Archive
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Linking Assessment and School Success
Comments Off on Linking Assessment and School SuccessLinking Assessment and School Success
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Accountability: Reality or Pretense
Comments Off on Accountability: Reality or PretenseAccountability: Reality or Pretense
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Shared Accountability: The Importance of Cooperation and Comprehensiveness in Accountability Frameworks
Comments Off on Shared Accountability: The Importance of Cooperation and Comprehensiveness in Accountability FrameworksShared Accountability: The Importance of Cooperation and Comprehensiveness in Accountability Frameworks
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Assessment and Accountability in Education: Improvement or Surveillence
Comments Off on Assessment and Accountability in Education: Improvement or SurveillenceAssessment and Accountability in Education: Improvement or Surveillence
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From the Editor/Le mot de la rédactrice en chef
Comments Off on From the Editor/Le mot de la rédactrice en chefFrom the Editor/Le mot de la rédactrice en chef
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Getting Serious About Literacy in Schools: Canada and Australia
Comments Off on Getting Serious About Literacy in Schools: Canada and AustraliaGetting Serious About Literacy in Schools: Canada and Australia
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Overcoming the Odds: A Case Study in Success
Comments Off on Overcoming the Odds: A Case Study in SuccessOvercoming the Odds: A Case Study in Success
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Meeting the Challenge of School Improvement
Comments Off on Meeting the Challenge of School ImprovementMeeting the Challenge of School Improvement
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Committing to Success for All
Comments Off on Committing to Success for AllCommitting to Success for All
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Constructing the Way Forward for All Students
Comments Off on Constructing the Way Forward for All StudentsConstructing the Way Forward for All Students
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How valid is assessment data?
Comments Off on How valid is assessment data?The Whitworth panel discusses the validity assessment data within Canadian education systems.
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Joel Westheimer & Mary Lou Donnelly: Will Canada follow America’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ Policy?
Comments Off on Joel Westheimer & Mary Lou Donnelly: Will Canada follow America’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ Policy?Joel Westheimer responds to this question from Canadian Teachers’ Federation President, Mary Lou Donnelly.
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Joel Westheimer & April Howe-Diplock: What can parents do to support critical thinking at home?
Comments Off on Joel Westheimer & April Howe-Diplock: What can parents do to support critical thinking at home?Joel Westheimer responds to panelist April Howe-Diplock.
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Joel Westheimer: Testing, ‘Accountability’, and the Threat to Canadian Democracy
Comments Off on Joel Westheimer: Testing, ‘Accountability’, and the Threat to Canadian Democracy2009 CEA Whitworth Award for Research and Education winner Dr. Joel Westheimer delivers a provocative lecture.
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Penny Milton & Jodene Dunleavy: What did you do in school today? Report Launch
Comments Off on Penny Milton & Jodene Dunleavy: What did you do in school today? Report LaunchPenny Milton and Jodene Dunleavy discuss findings from the What did you do in school today? Report.
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Starting Point for Dialogue
Comments Off on Starting Point for DialogueA review of On Excellence in Teaching by Robert J. Marzano, ed. Solution Tree Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-934009-58-1
“The purpose of On Excellence in Teaching was to gather the opinions and recommendations of the world’s best educational researchers, theorists, and professional developers regarding the topic of effective instruction” (p. 1). The contributing authors, however, are all North American – American, actually, except for one – so it is presumptuous to claim they are the “world’s best”, and since the collection is invited, not juried, they may not even be North America’s best. But the authors are all well-known and worth reading, so the anthology is worthwhile nonetheless.
This book is one of five in a series that also addresses designing and teaching learning goals, assessment, professional leaning communities, and change. Its particular focus on instruction includes chapters by Grant Wiggins on the real job of a teacher; Thomas Good on the research on teacher effectiveness; Barrie Bennett on the art and science of instruction; Richard Meyer on the science of learning; David Berliner on the effects of high-stakes testing; Debra Pickering on recommendations for schools committed to excellence; Lynn Erickson on teacher education, conceptually-based curriculum, and teaching for thinking; Heidi Hayes Jacobs on Curriculum Mapping; Robert Marzano on developing expert teachers; Carol Ann Tomlinson on differentiated instruction; Jay McTighe on Understanding by Design (UbD); Jere Brophy on motivating students to be autonomous learners; Harvey Silver and Matthew Perini on student engagement; and Robert and Jana Marzano on how metacognitive awareness and control can make teachers more effective.
