What do you subtract to get accountability?

Lauding the Finnish education system is certainly nothing new but something that I came across last week has really stuck with me and I thought it was worth sharing. Morgan Spurlock (the Supersize Me guy) has a new series on CNN called Inside Man and last week he went inside the education system. He spent half of the show visiting a Finnish school and talking to various administrators, teachers, and students. At one point he asked an administrator what he thought about the American obsession with testing. The admin smirked and replied:

“Accountability is what you have left when you remove responsibility from the equation.”

It was clear that this wasn’t just a random statement but a philosophy embodied by everyone involved. Trust in teachers to be the professionals that they are and for students to focus on what they needed to do is the lynchpin of their system. There is no magic formula and in fact their lessons don't look remarkably different than those in a typical American classroom. The difference is simply a trust in the fulfillment of responsibilities. It also doesn’t hurt that their schools are inspiring and modern buildings whereas ours tend to look like (and are often run like) minimum security prisons.  

Spurlock spent the second half of the show in American classroom. Unfortunately, it was in a NYC charter school and not representative of the quality of education or what happens in American schools overall. The lesson planning and management protocol looked pretty gimmicky and low level to me and I would argue that in this case they are subtracting dignity to get accountability.

Update 8/5/13: Check out the EduShyster's much better written take on the charter school piece: 
A Second is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Pinterest for Displaying Model Student Work

The smell of wicker makes me queasy and since Pinterest initially seemed to me like a virtual version of a Michael’s store, I swore I would never use it.  However, I have been searching for a solution for displaying digital student work for quite some time and hadn’t found anything that was fitting the purpose. In a paperless classroom, the walls no longer work for doing such a thing and work tends to fade from memory when posted to a blog or edmodo. So I gave Pinterest a try and have got to say that I am now loving it. It is perfect for the task of displaying exemplary student work to use as examples and motivation.

I’m still fairly new to the Pinterest world but am clearly seeing how it can be a great resource for curating resources across a range of topics. You can follow my developing boards here: http://pinterest.com/blschum/boards/

What About Bob?- Part 3: Have you evolved beyond empty compliments?

Some light summer reading.

This week (it turned out to be a few weeks) I will be reflecting on my involvement with the Marzano Causal Evaluation Model which has recently been adopted as the teacher evaluation framework in most of the state of Florida. I volunteered to participate in intensive coaching and filming sessions throughout the past year and a half that were sometimes stressful but always revealing. I had always been a fan of Marzano’s work but was skeptical about the model for several reasons. Over the next several posts I will be outlining some of the changes that occurred in my thoughts related to the model and why I am excited about the direction that it is taking us in.

The first formal evaluation that I had as a teacher was an extremely frustrating and unfulfilling experience. I had set an observation time sometime in October with the principal who was going to come into my room and evaluate me as I taught a lesson. I lost sleep and stressed about it for days as I continually changed my lesson to try and make sure it was good enough. When the appointed time came the principal did show up. I stopped by to see her at the end of the day and she apologized for getting caught up in something else and we set another time the following week.

Again I lost sleep and stressed about it as I developed a new model lesson. When the second appointed day in mid-November came the principal again did not show up. Trying very hard not to take it personally, I once again tracked her down and we set another observation time. She actually showed up the third time and spent about 15 minutes in my room. When we finally met later that week to discuss the notes she had taken on the observation form I was relieved to see that I had scored at the top level in every category. When I asked her what I could improve on she responded that the kids really liked me and gave me some vague suggestions about differentiation. I left her office feeling good but it didn’t last long as a realized that I really had no idea what I had done well or what I could do to improve. The rosy feedback I got was just a bunch of empty compliments.

Since then I have had many evaluations that were very similar including walk throughs that lasted under a minute, empty suggestions based on check marked forms, and even summative evaluations completed without an observation after the last day of school in June. As I have traveled around and met with a variety of teachers across the country over the past few years I have discovered that this story is more common than not. It seems everybody has war stories about worthless evaluation.

