Commissioner's Remarks 1/30

The commissioner spoke to the opening meeting of this month's SBOE meeting. These are my notes and interpretations. My words. Nothing about this is official.

Here's the link to the audio.
Here are the highlights from my notes.

1. TEKS GUIDES: They are working on materials to support the field. TEA is creating a TEKS guide to support new TEKS. It will include what grade level, rigorous student work looks like. It will help teachers unpack the assessment and give a standard interpretation of the TEKS. They hope to have sample assessment items linked to each standard. They are trying to make sure that this material becomes a bridge between standards and assessments. They are going to start with SLAR and hope to have things ready by Spring of 2020. They won't be able to release everything at once, but will roll things out as they are finalized.

2. INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS PORTAL: They are working on an Instructional Materials Portal. (This is not required by law.) This will be a place where information will be available for TEA and the field to review the new Proclamation materials using a rubric. The portal will also make it possible for us to see what materials are associated with assessment gains. The commissioner likened it to the What Works Clearinghouse. The example he gave was about which materials were being used by schools that received A ratings. He also said that lesson study findings could also support this work. They may begin with review about the items that we know where students traditionally struggle. They are hoping to report effect size for the materials for specific areas of content. Only materials submitted through the official process would be included. Note: This kind of narrow level analysis is hard to do. We will need to see how this develops.

3. OPEN SOURCE: TEA is working on legislative requirements to create open source materials. They will hire a vendor to create the materials. The vendor cannot sell the materials. Anyone can use the materials for free. Textbook companies can license the materials, develop them, and use them in their textbooks. They will be sending out an RFP soon.

4. Reading Academies: They are working on adding instructional materials, examples of student level work, and assessment items to match the training. They hope to bring in materials from the Proclamations to support the training.

5. BUILDING NEW ASSESSMENTS: When creating assessments in the past, they have done a reverse review with the existing test bank to see what matched the new standards. The commissioner wants a better approach to that process that begins with the standards, creates a new blueprint, creates new assessment samples, then field testing, etc. to build the item bank directly from the standards.

6. STANDARD ADOPTION TIMELINES: Because all of these ideas are time intensive, the commissioner suggests that we reconsider the standard adoption timelines. Morath says that this kind of process is complex and needs 2-3 years for development. It might even require extending the Proclamations across bienniums. Board members suggested that there should also be a delay before STAAR test scores (for new TEKS subjects) would be used for accountability purposes - a Report/Report/Use cycle. That means that kids would take STAAR for two years and scores would be reported. On the third year, scores would be used for accountability. (NOTE: That was PROPOSED. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WILL DO YET.)

7. HARVEY and ACCOUNTABILITY: There are three options the agency is looking at to establish meaningful cut points on how they will use test scores and participation for accountability. First, they are thinking about running the data twice. Once with everyone. And then a second time removing students who were impacted by the storm. Second, they are looking at the degree of a student body that was effected, the number of instructional days missed, and if schools had to move locations. Third, they are looking at how many school staff were displaced or homeless during this year as well. They are working on respectful solutions for the situation.

8. SPED Investigation: The federal review is complete. They have submitted an initial plan and a timeline. They are working on a comprehensive plan to submit to the feds by April.

9. PROCLAMATION 2019: Proclamation 2019 goes forward as planed. Stay tuned for accountability requirements (perhaps a Mulligan?) for 3-8 in 2020.

X Marks the Spot

*Warning: This is not what I normally write. These words may need one of those black screens that cover graphic images on Facebook.

Traffic on Georgia and James Louis seemed sluggish. It took quite a while to pull into the the stream. The cars in front of me slowly swerved, one by one, in slow arcs around this scene.

A beautiful golden retriever lay in the road. Half  on the curb. His head on the asphalt, Red blood pooling under his clouded brown eyes. 

The woman stood from her place by his side, sobbing, and walked toward her car. 

A man in a blue car drove up the wrong way in the access to the houses.

She saw him coming. She hadn't seen the dog. 

And the rest of us...continued our funeral procession 

well past the flashing school zone light.

I didn't see what happened after that. Both parties grieving...and now I sit at the screen with hot eyes and tears that will make it hard to see through my contacts for the rest of the day. But bless that poor lady. And thank her for staying by the dog until his owner returned. She did the right thing. And I admire her.

Grading Essays: Cease and Disssssssissssst

Marking on student papers -grading, pinpointing, and correcting -  is a waste of time. It doesn't matter how much you write, how often you do it, of how good you are at it. The Education Endowment Foundation from the University of Oxford gives a review of the evidence on written marking (Elliot, Baird, Hopfenbeck, Ingram, Thompson, Usher, Zantout, Richardson, and Coleman, 2016). Kids don't do anything with your feedback and persist making the same mistakes.

