I was recently asked two questions from a talented teacher who is engaged with her school and team in developing common assessments. Following are the questions and my response. 

Questions: “Can you share some thoughts about aligning the formative assessments to the quarterly assessment? Should formative questions look like those to be seen on the quarterly assessment? Should questions on the quarterly assessment be new compared to those previously seen by students?”

Response: Let me give a little background. First, it’s important to recognize that thoughtful schools and teams have a balanced approach when it comes to assessments. Meaning, they have and use common summative assessments, common formative assessments and formative assessments.  There are distinctly different purposes for each. 

Common Summative Assessments
The quarterly assessments your team has developed are generally more summative in nature. They are an event used to tell how well the strategies used by teachers worked. They tell how well students have learned, and often used to assign a grade. But because the information from summative assessments is collected so infrequently, they are not as useful in helping to improve learning. The information is too late. What they are useful for is establishing what is essential to be learned within the time period, and through the process of development, have given clear direction to teacher teams that the standards alone don’t.  We often talk about the power of formative assessment, but don’t underestimate the power of summative assessments! They play a huge role in developing a guaranteed and viable curriculum! (Your team needs to celebrate what you’ve accomplished so far!)

Formative Assessments
Formative assessments don’t have to be common and can essentially be any task that helps the teacher gather information about student progress. If the teacher is deliberate and thoughtful, any in-class activity, task or assignment, can yield tons of information and allow the teacher to provide on-demand intervention or plan new whole group direct instruction. This type of assessing doesn’t have to be an event. “Good teachers” are constantly gathering information through assignments, activities, or by just walking around that informs their feedback and instruction. “Master teachers” track that information over time about each individual student’s progress so they can be strategic about improving each child’s learning. 

Common Formative Assessments
The purposes of the common formative assessment is three fold:

1.Uncover the most promising practices or strategies for teaching a specific skill with the students we serve
2.Gather information that helps to diagnose, respond to and improve student learning
3.Make pacing, materials or assessment adjustments

It’s only through sharing our progress or results that we best accomplish these purposes.  

Now, back to your original question, “Should formative questions look like those to be seen on the quarterly assessment? Or, should questions on the quarterly assessments be new compared to those previously seen by the students?” 
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The answer is, yes to both!  We have to remember our purposes. The purpose for creating summative assessments was to establish what needs to be learned. In your best judgement the tasks you’ve created on the summative assessment are representative of that expectation. In other words, if kids can do well with the tasks on the summative assessment, we think they’ve actually learned the skill. That said, if we have done a decent job of formatively gathering information about their progress along the way, we should already know how kids will perform when they take the summative test, right? 

Regardless, it should never be about kids passing the test. It should be about each kid learning the skill(s).  So, again, yes, the common formative tasks could look like the summative assessment tasks, and that might be a good place to start, because of the hard work done to ensure those are at the appropriate rigor levels. But, they probably shouldn’t only look like the summative tasks. The reason is, because if kids have really learned the skill, they should be able to perform tasks in lots of formats and contexts, familiar and not so familiar. The process is about learning the skill, not about passing tests! The questions you’re looking to answer through your formative and common formative assessment practices are:

• Do our kids really know how to do this?
• Why is each kid that is struggling not learning yet?
• What are we going to do to address the specific deficits of each kid?

When you’re assessing, either formatively as an individual teacher, or as a team through common formative assessments, you’re trying to tease out actionable information that will help unlock individual student’s learning. To that end, I would say that the more formatively you’re assessing, the more I would suggest novelty and increased rigor in those tasks. In other words, while in the safety of the low stakes environment of your classroom is where you would want to help kids try to tackle the skill in unfamiliar contexts and rigor levels. Your careful observation over time while they are trying these unfamiliar tasks will tell you, better than the summative assessment, whether they are getting it. And, if you’re strategic about how you collect that information individually and as a team, you will know what the root of each child’s deficits are and therefore be able to help them really learn the skill… and oh yeah, pass the test.   

Click here to tweet: “Should Common Assessments Look Like Summative Assessments?” Reading this piece by @Aaronhansen77 

Because most teams rarely get to the place where they really know each child’s specific learning needs, they group kids not according to specific intervention needs, but instead more generally. The groups usually go something like this: “low group”, “middle group”, and “high group”.” When I ask, for example, “what does it mean to be a “high” kid?,” I usually get some overarching description of what the teacher feels the child’s development is, their family support, or even a description of perceived intelligence. Eek! These groups are usually not focused on specific standards, targets or specific skills. Instead they are based on some general overreaching judgement or one standardized reading or test score and almost always not flexible. Once in a group, you stay in. It becomes part of your identity. 