The chapters vary in depth and quality. Some are rather casual restatements of previous work that touch lightly on the topic while others are reasonably substantial syntheses, but all are merely overviews that serve best as reminders or introductions and are insufficient for fully understanding the ideas they present, let alone applying them. Each, however, includes an extensive list of references that would allow the interested reader to delve more deeply.
There is no connecting thread and no dialogue between ideas in this book, no critique of their strengths and shortcomings, and little identification of lingering questions. They are simply compiled under a very broad thematic umbrella. Thus, it is up to the reader to consume the contents with a healthy degree of skepticism and interrogate the tidy presentations, which contain a mixture of research results, confidently known insights, suggestions, personal perspectives, and opinions that should not be treated equally.
Since no synthesis is attempted and no overarching model of instruction is provided, the anthology amounts to a sampler of educational ideas that may pique interest and prompt further inquiry, but it is insufficient on its own to fulfill the editor’s claim that, “A careful reading of the chapters should provide a rich source of ideas and strategies with which K-12 practitioners can examine and enhance their practice.” The advice contained within the book itself makes it clear that practitioners will need guidance, scaffolding, and assistance much beyond the mere reading of it to effect substantial learning or enhance their practice.
In the hands of a committed study group that is willing to follow the leads provided and engage in the sustained effort required to digest, debate, explore more deeply, apply, reflect upon, and learn from the current and important ideas that this book introduces, it could be a very useful topical tour and starting point for dialogue. However, the reader who has already been introduced to the work of the included authors will not learn more from reading it, and those who are meeting these ideas for the first time should be aware that they are seeing a set of trailers, not the movies themselves.
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Formative Assessment: Bridging the Research – Practice Divide
Comments Off on Formative Assessment: Bridging the Research – Practice Divide“Teach, mark, move on: that’s the old paradigm. Today’s classrooms have changed. It is important to show the students where they are, how to improve, and where to go from here… It’s no longer about “this is your mark and that’s the end of the story”.
~ Secondary Teacher
Most educational jurisdictions acknowledge a dichotomy between assessment practices that are ongoing and take place during a lesson or unit of study and those that primarily serve an evaluative function at the end of a unit or term. The former is referred to as formative assessment (also known as assessment for learning) and the latter is referred to as summative assessment (also known as assessment of learning). Although both types of assessment provide important data for instructional planning, only formative assessment informs teachers about student learning at a point when timely adjustments to instruction can be made. Another advantage of formative assessment is that it invites students to be active participants in their own learning so that student engagement and motivation are increased. For example, students may be asked to assess their own learning or to act as a resource to other students by engaging in a peer-assessment exercise. These advantages, along with other unique features, make formative assessment an essential characteristic of the teaching-learning cycle. Research suggests distinct advantages accrue to students when their teachers utilize a variety of formative assessment methods.
Although research has clearly shown that formative assessment can enhance student success, there is firm evidence of a research-practice divide. Too many teachers are failing to utilize the full cadre of formative assessment practices available to them. To build capacity in assessment skills, educators need new models that focus on assessment for learning rather than evaluation of learning; one way to understand how to build this capacity is to listen to practitioners’ stories of best practices.[1] With a deeper understanding of how practitioners are making meaning of assessment practices, policymakers may be better able to enhance attempts to increase the use of formative assessment.
Although research has clearly shown that formative assessment can enhance student success, there is firm evidence of a research-practice divide.
Research versus Practice
Four large reviews on the impact of formative assessment provide strong support for the utilization of strategies such as questioning techniques, feedback without grades, peer-assessment, self-assessment, and formative use of summative assessments.[2] Research suggests that the consistent use of these formative strategies can double the speed of student learning.[3] Even more importantly, formative assessment reduces the achievement gap by helping low achievers the most.[4] Thus, educators are faced with the challenge of balancing the demands of grading, which puts an emphasis on summative assessment, with the research literature that strongly favours the utilization of formative assessment. One may naturally query if teacher practice has changed in response to the weight of evidence favouring increased use of formative assessment.
