MAP and KLT in Ohio: How educators in three regions prioritize student growth and engagement

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY PARTNERING WITH NWEA MAP and KLT in Ohio: How educators in three regions prioritize student growth and engagement When educators take interim assessment data and formative assessment practices to heart, everyone wins Providing a quality educational experience that focuses on each student s academic growth and engagement can be a challenge for any district. In Ohio, a large district and a small academy have both seen strong gains in student achievement once they started using Measures of Academic Progress (MAP ) interim assessment data. Elsewhere in the state, a district seeking an effective professional development solution committed to Keeping Learning on Track (KLT ). The result? The multi-year formative assessment curriculum for educators has had an immediate, positive impact on students. Hear why partnering with Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA ) has made a positive difference for educators and students in Worthington City Schools, Stepstone Academy, and Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City School District.

2 A district fast-tracks its transition to new standards with the help of interim growth data District Snapshot Worthington City Schools Location: Columbus, Ohio Student population: Serves 9,500 K 12 students; 30% are identified as Gifted and Talented Economic markers: 25% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch College-bound rate: 90% MAP usage: Implemented MAP and MAP for Primary Grades (MPG) in 2007 Worthington City Schools is one of the top-performing districts in the Columbus, Ohio area. Though a quarter of its 9,500 students qualify for free and reduced lunch, 30% are identified as Gifted and Talented, and 90% go to college. Since 2007, Worthington City Schools has used MAP interim assessments to both track K 12 student achievement and growth and to inform decisions at every level. After Ohio adopted New Learning Standards, the district wanted to maximize their support of students, teachers, and administrators. To help do that, they relied heavily on MAP data. Worthington s Director of Academic Achievement and Professional Development, Jennifer Wene, explains, We believe there s value in multiple data points and we ve been using MAP for years as a starting point. Our state s adoption of new standards and new policies around teacher evaluation only further reinforced our need for an assessment tool that could reliably measure performance and growth. Applying MAP data across various roles The district s teachers, instructional teams, and administrators all rely on the interim data to inform decision making. At the classroom level: Teachers use MAP reports to look for growth, set goals with students, and identify patterns. They pay attention to both the bright spots and the gaps in order to determine where to focus more deeply, says Wene. Grouping for interventions also occurs across classrooms and grades, and instructional teams collaborate to dig deeper into large-scale patterns. At the school level: Principals play a critical role, explains Wene. Our principals are just as involved in the use of MAP as our teachers. We believe that if a principal is hands off with data, teachers will be too. But our principals immerse in data, understand it, get excited, and ask to hear the stories behind it and that can be incredibly motivating for the whole team. At the district level: Wene and her colleagues analyze longitudinal MAP data to determine how each group of students is growing over time, as well as how each year s students are faring compared to the norms and the previous year s class. With MAP, we can track the journey students have taken, starting in elementary school. It s very informative, says Wene. In 1st grade and above, the district uses MAP growth data as one of several factors that inform teacher evaluation discussions. Demonstrating that the proof is in the progress In recent years, Worthington s kindergarteners have entered school performing below the national norm in mathematics. However, each spring they finished the grade performing well above the norm. Across all grades in which Worthington s entire student population is assessed with MAP (K 10), students met or exceeded the mathematics growth norms in all but one grade and the reading growth norms in all but two grades. We use MAP reports to closely monitor our students growth and target instruction and intervention. When we see outliers, we direct our attention to them and ask teachers questions instead of trying to make broad strokes. If many students in a class seem to be struggling, we discuss with the teacher whether they re using the new curriculum materials and what additional support they may need. The district has made great gains and has a strategy and the tools to continue to guide all students toward college and career readiness.

3 Charter school sees student growth skyrocket in primary grades School Snapshot Stepstone Academy Location: Cleveland, Ohio; majority of students live within 5 miles Student population: Served 113 K 1 students in 2012 (currently enrolling K 4) Economic markers: 96% free and reduced lunch MAP usage: Implemented MAP for Primary Grades (MPG) in 2012 Stepstone Academy is a Cleveland, Ohio urban charter school with an innovative blended learning model. In 2012 it welcomed its inaugural class of 113 kindergarteners and first graders and will add a grade every year until it reaches K 8. The school is located in the Cleveland Central Promise Neighborhood and partners with the Cleveland School District. Many of the families it serves face significant economic challenges. The majority of students qualify for free and reduced lunch (96%), live within five miles of the school (85%), and are African American (94%). Stepstone s educational leaders knew they needed a research-based assessment to support differentiation and track performance against the rigorous new standards. They chose computer adaptive MPG to help keep the team s mix of face-to-face and technology-based instruction focused on student learning and growth. Curriculum Specialist Colleen Lennon explains the decision to add MPG to Stepstone s toolkit: To be honest, there was no contest. It s the most well-researched test out there. I m continually impressed by the norm studies and other research NWEA publishes. I feel good about the quality of the results. When I m asked about the credibility of the test, I know what I m saying is research-based and there are many studies to back it up. We ve been thrilled to be able to work with a company like this. College and Career Readiness companion MPG reinforces educators efforts by aiding in-themoment instructional practices, tracking growth from fall to spring, and predicting performance on high-stakes summative assessments. It s a winning combination, says Lennon. We re working to make a lasting difference to help break the cycle of poverty. All students take MPG three times a year: fall, winter, and spring. The computer-based format of the assessment fits in seamlessly with other activities. Our students are so used to technology, they actually perform better on the computer than with paper and pencil, says Lennon. Each season, interim assessment results help guide the team. MPG data help Stepstone teachers keep small group work and daily online instructional time focused. Lennon says, We use MPG reports to ensure our college and career readiness alignment is great. We ve started to develop a list of skills to incorporate into our teaching so that we can be sure we re setting students up for success. Growth by leaps and bounds Looking at our MPG assessment results, it s pretty incredible to see what the students could do. I ve been in urban education for 10 years, but I ve never seen anything like this. The growth was off the charts, Lennon shares. In kindergarten mathematics, Stepstone students achieved a mean growth of 26 points on the RIT scale a jump from the 4th to the 77th percentile in just one year. In 1st grade mathematics, students soared from the 8th to the 73rd percentile. In reading, the mean growth was almost 25 RIT points in both kindergarten and 1st grade (from the 12th to the 63rd percentile in kindergarten and to the 65th percentile in 1st grade). Lennon reflects, I believe the growth is a combination of everything we re doing: the daily computer time, the differentiation, the focused work on skills we ve identified as needing improvement with the help of MPG. Seeing how far we ve come this year, we re absolutely thrilled. As we move forward, our goal is for all of our students to be able to reach the benchmarks. We re working to prepare them for our state s upcoming summative assessment, PARCC. We re ready to continue raising the bar.