Captain Obvious here, but there are lots of problems with the practice of labeling individuals or groups, particularly in an environment of education where we shouldn’t have preconceived limiting beliefs about any child’s potential. Research is clear that we treat kids differently when they are assigned a label. (West Virginia Department of Education’s compilation of research.) That said, I fully recognize that when I’ve heard my good-hearted educator colleagues use terms like “high kids” and “low kids”, they are not intentionally trying to label kids or limit their beliefs about kids’ potential. It’s like when Grandma Hansen would call me a “fat kid.” She definitely didn’t mean any harm, but as the recipient of that particular label of endearment, it wasn’t good use of language none-the-less. 

Intentions aside, that type of language makes me wonder about educators’ beliefs about learning in general. 

When teachers talk about their “low kids” it feels permanent to me, as if they expect them to always be a “low kid”. “Of course he struggled learning X, he is a low kid.” Or, they always expect a “high kid” to always be a “high kid”, or a “SPED kid” to always need special education services. But, if learning is a continuum, can’t people move on that continuum? Can’t our abilities improve or change as we try harder or just develop better strategies? In other words, isn’t it our job to help the “low kids” become “high kids” and to challenge the “high kids” sufficiently enough that at some point they might experience authentic struggle- and therefore be low in a standard or skill? My point is that the way that the terms like “low kid” or “high kid” are used, it makes me think that those using those terms believe that once a “low kid”, always a “low kid” and once a “high kid”, always so and etc. That’s just not true. 

As a learner, my current understanding of one target might be lacking (low) while my current understanding in another target might be strong (high). That doesn’t make ME low or high. It makes my current position on the learning continuum low or high. In my own case as a student, I had strengths in some areas and not in others. How about you? In high school I probably would have been sorted as a “low kid” in English and possibly a “middle” or “high kid” in math. Given some of my writing endeavors, and my lack of math accomplishments, clearly, the labels wouldn’t have been a good indication of my permanent position or potential.

Flexible Groups
I’m not opposed to flexible groups for intervention, far from it. It is the only feasible way to provide targeted intervention in schools that lack unlimited resources for one on one tutoring. Flexible grouping is a good thing that works amazingly well IF teacher teams do it well. Start with these 6 things:

1. Develop groups and design interventions that are specific to students’ needs. Example: If kids are struggling on an assessment because they don’t conceptually understand common denominators, don’t just practice finding common denominators, design an intervention that helps them develop conceptual understanding first, then let them practice. (This means you have to be collecting good formative data for making these diagnoses accurately.) 
2. Be reasonable about how big the group can be. If kids didn’t learn what was intended in a class of 30, it’s unlikely they will learn it in an intervention group of 20. The more intensive the need, the smaller the group should be. 
3. Help kids see their position in regard to a target and celebrate movement toward the target. As Rick Stiggins is fond of saying, “Students can hit any target they can see which stands still.” Actually achieving targets will do more for motivating students than anything else. –That’s a whole different blog.  
4. Groups have to be flexible. As soon as a student has developed proficiency, move them.    
5. Stop using labels! If you’ve followed the steps above, “low” or “high” are no longer sufficient descriptions of your groups, because your process is not about sorting, but now about providing intervention for small groups of students with the same cause for deficiency. When describing the group to colleagues, you might say, “the group who is working to develop conceptual understanding of fractions.” It’s a longer description, but far more accurate and transient than “low kids”.

When schools get better at formatively determining needs in relation to specific targets, and doing something about it, their language naturally evolves so that they quit using labels. Instead of saying Johnny is a “low kid” or “high kid” they say, “Jonny is struggling finding relevant evidence.” They describe the child’s position on the learning continuum at that given moment (a temporary position) in regard to that particular standard or target. 

Yes, it takes more time to say, “Jonny is at the lower end of the achievement spectrum with regard to finding evidence” than it does to say, “Jonny is a “low kid””. However, you’re making a shift in your own mind as well as the mind of any hearing individuals, including the child, that you’re describing a temporary condition, not the child’s identity. 

In a profession that is so happy to create impressive sounding jargon, can’t we get a little tighter about how we talk about children? Some people might argue that I’m just being one of those overly sensitive politically correct people. I can respect that opinion if you’re willing to start using similar labels while talking about adults. “Since you’re a “low teacher”, you’ll be going with the “low group” for professional development while the “high teachers” go to “high group” PD.” 

In my own development as a teacher and leader, I was guilty of unintentionally using some of these labels.  But as I learned better, I changed the way I spoke. Once we know better, we have an obligation to do better. Just like we expect our students to move on the continuum, this blog isn’t meant to be an indictment or labeling of you or your past practices. Just use what you now know to do better, to move on the continuum! Change your lexicon to be more precise as you describe children’s current position on the learning continuum in relation to the target. Then help those around you do the same. By changing the language, you are helping yourself, your colleagues and kids see that their current positions are not permanent labels, but moveable positions. Then help kids move by following the steps listed above.

