do, continual reminders of the challenges facing our Hawaii Catholic Schools network, become even more visible as the pressure mounts during the competitive Hawaii private school recruiting season.  Open houses are beginning to pop-up and we want to make sure we highlight all the best points that a Catholic education in Hawaii has to offer.  Each of us in our network of Hawaii Catholic Schools can reflect and identify how we are going to contribute to recruiting more students and families to our Catholic ohana of schools.  Whether it is through actively speaking with people in the community or raising the instructional bar in our school/classroom/system, there are myriad of ways that we each may contribute.  Perhaps if we view our recruitment opportunities as ongoing for the year then maybe we can stem the tide begin attracting students back to the product we offer: Quality instruction, respectful and safe learning environment, extracurricular activities such as foreign language, athletics, computer instruction, etc, and of course, Catholic faith doctrine. 

Please know that I am not saying this is an easy challenge we face!  Everyone I have met in our network of schools is working hard.  Making sure we are actively involved in changing up the pattern, either individually or collectively, as part of the network of Hawaii Catholic Schools,  is all that anyone can ask.  To look in the mirror at the end of the day and know we did our best for the kids and their families and that we did something to spread the word - not only of God, but of the positive changes we are making in our schools - should make us feel proud of our efforts.

We have resources at our disposal to help promote our work - CCA and their Facebook page, Edmodo and the connections it offers to our parents, PD360 and the connections it offers among our teachers and administrators - private, parochial and diocesan, and of course our own personal conversations with our students, their parents and the parishioners who come and visit our schools.  Mass is another opportunity for us to reach out and connect.  The more we accept our role as active spreaders of the good word, the more we will attract  people to our schools.

Please share the work you or your school is doing to actively bring students and families to our schools! Be proud of what you have accomplished and willing to share the changes we are making to meet the needs of our 21st Century students and the rapidly changing world we live in.   Upload a video, publish some writing pieces, highlight the community outreach that some many of our schools and students are participating in across Hawaii.  This is a forum to do that and I welcome all of you join in the conversation!

Hawaii Catholic Schools are AWESOME!!!