The Royal Oak Education Association

As one of the ROEA representatives on our Evaluation Bargaining Team, I argued early that the doings of the Michigan legislature were largely beyond our local control, but that we could make solid pedagogical choices within the frameworks of the law, especially around teacher evaluation.  In other words, there is the letter of the law, and then there are choices that Royal Oak must make within its language. 

To that end, much of Michigan 1249 and 1250 leaves room for teachers to make good choices to improve their work in their profession. While they mandate annual evaluations and elevate the need for student growth, these conditions in and of themselves are not calamitous.  As I have written and presented at various meetings and PD sessions in the weeks since our Bargaining was suspended in August, there are no clear state mandates for student growth and that practitioner experts may be the best choices for determining it—in other words, teachers.

Hence, our “dashboard” menu for possible measurements which was distributed this fall is a start to find measurements, but it is hardly exhaustive.  This series of articles and reflections on student growth, then, is a means for our membership to continue the conversation, to find what works, and to make the best of Michigan statutes.  If we do very well (and find similar-minded collaboration with our local administrators), we might even become better teachers for it.

And so a few basic glossary points to begin (others will appear as needed below)

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·         “Student Growth” – It is important to note that the phrase in 1249 does not mandate “student academic growth.”  This allows teachers in non-core areas to consider indirect or behavioral data in measuring student performance.  For instance, counselors might consider truancy as an area for student improvement (reasoning that absent students cannot learn).  Classroom teachers might be similarly creative in considering what causes students to learn.

·         “Other objective measures” – From our local dashboard, we agreed that we could never anticipate all of the potential and future assessments which may be produced for student growth, but that if teachers employed an objective (not anecdotal) measurement, it could be considered valid for purposes of “student growth.”

·         “Multiple measures” -- This legal term demands that teachers not hinge any one student skill on a single evaluation instrument (nor even consider only one student skill to measure for their evaluation). 

By now we know the challenges of working fairly with a values-added model of student growth, of allowing our careers to be tied exclusively to broad national-level scoring. What we may be less confident in are the alternatives. But surprise, largely, teaching professionals already do everything the law asks. 

I will volunteer myself to test these methods against the legal wording, the district’s emerging practice, and my own common sense to see what works and what fails in measuring “student growth.”  In this sense, I become something of a classroom lab scientist, experimenting with professional research and my own practice; at their best the Michigan statutes ask us all to be scientists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on any of these objectives for an expanded discussion and defense of their use.

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.” 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.