Our own three-year longitudinal research in elementary and secondary schools within Ontario posed that question, and its results suggest that teachers continue to overemphasize summative assessment methods (i.e., tests, quizzes, projects), with only a minority of teachers using formative assessment techniques on a consistent basis.[5] Teachers cited a number of factors as constraints to practice, including a lack of instructional leadership, poor initial teacher training, and resistance from parents and students to more innovative formative assessment strategies. These results are not surprising and are largely congruent with research outside of Canada.[6] In spite of the findings, however, we found hopeful evidence to suggest that the research-policy-practice gap can be bridged.
Bridging the Divide
Although it was apparent that too few educators in the school boards we studied were actually employing the new assessment practices, most of the teachers and administrators in our longitudinal study had a strong working knowledge of, and a philosophy consistent with, the best practices recommended in assessment research/policy. These teachers and administrators shared insightful stories of formative assessment practices from which other jurisdictions may benefit. By sharing stories of best assessment practices with colleagues, administrators and teachers built network communities that created a positive assessment environment and led to professional accountability.
Based on the emergent evidence from our study of K-12 administrators and teachers, we consider focusing on the following aspects of assessment.
Professional Accountability
Across Canada, accountability is measured by performance assessment – primarily in the form of large-scale student testing. But according to Lorna Earl, the real essence of accountability lies with the educators and their sense of professional accountability. Educators, she says, need to be assessment literate as part of this professional accountability.[7] For teachers in our study, accountability was not measured by external assessments such as testing. Indeed, their sense of accountability at its core was a personal one – accountability to students and insuring growth and reaching full potential. All educators highly valued student growth as the most important aspect of assessment. This meant that classroom assessment often needed to be differentiated and formative.
Building a Positive Assessment Culture
Perhaps the most distressing finding in our study was the perception among teachers that all that mattered to students were the grades. One teacher said, “We’ve conditioned them to think only about their grades; learning doesn’t seem to matter to them as long as their grades are good.” But students weren’t the only ones who shared this view. Many educators commented that parents play a large role in perpetuating this attitude. As one secondary teacher said, “Kids only care about marks. They have an obsession about numbers. I think it comes from the parents and the culture.”
Although their classroom practices did not always reflect it, teachers in this study ascribed to the benefits of using formative assessment to enhance student learning and build a positive assessment culture. Consider the following responses: “We are not doing this because someone told us to; we are doing this because it’s good for the kids and we need to make schooling valuable;” and “We owe it to each child to figure out where they are and move them along.” All the administrators in our study held the belief that “all students can succeed” and that it is consequently the administrators’ responsibility to create an environment that ensures such success.
As a result of increased understanding of the role of culture in student attitudes toward assessment and learning, teachers began to shift the emphasis in their classrooms away from grades and toward rich learning experiences over the course of this three-year study.
Networked Communities
Both teachers and administrators found that professional learning communities (PLCs) were the best form of professional development for improved assessment. PLCs were created across grades, divisions, or schools, or within schools, depending upon size and purpose. The most helpful practice was moderated marking, in which teachers got together to discuss samples of work to determine its quality. As one teacher said, there is a need for “a common language because we are all collecting the same data.” According to another, “It is important that we are all measuring things the same way. This is how we ensure accountability.” Many were concerned that “a Level 2 is a Level 2 in every classroom and at different grade levels so that kids don’t get mixed messages.” Moderated marking was seen as a strong catalyst for professional dialogue.
A powerful way to build capacity is to listen to people’s stories of best experiences in the field.
However, there were some problems with PLCs. Some felt that not all participants were onside – especially when PLCs became mandatory. Sometimes, PLCs were too small to be worthwhile; for example, if there is only one law teacher for the entire school, collaboration became impossible. In other schools, PLCs became stagnant over time. In some situations, interschool, network-learning communities offered a good solution; interschool professional learning communities can be especially valuable when they include personnel from each level within the system (e.g. teacher, administrator, superintendent) and when each member has a different role to play within the process.
