The Royal Oak Education Association

As of this writing, I have already had my first observation and follow-up discussion with my building administrator. I submitted my approaches to student growth along with my classroom observation plan (I had to create a new section to do this on the old form), and I brought up the measurements at the conference, explaining that I planned to share my work with our ROEA membership.  At that conference, I was told that everything I listed “looked good.” 

 

I have expanded each approach to reflect my background thinking and research support.

 

Student Growth:

 

1)      Successive Group Improvement: Across three years (Class of 2012-2014), AP Literature scores will show improvement on the College Board’s 5-point scale based upon usage of student-centered curricular approaches, dual practice exams, and one-on-one tutorial work where needed.

 

Measurement Tool: Here I am using a national test as the measurement tool, one I feel fairly comfortable using since I have several prior-year exams to use for practice and periodic evaluation along the way. I have purposely not indicated a percentage improvement—I don’t know how I would do so since the test uses only a 5-point scale and does not break down the scores. In addition, I cannot predict the pre-requisites my students will have entering my class each year, because they come to my AP Lit course from two different courses with different levels of preparation. I may divide my growth scores based upon students’ pre-requisites (see Sub-Groups below). There is also a difference between “historical” trend, “reasonable expectation,” and “required” performances of students which isn’t well-defined so far, and a “growth ceiling” which limits how far my students might ever actually progress in comparison to national scores.   

 

Extrinsic Factors: I could use a score improvement based upon number of students taking the exam, as well, since it is not mandated for all students.  I will have to think about what makes a fair measure of growth here, but I have to watch for test format changes which would invalidate my approach and for differences in strategies I am permitted to try (for instance, the high school is finicky about my giving practice tests for students in 3-hour blocks).  Finally, I must be ready to revise this objective if the external factors change, something I would communicate throughout the next three years of evaluations.

 

Strategies: It’s important that I identify strategies which I will use to improve student performance, the equivalent of seeking out the impact of any variable on growth.  I have already begun using these strategies and seen some positive results in the last several years, so I am reasonably certain they will work well if I pay closer attention to them.

 

Research Support:  NCLB/ESEA uses “successive growth” measures as one of four approaches to measuring school quality.  Research suggests that appropriate data for such a measure includes “annual assessment; representative group, comparable across years; consistent performance standards; ‘headroom’ or accountability system that allows for ceiling effect; two years of data minimum”  (Gong, NCIEA). It’s important to note that this approach is a value-added model (VAM), but I am also cognizant of the variables (some above) which might invalidate the assessment. 

 

Legal Support:  Nothing in the language of 1249 or 1250 suggests that student growth must occur over any particular window of time.  Growth might occur over a two-week period or multiple years.  Further, national education policies employ this method regularly. Evaluations are annual, but student growth may not be. What does this mean for indicating growth on an annual evaluation?  I will offer my administrator updates on this measurement annually, but I do not imagine I can be accountable here until July 2014 when my scores are published.

 

 

2)     Strategy-Based Growth Measurement:  To increase student participation in class (a factor which directly correlates with student AP Exam success based on my data and a focus of my IST group), I will:

a.      Add student participation as a class grade in one section;

b.      Not have student participation as a class grade but encourage it individually in one section;

c.       Add technological factors such as Twitter to one section. 

One of these methods will likely produce more student growth and thus increase scores more than the others.  This method can then be expanded to other sections.

 

Measurement Tool: Here I’m really looking at what strategies create a culture of participation. Since I have already identified participation as a critical factor in AP exam success, I need not use that test here.  Instead, I am creating a very simple rubric for class participation and using it daily as we run class and group discussions.  Does a grade incentive intimidate or challenge students into performance or can this be done intrinsically?  What role does digital tech play in improving that intrinsic motivation?   

            The important thing here is that I’m bring that classroom scientist.  Undoubtedly, one of these methods will result in more growth (participation) than another.  Then I can shed the failed methods and employ the new one more regularly.  After that, I can try a new set of practices with the next evaluation cycle, constantly gathering evidence to improve practice.

 

Extrinsic Factors: I can imagine only a few factors which may interfere with these results: students in different sections may complain about the different strategies and favor one over another, causing undue resentment.  Also, I have already noted this year that the morning section is less participatory, likely from sleepiness, something I should take into account as I use the rubric.

 

Strategies: In the past I’ve tried two of these three strategies but I’ve never really taken the time to measure out the impact of them.  In this case, the quick participation rubric will make me more attentive to what I already do, a decent outcome of the new legislation. 

 

Research Support:  Numerous studies have tied participation and classroom climate to achievement (Voelkl 1995, Shindler 2001, Caruthers  nd, Bean & Peterson nd, and others).  Outside of that, this approach is identical to long-established educational research practices like action research, the basis for much post-graduate work in education. 

