DIRECT CONNECT
Planning for Growth: Identifying
Needs and Focusing Resources for Professional Development
By Ferdi Serim, Editor, MultiMedia Schools and
Janet Murray, Associate Editor, MultiMedia Schools
"In fixing high stakes to assessments, policymakers
borrowed principles from the business sector and
attached incentives to learning and sanctions to
poor performance on tests. High-performing schools
would be rewarded. Under-performing schools would
be penalized, and to avoid further penalties, would
improve themselves. Accordingly, students would
be motivated to learn, school personnel would be
forced to do their jobs, and the condition of education
would inevitably improve, without much effort and
without too great a cost per state. What made sense,
in theory, gained widespread attention and eventually
increased in popularity as a method for school
reform."1 Spring is traditionally a time of planting, yet
in schools there is already a feeling of rushing
to the finish line. As the sap rises, and the weather
warms, it is all too easy to discern the agrarian
roots of our school calendar. Yet our work takes
more than a season, or set of seasonal cycles. So
must our view of professional growth, even in this
season of No Child Left Behind. What we harvest
in the fall depends on our actions now, and the cultivation
that takes place over the summer.
What's different about this season from those that
have come and gone before is that this time, technology
professional development is mandated. Under the No
Child Left Behind law, 25 percent of all funds
spent on educational technology must be directed
toward "high-quality professional development." And
as the Department of Education's John Bailey has
said, "Every program is potentially an education
technology program" as long as schools clearly define
technology's contributions to improved student achievement.
These contributions only come to those who've developed
their information literacy skills, so we have an
opportunity to design these skills into the professional
development experiences we provide.
Far too often, technology staff development is
too late, too lame. Decontextualized learning ("just
in case" instead of "just in time") that teaches
tool-centered skills doesn't work for children, so
it should not surprise us when it doesn't work for
educators. Instead, it is important to anticipate
the real work that real teachers will be doing in
the near term, providing experiences, modeling, and
support that show how technology can help them work
smarter.
Accordingly, here are three key activities for
you to consider as you work with the decision makers
in your school and district to make sure that learning
for all students is supported by effective use of
both the technology and human investments your district
has already made.
• Assessment and Accountability: What's
Going On?
• Curriculum Mapping—Charting Your
Way to Success
• Developing Your Professional Development
Calendar
Assessment and Accountability: What's Going
On?
It is widely accepted that assessment and measurement
techniques must reflect the instructional strategies
used in any course, as well as the desired learning
outcomes. However, some schools are turning this
advice on its head, by adopting instructional strategies
that hyper-focus on test-taking skills. Only through
effective professional development activities can
we avoid this pitfall.
Today, what accountability means to schools has
been redefined by the provisions of No Child Left
Behind. Schools are being required to answer
on the basis of results, rather than inputs. As summarized
by the Education Commission of the States, "Holding
schools accountable for the performance of all students
is a cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Act. Under the new law, this accountability is based
on whether or not schools, districts and states are
making adequate yearly progress (AYP) towards the
goal of bringing 100 percent of their students at
least to academic proficiency by the end of the 2013-14
school year."
Assessment should foster growth, not simply serve
accountability compliance. In my school, we've begun
examining our students' results from the Northwest
Evaluation Association (NWEA) Level Tests. Instead
of yielding percentages that compare kids to mythical "norms," each
student is compared to him- or herself, which in
turn makes it possible for us to see areas of growth,
as well as areas where students need to grow. NWEA
works with their clients to provide the professional
development required for us to learn to use the data
to see and guide such growth. Such professional learning
is not left to chance.
These benefits are being felt at statewide levels
as well, as in Idaho's state test (NWEA's MAP system).
Using these tests, most Idaho schools are getting
accurate data for 99 percent of students. Teachers
are using real data about their actual students to
inform classroom instruction, school improvement
plans, district-level decision making and individual
education plans (IEPs). Linda Clark, director of
Instruction at Joint School District 2 in Idaho,
said, "For the first time we can look at progress
for our special education students in relationship
to the regular curriculum, which is a requirement
of current federal special education legislation."
When professional development is geared to a specific
purpose (as in learning to see individual patterns
of growth to shape instruction), educational technology
can reach its full potential. According to Shannon
Bunch an elementary resource teacher at McMillan
Elementary in Joint School District #2, they've learned
to harness the power of the assessment tool to break
the data down for the special needs students into
skills strands. For example, if they're looking at
reading, they identify needs by goal strands (such
as literal comprehension, word meaning, etc.), then
they group the kids into skills groups according
to needs and level and then target instruction to
the skills where the kids are deficient. This system
is being used across the state and is particularly
useful in 4th and 5th grade, where they have no other
measure. It enables them to move these students toward
adequate yearly progress, and more importantly, it
helps them hold the special education students toward
the standards of the regular curriculum. For more
information, see www.nwea.org.