I initially viewed the Marzano framework through that lens; another reform effort that we were going to throw our resources and time into only to have it disappear once it proved ineffective in the real world. The reality is that it represents not just a reform effort but an evolution in how we approach the issue of evaluation. It is about empowering teachers to grow and focus on the areas that they want to improve in. When applied correctly it is not about accountability, “gotcha”, or checklists. It is simply about growth.

The potential impact upon students is exciting. Over the past decade the focus on teacher accountability has shifted into classrooms where increasing amounts of time are being spent on uninspired test-prep activities. It stands to reason that a shift in how we evaluate teachers would also influence what is happening in the classroom and that teachers themselves would begin focusing more on student growth in authentic ways.  

Any change is going to meet resistance and a shift to an evaluation a system as complex as this one is going to be messy at the beginning. Perseverance and a strong focus on growth is key to its success. The bottom line is that it has made me a better teacher and I think it is the most promising development in education since edtech.

What About Bob?- Part 2: Art, Science, and Coping Without Fabio at Shortstop

This week I will be reflecting on my involvement with the Marzano Causal Evaluation Model which has recently been adopted as the teacher evaluation framework in most of the state of Florida. I volunteered to participate in intensive coaching and filming sessions throughout the past year and a half that were sometimes stressful but always revealing. I had always been a fan of Marzano’s work but was skeptical about the model for several reasons. Over the next several posts I will be outlining some of the changes that occurred in my thoughts related to the model and why I am excited about the direction that it is taking us in.

One of my first impressions and a frequent comment that I hear from colleagues is that the causal evaluation model is too prescribed and focused on the actions of the teacher. At the beginning this is probably true just as it would be of learning anything that is new. After all when you first learn how to ride a bike you have to concentrate pretty hard on each of the individual tasks required to keep you from hitting the pavement. As you develop proficiency you stop thinking about all the individual parts and start concentrating on other things. Once you become comfortable with the model I was much more in tune to how the students were reacting to what was happening as oppose to my actions.

The other frequent comment that I hear related to this is that good teachers have been using all of these strategies for a long time already and we don’t need Marzano or anybody else to tell us to do them. Again, there is some truth to this and good teachers have probably been doing well at incorporating a majority of the 60 elements. The difference though is that the causal model provides a framework and motivation to very deliberately improve each of the strategies that we have already been using. We all get locked into our habits and tend to have certain strategies that have worked well get reused year after year without considering how to improve them. Even veteran teachers can benefit from critically examining those strategies that they have in their tool belts.

Many of the arguments against any reform movement including the causal evaluation model is that as an art form, teaching cannot be effectively measured. Good teaching is undoubtedly an art and it should go without saying that you have no place in the classroom if you cannot develop relationships with students and are deeply committed to positive change on a very personal level. The art of it only takes you so far though and the science aspect needs to have a more prominent role in informing practice. We are in the infancy of using big data to inform decision making and it while it is impacting many aspects of life it still has not been used effectively in education. We need to take the leap from using data in an NCLB accountability style to a more democratic growth style.

Consider the clip below from Moneyball. A Sabermetrics approach would be a much more unlikely proposition when it comes to teachers than ballplayers but there are some comparisons that we could make. Many of the current corporate sponsored reform initiatives are from the perspective that we simply need to replace our teaching force with Harvard grads who would be chomping at the bit to go into teaching if it simply paid more. The thinking goes that if you could raise the standard required to enter the profession and then the salaries the field would be flooded with genius ivy league grads who would propel us into American domination. The truth of the matter is that we are not going to get a Yankees lineup with an As budget. Fabio is not going to be our shortstop. We need to develop the prospects that we have by focusing on growth and not accountability.

What's the problem? How do we make data useful instead of punitive for educators?