 

Legal Support:  Nothing in the language of 1249 or 1250 suggests that student growth must occur with every strategy implemented.  As a growing professional, conducting simple objective “action research” can only help both my teaching and student scores; student growth must occur with one of these methods; even if it does not, I have three strategies to abandon and must search for others, still a victory.

3)     Sub-Group Focus:  I will improve the impromptu writing scores of AP students who did not take AP English Language by a higher percentage than those who had this pre-requisite (College Board 9 pt. Scale) over the course of the year through focused evaluation/instruction as measured by two different types on impromptus.

 

Measurement Tool: The language of 1249/1250 suggests that teachers employ “multiple measures” is assessing student growth. I wish to improve their writing scores but have two different impromptu essays which may be impacted.  I use the same impromptus with my control group, students who have taken the AP English Language course.  I use the same rubric for the impromptus the entire year.

 

Extrinsic Factors: I see few to no outside factors which might influence this approach.

 

Strategies: Knowing that these students are more anxious about their success, I will build in small group workshops and 1-on-1 conferences with them. I will also request more revisions of their work to improve scores.

 

Research Support:  NCLB has, of course, made sub-group performance infamous for school improvement, and our reviews of Royal Oak student performance on national tests reveals that our subgroups consistently lag behind.  Virtually every education psychology study focuses on subgroups and there is no legitimate study which negates their value.

 

Legal Support:  Again, the phrase “student growth” is not qualified to indicate which students, how many students, etc.  A social worker may theoretically focus on individual students, then, and special education teachers have multiple means to delineate focus groups.   

 

4)     Indirect and Affective Measure: I will raise the percentage of students who actively participate in class-culture activities (couth nights, in-class contests, parody assignments, extra-credit trivia research, etc.) to improve connectedness to the academic culture; improved attitude and inclusiveness in the class culture enhances scores on writing and daily assignments over the course of the school year.

 

Measurement Tool: Establishing a safe classroom climate where students can take interpretative risks is important to their successful practice and thus their academic performance.  The affective domain can here be measured by a simple record of student participation in various activities which promote intrinsic valuing of education. It will be a simple matter to record participation; more difficult will be aligning that participation with student academics; I can probably compare scores of students who participate with those who participate less, but here I am simply looking to grow student participation in affective classroom activities.

 

Extrinsic Factors: As above, correlation of student participation to academic scores will be noted. However, it will be difficult to isolate this participation from a host of other strategies I employ.  With 70 students, however, I think I can crunch the numbers to reveal success of participation and success in various scores.

 

Strategies: Promoting activities as part of the class community has always been a major goal of mine; again, I am just becoming more attentive to the effects. 

 

Research Support:  While North Central has abandoned the affective domain in considering school improvement, countless studies have reinforced the need for positive classroom cultures to improve performance including the ASCD’s Farley 1982, Volet 1997, Park et al 2011, APA’s Daniels 2009, and an update of the infamous ACT study which determined that extra-curricular involvement impacted student success and future endeavors more directly that GPA or ACT scores.

 

Legal Support:  Again, the phrase “student growth” is not “student academic growth.”  Thus the improvement in school culture is a viable measurement to meet state law, especially as it correlates to academic success. 

 

5)     Collaborative: Two of my colleagues and I talked on November 8 about approaches to improve reading comprehension scores amongst our junior classes.  We selected three simple exercises for improving reading with the intent to measure these in our jointly-written common assessments. This approach was not originally listed with the four goals above, but I shared it orally with my administrator. 

 

Measurement Tool: We will be using the mid-year and final exams for ELA 11, a common assessment created by our department, for the assessment tool.  It’s an objective assessment which we align with HSCE standards to prepare our students for the ACT.  In other words, it is a local assessment in preparation for ACT success. 

 

Extrinsic Factors: The common assessments in ELA are in development; that is, they require a fair amount of time to create and test for reliability and validity.  In addition, teaching these new strategies for reading and aligning them with the common assessment and smaller assessments en route will require a fair amount of time collaborating with my colleagues.  I do not know if they have selected this as a measure for their own “student growth” data, so our priorities to see it through may not be equal.

 

Strategies: We will employ three different reading and annotations strategies, especially around non-fiction readings, all of them from Oakland Schools Core Curriculum and other PD sessions attended by my colleagues. Our surmise is that direct teaching of these reading skills will improve reading performance.

 

Research Support:  This is the most direct and simple approach to improving student scores with a local assessment, though the collaboration element is different from the other four.  Studies on the positive impact of Professional Learning Communities are numerous, though often resisted by Royal Oak board and administrators (see, for instance, ASCD’s DuFour, 2004, Graham and Caskey 2007, and this PLC clearinghouse).

 

Legal Support:  Combined with national legislation on school improvement and RT3, the Michigan statutes align easily with the idea that individual teachers improve if working collaboratively with colleagues. The alternative (divisiveness, competitiveness, etc.) reduces the sharing of successful strategies, of improving learning communities.