Sharing Stories
A powerful way to build capacity is to listen to people’s stories of best experiences in the field.[8] A key question in our study asked participants to share a story of assessment and evaluation that was meaningful to them. The stories that they told were heartwarming. Importantly, the stories were also about the kind of assessment practices that the research is recommending educators to implement. In some cases the stories focused on how a certain assessment practice – usually ongoing, formative assessment – helped an individual student who was having trouble. Other stories focused on how using evidence (usually evidence posted on a data wall – often from large-scale testing) to inform daily practice helped students to succeed. These stories indicated that educators were compassionate and caring, as well as concerned about how well students performed on their assessments. (See sidebar.)
Sharing these types of stories would offer valuable examples that others could explore. Since stories are aligned with educators’ basic values, it is likely that they will appeal to other educators with the same values and thus may make changes in assessment attitudes and practices easier to implement.
Supporting Factors
The assessment for and of learning is an international movement. Across Canada this philosophy is embedded in the Western and Northern Protocol for Collaboration in Education, which attempts to guide best practices of assessment in Canadian classrooms. And in Ontario, the most recent K-12 School Effectiveness Framework (2009) highlights the use of the three purposes of assessment, (of, for, as) as one of its main tenants in order to successfully “reach every student.”
However – in spite of such “official” recognition – the philosophy needs to be better aligned with provincial ministries, schools, and teacher education faculties. We were surprised at the number of educators in our study who stated that their primary source of professional development was from a Faculty of Education – either from a teacher education program or at the graduate level. In fact, few of these faculties teach courses on assessment and evaluation; rather, assessment is embedded into teachable subject areas. The trouble with this design is that not all faculty members have expertise in assessment and evaluation, and therefore the assessment content is not properly infused and is often neglected in teachable subject courses.
For proper instruction to occur in K-12 schools, assessment must be embedded into the curriculum. If academics took the time to properly learn about assessment, integrated in all subject areas, then emerging educators could see what good assessment looks like in different subject areas.
It is also surprising that initial training for school administrators (i.e., Principals’ Qualification courses) continues to be deficient in assessment preparation. Such programs tend to have a strong focus on policy, school law, and injustices. Yet, as Picciano has argued, instructional leadership in assessment is the key to successful data decision-making.[9] As one administrator from our study said, “… Extracting next steps from assessment data is the cornerstone to effective leadership, instruction and student growth.”
Conclusion
Our research suggests that formative assessment creates vantage points throughout the teaching-learning cycle for both teachers and students, and therefore stronger supports are required to bridge research and practice. By way of this study, a number of practitioners where able to share their stories of best assessment practices which demonstrate the successful transmission of formative assessment research to classroom practice. When educators participate in sharing stories, take part in internal accountability practices, and build networked learning communities, the philosophy of assessment and school culture begins to move forward. Furthermore, generating coherence and synergy between ministries of education, education faculties, school boards, and school policy is essential in order to successfully construct a medium where research to practice can traverse freely.
This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
EN BREF – Bien qu’il soit clairement prouvé qu’une évaluation formative offre des repères tout au long du cycle d’enseignement et d’apprentissage, pour les enseignants comme pour les élèves, la recherche indique que les enseignants ne profitent pas pleinement de toutes les stratégies possibles d’évaluation formative – particulièrement celles qui ont été associées à de meilleurs apprentissages et réalisations des élèves : méthodes interrogatives, rétroaction sans notes, autoévaluation, évaluation par les pairs et emploi formatif de l’évaluation sommative. Quand des éducateurs mettent en commun des anecdotes, participent à des comptes rendus internes et bâtissent des communautés d’apprentissage en réseau, la philosophie d’évaluation et la culture d’école commencent à progresser. Il est essentiel de générer de la cohérence et de la synergie entre les ministères de l’éducation, les facultés d’éducation, les conseils et commissions scolaires et les politiques d’école pour construire un milieu où les résultats de recherche peuvent influer sur les pratiques.
[1] L. Stoll, “Capacity Building for School Improvement or Creating Capacity of learning? A Changing Landscape,” Journal of Educational Change 10 (2009): 115-127.
