Putting the Pieces Together

I recently traveled to the Washington, D.C. area to visit with my parents.  During one of the days of our visit we headed down to the Mall to see all the monuments.  I had not been to the Nation's capital since the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial had been completed and I was very interested in seeing it.  Upon entering from the Tidal Basin, visitors are greeted by a towering statue of Martin Luther as he appears to be emerging from an uncut piece of stone.  As I stood there staring at the statue and taking a few pictures, I found myself thinking about the sculptor's intentions.  Why did it look like an uncompleted sculpture?  What was the message?  Was the sculptor being too obtuse?  Then I took two steps to the left to get out of the way of a family trying to take a picture and the whole thing came into focus.  Written on Martin Luther King Jr.'s right hand side is this quote, "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."  From my position, I was able to see the quote, the Stone of Hope with Dr. King emerging and behind it (which I just thought was a wall) the mountain of despair.  From that slight shift in physical perspective, I was able to see the sculpture's intent.  I went from looking at the trees to seeing the whole forest.

During the long drive home, my mind continuously drifted back to this moment and its relation to the frenzy of public school education.  I thought about how many times over the past few years that I have found myself staring intently at the fine details and intricate patterns of a tree, studying its bark, anxiously worrying if it will survive the storm or if I am strong enough to climb it; all the while missing the fact I am surrounded by a vast interconnected forest.  Recently, we have all noticed a lot of trees being added to our forest: common core standards, educator evaluations, PARCC assessments, Race to the Top, and in our district regionalization.  At any given minute, it has appeared that one of these trees was more important than all the rest, only to find that the next minute the importance had shifted.  It is time that we take a step back and look at the forest.

The corner pieces

I am sure that any of the major initiatives taken over the past few years could be used as the perspective to see the forest, and people smarter than I would argue their points well.  However, I see the new educator evaluation system in Massachusetts as the vehicle for connecting the trees.  Lets take a second and re-familiarize ourselves with the major components of the new system.  The new evaluation process is anchored by a set of rubrics that define the qualities and practices that are good teaching and good educational leadership.  The rubrics were developed using decades of research and the observation/sharing of best practice.  The rubrics examine teaching/leadership in four major areas (Standards) that slightly vary from teacher to specialized instructional support personnel to school administrator, to superintendent.  While there is some variation, they all align and are connected to the main themes of curriculum development, meeting the diverse needs of learners, connecting with families and the community, and continuous professional development.  Each of these is further clarified with indicators and elements that provide specific language that can help educators examine their own practice for areas of strength and improvement.  In addition to the rubric, the process requires goal setting by all licensed members of the school system.  Educators are responsible for creating two goals: one focused on professional growth and the other on student learning.  

The edges

It is important at this point to stress that this is an educator evaluation system, not just a teacher evaluation system.  Under the law, every position that requires a license must be evaluated in this system.  The genius comes in the fact that the system is the same for everyone.  Since the system is the same, it is easy for it to be aligned.  The system can be used to set the boundaries of the forest.  How might this work?  Let's say there was a school district that was performing pretty well, but felt like it could be doing better.  The district felt that given its demographics, resources and funding that they should be producing higher levels of student achievement.  As a result, the district leadership decides to create a student learning goal to increase student achievement across the district by 10% by the end of a two year cycle.  Building principals are then instructed to examine their building based data and generate a building based student learning goal that aligns with the district goal.  One elementary school in the district examines their data and determines that too many students are not successfully meeting the core competencies for achievement which is stressing the intervention system.  As a result, the building principal creates a student learning goal to increase the number of students achieving core competencies and reduce the number of students in the intervention system.  The principal also determines that in order to best support this goal, he/she will set a professional practice goal to increase his visits to the classroom and provide quality feedback to classroom teachers.  As a part of that goal, he will re-examine the qualities of effective teaching, and use language from the teacher rubric in his conversations with teachers.  The principal shares his goals with the staff at the start of

school and encourages his teams to align their goals to that of the school.  In examining their data, grade-level teams determine that they do not have a consistent set of common assessments with common criteria for success.  As a professional practice goal, they determine to generate a set of common assessments that are aligned to the newly released Common Core State Standards.  Quickly they realize that they can use this goal as a way to generate a student learning goal and determine that they will expect 80% of students at their grade-level to perform successfully on their common assessments.  An team of interventionists determine the best way to support the building goal is to work to exit students from the intervention program at a higher rate.  Through conversation among themselves and with the classroom teachers, they realize that there is not common criteria for success that defines a student's exit from the intervention program.  Therefore this team decides on a professional practice goal to create entrance and exit criteria for the intervention program that is communicated clearly to all stakeholders.  

Filling in the middle

So where does the rest fit in?  Well that is the beauty.... everywhere!  Can you design quality assessments without a deep knowledge of the Common Core State Standards?  Should you be creating assessments that are aligned with your current testing format, the format of the reading/math series your district adopted 5 years ago, or something aligned with the new PARCC assessment?  How should the school lead teacher collaborative time?  Does it make sense to fill it with administrative tasks or perhaps allow complete autonomy? Or does it make more sense to require staff to use their collaborative time to work on team goals (from the goal setting in the evaluation process) and set calendar bound expectations for products that are driven by the teams' goals.  Districts must examine the professional development calendar so as to best support the needs of the staff.  Working with building principals, the district can support scheduling that allows for regular opportunities for teacher collaboration in meaningful teams focused on common goals that best meet the needs of students.  

As teachers and administrators work together they are generating a plethora of evidence to support their own proficiency within the new evaluation system.  The process encourages reflection on progress, growth and outcomes; a process that naturally loops us back to the beginning and forces us to look for new opportunities for growth.  Whatever the future brings, whichever initiatives districts seek to undertake the new evaluation system can be used a a vehicle for framing those initiatives.  If an initiative does not seek to improve the quality of curriculum and assessment, improve our ability to teach all students, improve our relationships with he community or improve our professional interactions it probably is not a worthwhile initiative.