But yet, English teachers spend copious amounts of time grading papers, marking rubrics, and so on. Beers and Probst (2017) discuss two questions to help us disrupt our thinking about this dilemma: "What needs to change? What assumptions make that change hard?" (p. 7).

When I ask those questions about writing, these are the answers that make the most sense to me: We need to stop grading essays. It's hard to stop because we think we are supposed to. And we don't know what to do instead.

Mendelson's Solution:

Mendelson (2018) provides an EXCELLENT solution. In this post, I lay out the steps he describes in the article and provide links to instructional materials to put his suggestions in place for your classroom. Mendelson still marks the essays, which I don't recommend. I think this must be addressed during the drafting stage through revisions conducted during writing workshop, student use of rubrics, peer feedback groups, and teacher conferences. Feedback is best when it comes at the formative stages and not after the final copy (Elliot, et al., 2016).

Mendelson (2018) describes five steps to this process: Review, reflect, research, revise, and reinforce. Here's a link to a simplified version for students. 

1. Review: Students evaluate feedback and/or marks on papers. The feedback must be: "specific, clear, contextualized, balanced, and forward-looking" (Mendelson, 2018). There's a lot to be said about what that looks like. I'll be addressing that in future posts. 
1. Students open a google sheet. Click the link to see the one I made for you. Students use this sheet all year long. 
2. Date: Students record the date so they can evaluate their progress over time. 
3. Name of the Assignment: Students record the title. They could even hyperlink the assignment instructions. 
2. Reflect: Students consider the feedback and select a focus for their revisions and edits. 
1. The feedback I am addressing is: In the spreadsheet, students record the feedback they are choosing to address. They must write it in their own words. 
2. Is this a recurring issue (Y/N): Over time, this allows students to see pesky problems that persist, realize that they have mastered a previous struggle, or see their readiness for a new level of writing sophistication. 
3. Research: Students are responsible for seeking their own solutions. They must look back at notes from mini-lessons, previous papers, or recollections from teacher/peer conferences. Students must look at handbooks and websites to find resources and solutions that guide their next steps. 
1. I researched a solution and found: In the spreadsheet column, students summarize their solutions in their own words. They could quote teacher or peer conversations that provided helpful solutions. Students can also copy and paste helpful links to resources. They could also insert links to pictures of notes or previous papers to support their synthesis of the solutions they have found. This is a great place for them to use the academic language of writing. 
2. My original looks like this: Students mine their papers to find examples where the feedback applies and where the resources identified solutions that they can employ. Students copy and paste the targeted text sections in the spreadsheet.
4. Revise: Students make the edits or revisions in their papers. 
1. I revised it to look like this: Students copy and paste the revisions or type the text into the spreadsheet. Students can work with peers or teachers during this stage as well to get needed support. 
5. Reinforcement: Students meet with peers to review their work and explain what they have learned. Peers help the student writer reflect on the accuracy, impact, and completeness of the changes. 
1. My work was reviewed by: In this column of the spreadsheet, students record the name of the people that helped them review their work. Students could also give specific quotes from the peer reviewers and how that refined their understanding. 
2. Teacher reinforcement:  The teacher can now review the work and give final commentary, design mini-lessons for the whole class, or provide further individual support. 
3. Feedforward: Goals for the next assignment: Students now think about how they will apply this new learning in future assignments. They use the spreadsheet to review previous lessons and set goals for the next writing performance. Then they use these lessons as they compose. (I added this last column from the feedback protocols suggested by Hattie and Temperley, 2007). 

Teach them to Fish: 

Mendelson (2018) goes on to describe how he compiles the student spreadsheets and sorts them to identify common problems that he should address with the class or small groups. Most of all, I think this process gives teachers a more simple way to grade. Grade the spreadsheet and not the whole paper. Seems like that is a better way to address how we can help the writer improve the current paper as well as the next one. 

Mendelson says that he developed his ideas on that old truism about teaching people to fish. Applied to writing, it might say, "Give a writer marks on paper, and you give him nothing. Teach a writer how to use the marks, and you help him be a better writer." 

References: 

Beers, K. and Probst, R. E. (2017). Disrupting thinking: Why how we read matters. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Elliot, V., Baird, J.E., Hopfenbeck, T. N., Ingram, J., Thompson, I., Usher, N., Zantout, M., and Richardson, J. ; Richardson, J. and Coleman, R. (2016) A marked improvement: A review of the evidence on written marking. Oxford University, Department of Education and Education Endowment Foundation.

Hattie, J., & Temperly, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research 77, (1), 81–112. DOI: 10.3102/003465430298487.

Mendelson, E. J. (2018). Use the five Rs to avoid the forbidden fruitlessness of feedback. ASCD Express 13(9). Accessed from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol13/1309-mendelson.aspx