[2] (see P. Black and D. Wiliam, “Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment,” Phi Delta Kappan 80, no. 2 (1998): 139-48; T. J. Crooks, “The Impact of Classroom Evaluation Practices on Students,” Review of Educational Research 58 (1988): 438-481; A. N. Kluger and A. DeNisi, “The Effects of Feedback Intervention on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 2 (1996): 254-284; G. Natriello, “The Impact of Evaluation Processes on Students,” Educational Psychologist 22, no. 2 (1987): 155-175.
[3] D. Wiliam, “Content then Process: Teacher Learning Communities in the Service of Formative Assessment,” in Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Assessment to Transform Teaching and Learning, ed. D. B. Reeves (Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree, 2007), 183-204.
[4] P. Black, C. Harrison, C. Lee, B. Marshall and D. Wiliam, “Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom,” Phi Delta Kappan 86, no. 1 (2004): 9-21.
[5] L. Volante, “Assessment of, for, and as Learning Within Schools: Implications for Transforming Classroom Practice,” Action in Teacher Education 31, no. 4 (in press).
[6] See Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004; N. S. Wilson, “Teachers Expanding Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Learning about Formative Assessment Together,” Journal of In-Service Education 34, no. 3 (2008): 283-298.
[7] L. Earl, “What Does Accountability Mean for Teachers?” Orbit 32, no. 1 (2001): 27-31.
[9] A. Picciano, Data-decision Making for Effective School Leadership (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2006).
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The Big Ideas Behind Whole System Reform
Comments Off on The Big Ideas Behind Whole System ReformI had been writing in the 1990s about “tri-level reform” – how schools/communities, districts, and governments could align their efforts for more comprehensive reform – but I had not had a chance “to do it or help do it” until Tony Blair’s literacy/numeracy large-scale reform initiative in 1997, when a team of us at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto won the contract to evaluate England’s bold effort. The term “whole system reform” seems a better fit for this work, conveying the message that it is both comprehensive and cohesive. When Blair and his chief strategist, Michael Barber, set out to improve literacy and numeracy in Britain’s 20,000 primary schools, they focused their efforts on capacity building (professional development, leadership development, curriculum, and instructional resources) and reinforced the whole thing with interventionist accountability schemes.
In our evaluation, we reported two main outcomes: good news and bad news, so to speak. Student achievement did rise, by some 13 percent over a five-year period. Although there is some debate over the actual numbers, we considered the strategy to be a success in getting substantial improvement over a fairly brief period of time. The bad news was that this success came with a price – it was too top-down, too target driven, and too punitive. It was not a sustainable strategy, and indeed England’s gains leveled off.
Right on the heels of our final report in 2002 came the Ontario election. Dalton McGuinty was elected in October 2003 with a strong “improve education” platform. He appointed me his adviser, and we immediately implemented a strategy to transform the public system in Ontario, a system that had been stagnant in terms of student achievement for the previous five years. We took the best of the English strategy, jettisoned the weak parts (heavy targets, prescription from the top, and punitive accountability), and built our own brand of partnerships with the 4,000 elementary and 900 secondary schools in the province’s 72 school districts.
Focusing on improving practice uncovers the best specific ideas. What you learn along the way can be tested in the light of broader research, but practice – not research – should be the driver.
Ideas Behind the Reform
Whole system reform means that every vital part of the system – school, community, district, and government – contributes individually and in concert to forward movement and success. The big ideas underlying the Ontario reform strategy are contained in Exhibit 1.
I have come to the conclusion that practice drives theory.1 That is, focusing on improving practice uncovers the best specific ideas. What you learn along the way can be tested in the light of broader research, but practice – not research – should be the driver. With this in mind, the elements and insights discussed below were uncovered through implementation of these “big ideas”.
All children can learn
A lot of people pay lip service to the notion that all children can learn, but the breakthrough comes when children actually achieve gains that hitherto many did not think possible. Take, for example, Armadale and Crosby Heights elementary schools in York Region District School Board that Lyn Sharratt and I wrote about in Realization.2 By implementing the seven big ideas in Exhibit 1, these two schools went from low morale and terrible performance to impressive success. Crosby Heights increased its reading, writing, and math proficiency scores – as assessed by the provinces’ Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) – from 40 percent to 85 percent. Using the same strategies even more intensely, Armadale went from around 60 percent to 80 percent in a single year.