Click here to tweet: “Flexible Groups or Labeling Kids? Check out @Aaronhansen77's latest blog: https://ctt.ec/f1PT2+ #edleadership #atplc”

Aaron Hansen, Leadership Consultant, NNRPDP
 
One of the most common complaints I hear from school leaders today is, “I don’t have time to get it all done!”  It’s true!  Barraged by a litany of demands, now, more than ever, the list is just too long.  The pressures that have always been there are still there, student discipline, parent concerns, leading and managing personnel, extra-curriculars, management of facilities, budgets, schedules, and more.  As if those tried and true time demands weren’t enough, administrators now have new evaluation systems, bullying legislation requiring intense amounts of time and paperwork, new state and local testing systems, new student information systems, Read by 3, RTI and any initiatives that the school may have had the audacity to self-select because they thought those initiatives might actually be good for their kids.  It’s intense!

With so many demands, it’s impossible, that’s right, impossible to do everything well!  That said, I’m not sure we should.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying.  I do believe it’s still possible to not only do a good job, but a great job as a principal.  But, my image of being a good principal is someone who is leading change and improvement in a school, not someone who’s getting all of the demands done.  In my opinion, the principal who is getting all of the demands done is a distracted principal, not an effective one.  We’ve all had those days where we could have been the poster child for Starbuck’s Venti double expresso, super productive and efficient all day, yet never actually doing anything of meaning to lead the changes or improvements we envision.  With real change as the goal, time management isn’t as much about efficiency as it is about priorities.

“What are you saying?  Just don’t do those things that aren’t relevant to reaching our vision?”  Yes, stop doing STUFF that doesn’t get you closer to your vision.  “Leaders in sustained successful organizations focus on a small number of core priorities, stay on message, and develop others toward the same end, making corrections as new learnings occur.” (Fullan, Change Leader: Learning to Do What Matters Most (2011), p. 30)  If you’re not comfortable stopping things cold turkey, at least consider doing some things less well so that your limited resources of time and mental energy can focus on the things that really matter, those things that are going to really move the needle in your school. 

Assuming you’ve taken the time to truly articulate your vision, where you want your school to go and what it will look like in 5 to 10 years, then following are a few tips to help you move towards it:

1. Do what matters most first.  Many people make a to-do list first thing in the morning.  They empty their brain onto a piece of paper and then start at the top, working their way to the end.  Or, they start with whatever is most time sensitive. Instead try writing each of your to-do’s on its own sticky note. Then prioritize, asking yourself, “Which of these to-do’s is going to get our school closer to our vision than anything else today?” Write an A at the top of that sticky.  Do your A priority first!  Take the time that you need and do A quality work!

To have the kind of mental space needed for A priority tasks, try finding a place outside of your office that you can be uninterrupted.  Part of my A priority work as a principal, involved working with my leadership team as we planned and carried out plans toward our vision.  Occasionally I took them to breakfast for special meetings.  Those breakfast meetings were always extremely productive because to warrant the time away, we had a very specific focus relevant to our vision and we were uninterrupted from the distractions of meeting in the school.  Believe it or not, there were never any crisis that took place during that time that couldn’t be dealt with when we returned. 

2. Do, Delegate or Dump.  With the rest of your sticky notes, divide them in half as B or C priorities.  B priorities might support the vision in an indirect way.  B tasks often have direct consequences for the school, others or you if they don’t get done.  You have to do them and do them well.  Okay, fair enough, but do your B’s after your A priority. 

When considering C level tasks, ask yourself if this is really a priority.  If it isn’t, dump it right there.  If it is necessary, who in your organization could do this adequately- not well, adequately?  Done is better than perfect for C level tasks and the less time you spend on C level tasks, the more time you have to do what you’ve been paid to do, think about and lead toward the vision (NEPF Instructional Leadership Standard 1).  The people who sit outside of your office are called Administrative Assistants for a reason.  Use them!  Likely you won’t get to all of your C level tasks every day.  If a C task roles over more than 3 days, let’s get real!  You were never going to do it anyway.  Dump it!
 
The famous quote attributed to Bill Gates comes to mind, “People over estimate what they can accomplish in a year and grossly underestimate what they can do in a decade.”  I think the concept applies in the shorter run.  Think about your best teachers.  They have a clear vision of outcomes they desire and they are intentional about what they do every day in order to reach those outcomes.  As a product of staying focused, they get amazing results.  Good leaders are no different.  They know what they want and they prioritize their time to do what matters most without getting distracted.  Being too busy to really lead isn’t necessarily a symptom of a lack of time or poor time management.  Being too busy to take time on those things that matter most is a symptom of a lack of priorities.  Get clear about what you want, do priority A’s first every day and recognize and accept that not getting it all done is okay.    
 
Note: Momentum is an App that can help you create your priority A for the day and to-do’s digitally.  The app pops up to remind you each time you open a new tab in your browser.  Just make sure to label your to-do’s A, B or C.    
 
To request consulting services for your organization, visit NNRPDP.com