Divergent Goals:
Training, Learning, Education
"The proponents of increased accountability
see testing as a lever to force improvements
in school performance, and therefore student
achievement. However, differing definitions
on desired destinations create tension and
confusion as states, districts, schools,
and classrooms chart their courses. Our understanding
of this tension can benefit from 'a clarification
of the distinctions between the related concepts
of education, learning (particularly school
learning and the concept of transfer of learning),
and training.' For most citizens it is education
(the broadest and most difficult to define
of the concepts) that is the goal of schooling.
Learning is the process through which education
is achieved. But merely demonstrating acquisition
of some factual or procedural knowledge is
not the primary goal of school learning.
That is merely a proximal goal.
"The proper goal of school learning is both
more distal and more difficult to assess.
The proper goal of school learning is transfer
of learning, that is, the application or
use of what is learned in one domain or context
to that of another domain or context. School
learning in the service of education focuses
deliberately on the goal of broad (or far)
transfer. School instruction that can be
characterized as training is ordinarily a
narrow form of learning, where transfer of
learning is measured on tasks that are highly
similar to those used in the training. Broad
or far measures of transfer, the appropriate
goal of school learning, are different from
the measures typically used to assess the
outcomes of training."2 |
Curriculum Mapping—Charting Your Way to
Success
Curriculum mappingis a process that educators use
to develop a calendar that shows the content, skills,
and assessments that students experience at each
grade level in a school. This calendar (called a
curriculum map) provides an accurate view of the
pathway a student's learning experience follows from
grade to grade. Curriculum maps are particularly
useful for making visible the missing pieces and
the duplications as a student goes from one grade
to the next.
One never knows exactly what's been learned when
the lesson is over, but it's a fairly safe bet that
if it wasn't taught, it wasn't learned. Yet, the
variation between what goes on behind closed classroom
doors is so great that (at least in the case of my
children) it resulted in both frequent duplication
(dinosaurs six times in 12 years) and gaps (no parts
of speech, minimal geographic awareness). The curriculum
guides that stack the central office shelves are
no assurance that the guides reflect actual teaching.
The only way to know is to ask. Every teacher, in
every classroom.
Effective I&T teams do this informally, already.
When working with classroom teachers, the starting
point is always, "What will you be teaching?" Hence,
the technology wraps itself around the learning objectives.
However, in order to reach all children, we must
determine what they'll be doing in each class, all
year long. Only then can we know how to help. The
tool to accomplish this goal is a curriculum map,
and if you're not already using one, you should consider
obtaining the professional development that will
allow you to do so.
Developing Your Professional Development Calendar
Both the springtime planting of crops and the cultivation
of student achievement are information-based problems.
Although the introduction of the Internet into schools
raised the requirements for information literacy
skills for both students and teachers, No Child
Left Behind's reliance on data means these skills
have moved from optional to essential. One great
place to start is the IMSA 21st Century Information
Fluency Portal [http://wizard.imsa.edu/learn]. This
site, provided by the Illinois Math and Science Academy,
is a terrific resource for anyone interested in supporting
digital information fluency. In addition to the IMSA
Search Wizard, you'll find a WebSite Evaluation Tool,
Citation Tool, Information Literacy Project Tips,
a Spelling Tool, and Thesaurus Tool. Membership is
free and is not limited to Illinois residents (although
Illinois educators can receive graduate credit for
courses taken on the site). The site is funded by
the U.S. Department of Education under the No
Child Left Behind Act.
Once you know the targeted areas of improvement
(by examining student performance data from a variety
of sources in your school) and curriculum maps allow
you to see the upcoming academic challenges students
will face, you are prepared to apply the power of
information literacy to both staff and student efforts.
With this information, you can be an informed consumer,
making recommendations about how the 25 percent of
your district's technology purchasing power should
be directed. There are a host of free and for-fee
professional development offerings available, but
none of these can be effective until you've identified
your needs. For more information about resources
that can help you determine your needs and chart
your professional development strategy, please visit http://oii.org/IT4L.
Footnotes
1 Amrein, A.
L. & Berliner, D.C. (2002, March 28). High-Stakes
Testing, Uncertainty, and Student Learning. Education
Policy Analysis Archives, 10(18). Retrieved
11/21/02 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18/.
2 Ibid. |
 Communications
to the editor may be addressed to Ferdi Serim,
MultiMedia Schools, 11 Palacio Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505;
505/690-6039; fax: 505/466-1901; ferdi@infotoday.com
|