The main point here is that significant results can be obtained when the specific strategies are applied. But here is the change process insight: It is the actual experience and corresponding results that convince teachers that it can be done, not moral exhortation or mounds of evidence from other situations. The best energizer is actually accomplishing something significant and then building on it – what I call realized moral purpose.
A small number of core priorities
The problem in education is not the lack of innovation and initiatives but rather the presence of too many fragmented, piecemeal, rapidly changing priorities. This lesson is backed up by many examples, both negative and positive.
The objective of the entire Ontario strategy can be stated in a few words: broadly and deeply defined literacy and numeracy, and high school graduation, pursued through capacity building, with a focus on results. We could take a more specific example. Seven years ago the Ottawa Catholic District School Board announced “annual thrusts” which amounted to a dozen or so priorities that were altered every year. In 2003, the new Director, Jamie McCracken, reviewed the situation and announced that from that point on there would be three focuses – student success, staff development, and stewardship of resources; and that these goals would remain the same year after year. Today Ottawa Catholic is one of the top performing districts in the province.3 They accomplished this by following the set of strategies that I am describing here.
Resolute leadership
Third, we are beginning to appreciate that successful schools, districts, and larger systems have resolute leadership that stays with the focus, especially during rough periods, and that these leaders cause others around them to be resolute as well. It is so easy to go off message; but if you do, you lose whole-system-reform possibilities. This is hard, persistent work, but it is not overly complex. Resolute leadership is critical at first, when new ideas encounter serious difficulty, but it is also required to sustain and build on success. All the situations of success that we know of were a result of leaders staying on message and problem-solving as they go.
Another insight that comes from this work: Successful leaders combine resolute leadership with impressive empathy. Again, good leaders persist, but they try to identify and understand what hesitations or objections people might have. This is impressive because their preference would be to get on with action, but they know that there might be legitimate issues to address. In other words, they pay attention to building relationships – even with those who are not so enthusiastic.
Collective capacity
Fourth, another big idea – which is not new but is very much underappreciated – is that collective capacity is the hidden resource we fail to understand and cultivate. Collective capacity building is at the heart of our strategies, and both our own evidence and that of the research literature confirm the power of this multifaceted strategy. Let’s take the main components.
Whole district reform depends on resolute leadership at the district level, which in turn develops collaborative capacity within and across schools.
The practice and research on collaborative school cultures and professional learning communities is very convincing. When teachers work together, led by an instructionally-focused principal, they are much more successful than when they work alone. We have already seen Armadale and Crosby Heights. Another convincing example comes from the longitudinal research on Chicago schools just reported by Tony Bryk and his colleagues.4 They compared 100 elementary schools that had substantial success over the years with a matched sample of 100 schools that had stagnated or declined. The difference between the two groups boiled down to five factors: i) an instructionally focused principal, who in turn developed ii) strong parent and community ties, iii) professional capacity of teachers, iv) a student-centered learning climate, and v) instructional alignment and corresponding resources.
But there is more to collective capacity than intra-school collaboration. Whole district reform depends on resolute leadership at the district level, which in turn develops collaborative capacity within and across schools by helping schools learn in small clusters and networks. I have described four such examples in All Systems Go – Long Beach Unified District (California), Ottawa Catholic and York Region in Ontario, Tower Hamlets in London.5 Rick Dufour documented a further ten examples,6 and in Motion Leadership the Movie (in preparation) we have filmed nine examples in Canada, the UK and the U.S.
Beyond the district level, we have invested in spreading practices across districts. One example is Ontario’s “Schools on the Move” initiative, in which 150 successful schools have been identified and resources made available for others to learn from their experiences. In all of this, two strong change forces are unleashed. First and most obvious, by casting a wide net we increase access to effective practices. The second force is even more powerful; as schools learn from each other, their sense of identity and allegiance expands, spurring an even greater commitment to improvement. Along the way we have discovered an interesting twist, which we call “collaborative competition”, in which networks of schools compete with each other to do better – all in a spirit of pursuing important moral goals.