4 A district wins big when it goes all-in for formative assessment District Snapshot Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City School District School district location: Northeastern Ohio; grades split across 6 buildings Student population: Served 1,600 prekindergarten grade 12 students in Economic markers: 51% free and reduced lunch Keeping Learning on Track usage: Implemented KLT in 2012 Knowing that it needed exceptional teamwork and tools to help students meet rigorous new state standards, Ohio s Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City School District made a bold choice. Instead of investing in fragmented training efforts, the team decided to harness the collective power of its teachers by committing to Keeping Learning on Track (KLT), two years of embedded professional development focused on classroom formative practice. Despite its small size, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake faces both economic and logistical barriers to cohesiveness. Fifty-one percent of the area s 1,600 students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Additionally, teachers and students are split across six buildings: prekindergarten grade 1; grades 2 3; grade 4; grade 5; grades 6 8; and grades It s a structure that can and did contribute to feelings of isolation and insularity. Dr. Linda Bertsch-Uveges, former assistant superintendent at Sheffield-Sheffield Lake, shares, With new standards to integrate into our curriculum, we knew supportive transitions and teacher-to-teacher communication were more vital than ever. Yet we were finding each of our six schools was its own island. We didn t have a particularly collegial environment. To address these concerns, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake district leaders targeted student achievement, teaching and learning, and transitions between grades (and buildings) as areas for improvement. Taking the first step towards stronger teacher communities Leaders set about trying to create professional development (PD) experiences for teachers that would align with the district goals. As a starting point, they catalogued ways in which past PD programs had failed to prioritize teachers needs: subjectivity in how teachers were selected for courses or conferences failure to ensure training was relevant to all grades and across all content areas little teacher interest in and/or time to report back after off-site courses or conferences difficulty connecting elementary school educators with initiatives underway in the middle and high schools Determined to improve her schools unity and performance, Bertsch-Uveges hired 25 of the district s teachers as Academic Leaders. Together, group members represented all grades and subject areas as well as special education. During the school year, these leaders began exploring and sharing formative assessment techniques from sources that included educator and one of the lead researchers behind KLT, Dylan Wiliam. The teachers who consistently put their new skills into practice saw positive results in the classroom. Instructional rounds also gained a following. However, there was still no comprehensive plan that ensured every teacher received the same training message at the same time, and no shared language across the district. We really needed a professional development solution that made all our teachers feel valued while also increasing their effectiveness in the classroom, said Bertsch-Uveges. Discovering a curriculum for educators that benefits the entire school community The solution? KLT. Implementation began in , with each Academic Leader attending a three-day course that built their capacity to lead Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs). From there, every teacher in the district joined a

5 TLC and participated in monthly two-hour TLC meetings. Academic leaders, now KLT teacher leaders, closed geographic and content gaps by creating cross-district and cross-subject TLC teams. Our teachers say they ve learned so much about giving meaningful feedback to students, says Bertsch-Uveges. And many of our teachers have changed their lessons to reflect what they ve learned through KLT. Kids feel like they can approach teachers, that they can ask when they don t know something. It s now ok in their minds to say I m stuck, which gives teachers the chance to quickly assess learning gaps and figure out how to help them move forward. Bertsch-Uveges also shares how KLT techniques help motivate students to be active participants in their learning. KLT offers so many ways for teachers and students to evaluate work, and many of these techniques ask students to use higher-order thinking thinking that helps prep them for new standards, she states. Combined with other KLT techniques, it s really shown students that there s no place to hide from learning in our classrooms. Encouraging leadership at every level Like many districts, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake has often been a place where administrators make decisions and teachers are expected to follow them. Administrators find that KLT has empowered teachers to take on strong leadership roles within and outside their TLCs. New and experienced teachers have been able to mentor one another in key ways, creating more breadth and depth of experience throughout the district. Bertsch-Uveges concludes, We chose KLT because of its research-backed structure, but in some ways it was still a leap of faith. The extensive feedback from teachers and students, along with classroom observations, show us that WOW, this is working; we ve really received a return on our investment. Watching my teachers in action is exciting. NWEA has nearly 40 years of experience helping educators accelerate student learning through computer-based assessment suites, professional development offerings, and research services. Visit NWEA.org to find out how NWEA can partner with you to help all kids learn Northwest Evaluation Association. All rights reserved. MAP, Measures of Academic Progress, Keeping Learning on Track, and Partnering to Help All Kids Learn are registered trademarks and NWEA and KLT are trademarks of Northwest Evaluation Association in the U.S. and other countries. The names of other companies and their products mentioned in this brochure are the trademarks of their respective owners. April 2015