The Big Picture on School Performance

This is a great piece by Sam. I would encourage you all to read his latest book: American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community. Here's a short review and commentary from Kenneth Bernstein.

Also, check out the work being done by the Forum for Education and Democracy in general -- included are videos of their recent capitol briefings; one of which includes our own, Dr. Angela Valenzuela.

-Patricia

Sam Chaltain, National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy
Huffington Post
February 3, 2010

On Feb. 1, President Obama vowed to toss out the nation's current school accountability system and replace it with a more balanced scorecard of school performance that looks at student growth and school progress.

I love the idea. Mr. Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan have repeatedly criticized the No Child Left Behind Act for keeping the "goals loose but the steps tight." On their watch, both men aspire to introduce a new law that keeps the "goals tight but the steps loose."

With that more flexible standard in mind, I have a scorecard to propose: the ABC's of School Success. It provides both structure and freedom by identifying five universal measurement categories -- Achievement, Balance, Climate, Democratic Practices and Equity -- and letting individual schools chose which data points to track under each category.

1. ACHIEVEMENT
If there is a bottom line in schools today, it's that educators must do whatever it takes to help close the achievement gap and improve student learning. To do so effectively and fully, schools must expand their measures for determining student achievement. After all, "achievement" isn't only about student test scores; it's also about other factors. The following are all critical to achievement:
• Teachers and administrators are skilled in their use of data to improve student learning and engagement.
• The school has identified aspirational "habits of mind and being" for students, and adopted assessment measures to track student development of these habits over time.
• The school uses assessments that require students to conduct research and scientific investigations, solve complex real-world problems in mathematics, and defend their ideas orally and in writing.
• The school provides learning support programs that address individual student needs and ensure that all students succeed.
• The school has developed a curriculum that is challenging, experiential, accessible, well-rounded, and relevant to a diverse student population.


If each school identified between three and 10 different data points (including, but not limited to, test scores) to assess their overall learning environment, we might start to see "achievement" as a broader set of measures, and evaluate the full extent to which we are supporting the young people we serve.

2. BALANCE
We all seek balance in our lives. The search for it is a fundamental part of the human condition. Imagine how much more enjoyable -- and effective -- our schools would be if we assessed them, in part, through this prism?

As part of its Whole Child Initiative, ASCD promotes the development of children who are healthy, safe, engaged, supported and challenged. Additionally, I would urge schools to consider the extent to which:

• Students have sufficient opportunities for enrichment activities like dance, art, physical education, etc.
• Effective vehicles are in place to help the school routinely communicate with its parents and the larger community.
• Effective vehicles are in place to help parents and the larger community routinely communicate with the school.
• Teachers from different disciplines communicate with, work together and support each other's professional practice on a regular basis.
• Teachers, on average, spend no more than 20 percent of their time providing lecture-driven instruction.
• Teachers incorporate both formative (instructional) and summative (evaluative) assessments into their evaluations of student progress.
• Teachers routinely solicit, listen to, reflect upon, and integrate student feedback into their work.

The measures in this category would probably lean heavily on attitudinal surveys, although other existing data points could be useful as well, such as staff absenteeism rates (healthy schools have high faculty attendance), time in the schedule allocated for faculty planning time, etc. The point is not to dictate the individual measures, but to observe what schools discover as they start to experiment with the scorecard.

3. CLIMATE
"For almost a hundred years," explains Jonathan Cohen, director of the Center for Social & Emotional Education (CSEE), "educators have appreciated the importance of school climate -- the quality or character of school life. We can all remember childhood moments when we felt particularly safe (or unsafe) in school, when we felt particularly connected to a caring adult (or frighteningly alone), when we felt particularly engaged in meaningful learning (or not). However, school climate is larger than any one person's experience. When people work together, a group process emerges that is bigger than any one person's actions."

Clearly, a school's overall climate is an essential indicator of its overall health. So let's start insisting that all schools measure it. One possibility would be to use the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI), a research-based needs assessment that provides immediate feedback on how students, parents and school personnel perceive their school's overall environment for learning. Other useful measures would clearly emerge over time as well. And then in this and the other categories, an ongoing role of the federal government would be to share insights about measurement and the use of the scorecard across states and communities, so information could be funneled back throughout the system and create a reciprocal flow of information that improves the quality of all schools.

4. DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES
In a school setting, cultivating democratic practices doesn't mean turning the asylum over to the inmates. To create a climate where people feel both empowered and protected, you don't start by just telling everyone that they're free. You do, however, make helping people learn how to exercise freedom responsibly a foundational goal.

Before that vision can become a reality, we must encourage educators to ensure that the central elements of our social covenant are also in place in our schools: a clear sense of structure and shared identity on one hand, and an unwavering commitment to individual freedom on the other.

To help create such environments, we should gauge the extent to which our schools are equipping young people with the understanding, motivation and skills they need to become active, visible contributors to the common good.

Schools can do so by measuring the extent to which:
• Administrators have established structures and/or accorded meaningful roles in decision-making to students, parents, staff and community members.
• Students are routinely encouraged throughout the curriculum to agree and disagree honestly and respectfully.
• The school encourages people to model democratic principles, practices and policies in their daily work and interactions with others.
• The school's mission statement clearly addresses the democratic purposes of education.
• The community is committed to ensuring that religious liberty rights are protected for persons of all faiths and none.
• Students understand how to participate in the political process and institutions that shape public policy.
• Students take public action on personally meaningful issues and concerns.


Some may say this issue is not worthy of its own category. And yet our public school system is the only institution we have that is guaranteed to reach 90 percent of every succeeding generation, that is governed by public authority, and that was founded with the explicit mission of preparing young people to be active and responsible citizens in a democracy. Isn't it time we started evaluating the extent to which our schools are fulfilling their civic mission?

5. EQUITY
To ensure greater equity - by which I mean reducing the predictive value sociocultural and economic characteristics have on student achievement - we must improve the performance of our public schools and strengthen the effectiveness of our civic activism at the same time.

These challenges are interdependent, and will remain so. Indeed, the poorest and least fortunate in our country are not just the least likely to succeed academically -- they are also the most disenfranchised from our political process.

Therefore, to measure their commitment to equity (of resources and opportunity), school leaders should consider tracking the extent to which:

• The aspirations, strengths and weaknesses of each student are known by at least one member of the school staff.
• The school actively collaborates with its students' families as partners in the students' education.
• The school's pupil nondiscrimination policies and complaint procedures are comprehensive and effective.
• Staff and students are aware of these policies and complaint procedures and act in accordance with them.
• Teachers know and can use a rich variety of strategies to identify and accommodate individual learning styles and strengthen each student's ability to learn in diverse ways.
• The school provides its students with equal access to well-qualified teachers; strong curriculum opportunities; books, materials, and equipment (including science labs and computers); and adequate facilities.
• The school believes passionately in empowering students, families and community members to be contributing participants in their education, their community and the diverse society in which we live.

Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education captured the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. "In the field of public education," the unanimous Court wrote, "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," and the opportunity to learn "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

I believe President Obama is sincerely committed to fulfilling the decades-old promise of the Brown decision. He can't do anything, however, until we as a nation invest in a clear, flexible and balanced system for evaluating and improving our nation's schools.

I think this scorecard would be a great place to start. What do you think?