Strategies with precision
Because the work is so grounded, and because the only route to success is to be more specific about the instructional practices that are most effective, the overall strategy is to continually identify, retain, and spread practices that are precise (i.e. effective teaching practices that can be specifically described and demonstrated.) (Ontario’s Literacy, Numeracy and Student Success Secretariat’s website is loaded with resources – print and video – that are proven to work.) 7 With precision, the speed of quality change can be greatly accelerated. Working on capacity building with specificity, within and across schools, is essential for whole system reform.
This is also a good place to spell out the high school reform strategy. Although it cuts across all categories, it is an initiative with great specificity in a field (high school reform) that has not demonstrated precision but has rather gone for broader structural innovations. The strategy, in brief, involves creating a new role called Student Success Teacher (SST) that has been funded centrally to all schools and districts. The work of the SSTs, with the principal and other school leaders and teachers, is to identify at-risk students prior to their arrival at the school and to provide individual support for every student.
In the first two years of high school, the support focuses on individual students’ personal needs, the compulsory Grade 10 literacy test, and achieving the 16 credits that are expected by the end of Grade 10. In Grades 11 and 12, the emphasis is on program innovation to make the educational experiences more relevant and community-/business-based. One of the most successful innovations has been the High School Majors (HSM) program, which began in 2006/07 and is based on forming packages of courses and internships in partnership with businesses and community groups in designated specialties (e.g., transportation, finance, health, tourism). Today more than 20,000 students are enrolled in over 740 HSM programs across all districts.
Intelligent accountability
The failure to get accountability right plagues all reform efforts. Andy Hargreaves unlocked the door to intelligent accountability when he observed that “accountability is the remainder that is left when . . . responsibility has been subtracted”.8 Intelligent accountability involves a set of policies and practices that 1) actually increases individual, and especially collective, capacity so that shared responsibility carries most of the weight of effective accountability; 2) makes internal and external accountability almost seamless; and 3) leaves external accountability to do its remaining, more-manageable task of necessary intervention.
Our Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership (OFIP) is a good case in point. The strategy consists of identifying poor performing and coasting schools and providing them with targeted support, all with a non-punitive, transparent, non-stigmatizing attitude. The 1,000 schools in OFIP (one-quarter of all schools) have improved at a faster rate than other schools. The key here is to focus transparently on what needs to be improved and to do so in a way that motivates and helps schools to improve. Most of the needs of accountability are addressed through the transparency and open measurement of achievement. Overt means of intervention are confined to more extreme cases.
All means all
Finally, all really does mean all. You can’t solve the problem of whole-system reform through piecemeal efforts that try to get parts of the system improving in order to show the way. There must be constant reminders that all schools, and all districts, are part of the everyday focus of improvement.
These seven ideas represent the fundamentals of the Ontario strategy.9
The Results
To get to the point quickly, since 2003 literacy and numeracy achievement results in Ontario have increased some 10-13 percent in the English school boards, and some 18 percent in francophone boards (EQAO provincial results). It is interesting to speculate that the francophone boards may have done better because there is more cross-district joint work (i.e. more collective capacity building). The strategy includes a focus on raising the bar and closing the gap for all significant subgroups, and a commitment to higher order problem solving and critical thinking skills. The work is not done, but the commitment to going deeper with even more precision is evident.
At the secondary level, the double focus on “personal care and connection” and on more relevant educational programs through the Student Success strategy is also paying off. High school graduation rates have steadily climbed since 2003 at about 2 percent a year and show no sign of abating, having gone from 68 percent to 79 percent.
Recently we have added Early Learning strategies, including full day integrated services for four- and five-year olds (7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and continuity in the summer). The program is being phased in with the first group of 600 schools (35,000 students) already selected to begin in September 2010.
In short, the goal is whole system reform, whereby learning is cumulative (ages 4-18), and comprehensive, covering all 4,900 schools and districts in the province. There is a very strong emphasis on instruction and personalized learning and on developing the individual and collective capacity among teachers and administrators at all levels to get the job done.