What About Bob?- Part 1: Complexity and Expertise

Beginning of the Year Thinking End of the Year Thinking

This week I will be reflecting on my involvement Robert Marzano's Causal Evaluation Model which has recently been adopted as the teacher evaluation framework in most of the state of Florida. I volunteered to participate in intensive coaching and filming sessions throughout the past year and a half that were sometimes stressful but always revealing. I had always been a fan of Marzano’s work but was skeptical about the model for several reasons. Over the next several posts I will be outlining some of the changes that occurred in my thoughts related to the model and why I am excited about the direction that it is taking us in.

The Marzano Causal Evaluation Model is overwhelming at first glance. It covers 60 different elements of teaching across 4 domains including classroom strategies and behaviors, planning and preparing, reflecting on teaching, and collegiality and professionalism. Teachers can be evaluated in each of the 60 elements and rated on a 5 level scale from “not using” to “innovating,” which means that a teacher is not only using a given strategy but monitoring its effect on all students and adapting it to fit the needs of individuals. My initial reaction to it was that all of the elements were good things but it was way too complex to become an effective tool for busy teachers and administrators in the real world.

As I finish my second year of working with the model I have to say that my understanding of it has evolved and I am now a full fledged proponent of its use. The complexity of the model is actually its strength and not its weakness as it switches the focus on growth as oppose to accountability. Traditional evaluation models and the current drive to use test scores as a basis for rating teachers tend to be simplistic and only cover a few elements of actual teaching. This has created an atmosphere of “gotcha” type evaluations that have provided very little actionable feedback and bred mistrust and disenfranchisement. Simply put, building expertise is not an easy process and it demands a complex tool to support it.

The Marzano model is about empowering teachers and the specific focus on a few areas of need at a time. When implemented correctly, teachers get to choose elements to focus on to build expertise each year. This year I focused on two elements (tracking student progress and generating and testing hypothesis) and really had a chance to develop expertise in using them in the classroom. It required me to really break down and focus on the steps I was using with these particular strategies and then look for evidence in student responses and work to measure the effectiveness of what I was doing. As I gained fluency and confidence in using the strategies I was then able to combine several in what are referred to as macrostrategies (several strategies combined). The lessons that I built using my focus strategies were the best ones of the year and I will be able to build on them next year. Considering that I will be able to devote 10 months to becoming an expert in 2 more strategies next year it becomes apparent how powerful the cumulative effect of this could be in the long term.

It has been said that talent gets you in the door but it is your work ethic and practice that determines where you go from there. A purposeful and comitted focus on building expertise using a growth and not a simplistic “gotcha” model promises exciting things for those who are willing to devote themselves to it.

Malcolm Gladwell on the 10,000 hour rule. How does it support a growth as oppose to accountability model?

Be an Innovative Teacher in Marzano Domain 3: Case Studies in Differentiated Professional Development

I just got back from the 2nd Annual International Marzano Conference where I was lucky to be able to present with one of my amazing colleagues. We talked about how we have been using the Marzano framework for making the shift from soul crushing traditional PD to differentiated PD that is empowering our teachers and changing the culture of our school.

Technology in PD: Plan, Don't Ban

I just finished participating in a two day workshop on mentoring teachers in differentiated instruction put on by a professional development team in a very large Florida school district. The workshop was kicked off by having the collaborative norms read to us as has become the standard practice while attending such things. The facilitator paid particular attention the "responsible use of technology" and made it clear that they would prefer we not use the iPads and smart phones sitting in front of just about everybody.

As the workshop went on, the facilitators called everybody's attention to the last "norm" on their poster several times as people used iPads to snap pictures of the posters we created or sneak a look at their emails. My colleagues and I found this to be a bit demeaning.

The presenters could have planned to integrate technology to make their workshop more interactive. Resources to backchannel, collaborate, and network have been in common use at conferences for years now. The content of the workshop itself was mostly good but the presentation became a bit tedious and it reminded me of the schoolmarm types who are still complaining about kids having phones in their classes.

If you are still fighting it, you haven't figured out how to use it.