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Please contact the author, Jennifer Morrison (j.morrison@artofeducating.com), with questions, comments, or requests to reproduce this material.  

4/22/2008 - Faux Innovation

I went to today's meeting, the SC Staff Development Council's spring conference, with high hopes that it would fulfill its promise of presenting "South Carolina Proven Practices: Innovative Staff Development that Increases Student Achievement."  I expected a deep discussion of what really constitutes achievement and innovation, perhaps some discussion of a true professional learning community - one where teachers ask questions - and of the context that creates this curiosity and professional drive.  I wanted teachers defining data and being defined as the instructional leaders of their schools.  I wanted something new...something not about standardized test scores.

But, other than a good session put on by two middle schools in Laurens County described below, what I got was a look at South Carolina schools unapologetically chasing scores using whatever they could while calling it innovative professional development: pacing guides and standardized curricula including daily incorporation of test-taking skills and question formats as well as the requirement that teachers turn in lesson plans, benchmark assessments, routine teacher observations and monitoring (Bethune-Bowman High's principal was proud to share her motto, "You must inspect if you're going to expect"), the principal and administrative team recast as the school's instructional leadership team, data-driven instructional decisions with data and assessment defined solely as PACT and HSAP scores, a focus on school discipline and classroom management with programs like PBIS, laundry lists of best practices and school programs including multiple canned computer programs for remediation, and expensive student incentives for test scores (the principal of Berea Middle in Greenville County School District bragged that they awarded iPods and MP3 players for improved test scores).  What's innovative here?  Been there, done that to death.  Let me tell you a secret.  Turning your school into a test factory only works for a little while and it doesn't have much to do with true student achievement.

In his opening address, State Superintendent for Education, Jim Rex, quoted a favorite writer, saying that "fish didn't discover water."  What he meant is that people in the system have a difficult time envisioning anything different because they have never experienced anything different, and unfortunately, everyone from legislators to to teachers to criminals, grew up in basically the same system of schools.  We grew up in the water, we still live in the water, and today I saw schools reinventing water.  Rex encouraged us to become "jumpers," to take ourselves out and look at the system from a radically new perspective.  That's what I want to do. 

There was one "jumper" session: Laurens Middle and Sanders Middle in Laurens County School District 55 presented a session on their implementation of alternative report cards.  (Of course, I got to hear Scaredy Squirrel, a picture book by Melanie Watt, again - it's a favorite of folks doing sessions about teacher and system change, and it's getting to be as overdone as the "Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten" speech.)  Laurens and Sanders' move to alternative report cards, which focus on standards rather than grades, was a natural one rather than one induced solely by test scores.  Catalyzed by work with SC Reading Initiative coaches, the idea grew out of teachers' attempts to reconcile balanced literacy activities and assessments with grades, teacher inquiry about what students really knew, and uneasiness about discrepancies between PACT scores and student grades.  They also tied to research by Richard Allington (Classrooms That Work, 1999), who said, "Report cards tend to be bothersome to teachers and not very informative to parents, especially parents of at-risk children."  (I think Marzano also proposes a redesign of grading systems in one of his books.)  The new report cards give students and parents evaluative information on standards, MAP scores, successful learning behaviors, and PACT.  They still include a numerical grade, but Amanda Avery, the coach at Laurens Middle, told me they're looking to phase that out.  To assess students' achievement on standards, teachers also have the option (get that...option) of using matching standards-based portfolios or find their own ways of documenting student growth on standards.  The presenters mentioned that teachers are still working to develop systems for clear identification of student achievement, rather than checking boxes on students' report cards based on gut feeling.  It was clear to me that great conversations are happening at these schools, and that there is huge potential for further conversation and growth on the part of students, teachers, and their parents.  Professional dialogue and intellectual struggle of this nature are hallmarks of a true professional learning community.  Anything else, and most of what I saw today, is about expediting the process of getting test scores in the guise of professional development.  The label, "innovative," is slapped on simply because it's something new for that particular school.    

Avery, Amanda, and Wanda Melton. (2008, April). Don't Take the "A" Train: The Tribulations and Triumphs
in Developing and Implementing Alternative Report Cards. South Carolina Staff Development Council
Spring Conference, Columbia SC.
   
 

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