Implications
Interest in strategies for whole system reform is growing and widespread, across Canada and throughout the world. I have been in most provinces in the past year discussing the topic at local and provincial levels. Ben Levin, Ken Leithwood, and I have an ongoing involvement in Alberta (which has led Canada in international achievement results over the past years). We are working with the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) in which some 30 districts (almost half of the total) are working on “Moving and Improving” the whole district, and with the Department of Education as it prepares its next phase of reform.
Internationally, interest is growing rapidly. Even the U.S., which historically has not been very interested in international student achievement results, appears to have become alert to the need to compete globally, as it contemplates the reality of having fallen from number one spot in the world in 1980 to its current position of number 24 or so. The international comparisons generated by studies like Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have led to an examination of how top performing countries achieve their results. The McKinsey group, led by Michael Barber and his team, will soon report on its analysis of how the “top 20 and most promising countries” get strong results. This study is distinctive because it looks beneath the results to examine the policies, practices, and strategies that are characteristic of the highest-performing jurisdictions.10
We can expect, then, an increased interest and focus on “whole system reform”. It is especially encouraging that the interest has moved beyond achievement results to policy and strategy questions. Learning how to bring about whole system reform – including “raising the bar and closing the gap” – is the practical, albeit big, question before us right now. Debating policy and strategy together represents a significant advance. The race now is to figure out how to get major improvements across the system by mobilizing educators, parents, students, and communities to engage in the collective efforts necessary for success. The next few years could represent a quantum jump in whole system reform initiatives as we all build on the most recent successes.
EN BREF – Par réforme globale du système, on entend que chaque élément vital – école, collectivité, conseil ou commission scolaire, gouvernement – contribue individuellement et ensemble au progrès et au succès, en utilisant les pratiques, plutôt que la recherche, comme locomotive de la réforme. Ainsi, plusieurs « grandes idées » fondées sur une mise en application réussie ont contribué à la stratégie de réforme ontarienne :
- Tous les enfants sont capables d’apprendre.
- Il ne manque pas d’innovation et d’initiatives, mais il y a trop de priorités fragmentées qui changent rapidement.
- Le succès de la réforme dépend d’un leadership résolu.
- Les capacités collectives constituent la ressource cachée que nous n’arrivons pas à comprendre ni à cultiver.
- Le succès dépend de l’aptitude à constamment dégager, maintenir et étendre des pratiques pédagogiques efficaces et précises.
- Il faut combler le besoin de responsabilisation par la transparence et en mesurant ouvertement les réalisations.
- Tout signifie vraiment tout. On ne peut résoudre le problème de la réforme globale au moyen d’efforts hétéroclites.
1 M. Fullan, The Change Leader (San Francisco: JosseyBass, in press).
2 L. Sharratt and M. Fullan, Realization: The Change Imperative for Deepening District Wide Reform (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009).
3 M. Fullan, All Systems Go (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Corwin Press; and Ontario Principals Council, 2010).
4 A. Bryk, P. Bender-Sebring, E. Allensworth, S. Luppescu, and J. Esaton, Organizing for School Improvement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
6 R. Dufour, R. Dufour, R. Eaker, and G. Karhanek, Raising the Bar: Closing the Gap (Bloomington, IN.: Solution Tree Press, 2010).
7 See also Sharratt and Fullan, 2009.
8 A. Hargreaves and D. Shirley, The Fourth Way (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009).
9 For a full discussion of the strategy see B. Levin, How to Change 5,000 Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2008) and Fullan, All Systems Go.
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Public Attitudes Toward Education in Canada: Summary
Comments Off on Public Attitudes Toward Education in Canada: SummaryWith this report, CEA provides a context for rethinking schools to drive dialogue and critical thinking about the challenges we face in educating all students to take their place in a world of dynamic social, technological and economic change. Key findings from CEA’s Public Attitudes Toward Education Survey are contained in this report. This is CEA’s fourth such survey and is based on the opinions of over 2,400 Canadians collected between January and May 2007. Commentaries from educational leaders based on these survey results help provide a context to issues such as student assessment, confidence in school systems, and educational change.
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