Modern Learners podcast on grades

After a panui from Andy (our Principal at Haeata) recommending the Modern Learners site, I joined up and read their White Paper which I really enjoyed and related to, then we had another panui about this podcast. I was so inspired and excited, I took notes and thought I would share them. I do recommend you listen to the whole thing though (51mins) and read through their site.

https://modernlearners.com/mastery-transcripts-replace-grades/
Competency based assessment rather than numbers or grades.

Scott Looney - headmaster in Hawken HS in Ihio for 12 years. Changed the systems and culture of what learning looks like in his school.
He is founder of Mastery.org
Making a network of schools trying to get rid of grades in high school

What is Mastery about?
Didn't start out to change grades, just wanted to create a second high school within his own school. Built a strand that was completely based on education research and ignoring every convention. If they had a blank slate for education what would it look like? "It's problem and project based, interdisciplinary, intergrade level (9th graders in with 12th graders) and all built on real world problems. The teacher assumes the role of master to the student apprentice."
Built a few courses on entrepreneurship. Grades and content of courses got in the road. Needed a non graded course - find one.
37000 HS in the USA. They said what you want doesn't exist. One school didn't have grades but found that they still had to make up a GPA! Had a great assessment knowledge but had to have the GPA for college.

Created their own prototype. Unique transcript - employers said if you have something different, I don't have time to look at it and work it out. But if lots of schools did it, then we'd have to learn how to read them. That's when Mastery consortium.... was born.
160 schools from 15 different countries.

The high school transcript aims to assess student progress and performance, but it is a broken instrument that underserves students, teachers or the world outside our school walls.

Most schools don't have the courage to change this.

How do you break this?

Not stupid for a school to say it's broken but what can I do? Dangerous to go your own way. What gives people courage is numbers.

How do colleges and employers know it is rigorous?

There is ZERO research in the world that supports letter grading. NONE.

It's never been legitimate. Designed to be a bell curve originally.

International Baccalaureate was one direction that schools took.

Mastery hasn't done either. Has done zero outreach. Very new - 2 full time employees. Not ready to take on the world yet.

IB seems to be possible for partnership as some philosophy is the same. 6-8 years away from getting the transcripts ready.

Public sector way ahead of schools with competency and efficiency based assessments. What they are trying to do is get students to persist to mastery not just move when teachers tell you to.

Pilot, will select some schools to pilot their transcript. not there yet, probably 6-12 months. 80 school districts have indicated they are keen.

NZ very well placed - would be surprised if they didn't show interest. Broadening their outlook. NZ at the top of the list. They are well ahead of any other country when it comes to mastery based assessment.

All the concepts at the moment are just examples (see one here). Designing 15-20 different visualisations to play with and eventually settle in on one. Mastery transcript format has to be the same for admissions. Needs to be consistent.

All about abilities and dispositions, not content knowledge. MTC agnostic on that question - Hawken just does skills and habits of mind, not content. Different schools may have Science. They won;t dictate. Will open up space on the transcript. Can get credit for public speaking. Has to write a mastery threshold and have a way of assessing. Will not be standardised across schools. Each school will make own credits but the transcript will be standardised.

We are so content and discipline driven in schools. Will Unis make that something that they want to see? Nothing on the transcript that does this. College presidents will be among biggest fans. Make this accessible for ALL students, including underpriviledged.

Colleges don't read files anymore on paper - why can't your transcript be a living document that has all that rich data attached.

Colleges have been asking for "creative, analytical, risk-taking kids who can solve real-world problems and work in groups for a year" and the system they use for selection at the moment gives them exactly the opposite of what they are asking for. Students now are not risk takers, they see the entry as a game you play, taking the right courses, working towards As and the world is your oyster. Valedictorians are not being chosen and are not the best students, often going to College with anxiety and stress disorders due to the pressure to get top marks.

He asks teachers to raise hand if they have seen a HS kid break into tears after getting an A- and every hand goes up. Is that OK? No.

More reading on testing:

https://modernlearners.com/the-testing-emperor-finally-has-no-clothes/

Non college entrants - going to internships. Should kids do 13 years at school?

If you look at those that don't persist, so are life circumstance. Many leave because the system is against them. The biggest reason they quit is they come in with something that needs remediation and at the moment they get moved on based at the timing of the teacher, so if you happen to be bat the high end, you get bored, and if you are at the low end you are likely to quit.

System that allows kids to persist to mastery and allow them time to do that. Some can take a long time but once they master it they retain it. Didn't quite make 1st grade so now we'll start second grade and they get further behind. 3rd and 4th grade they work out school is not working for them.

No timestamp on mastery transcript - can take ages for some people. Only get judged when you ask to be

Teacher only job is to build a portfolio of evidence, feedback is that they are getting closer. Encourages them to persist and not give up.

Micro credentialling and badges

To employers - here's a link. Click on my leadership badge and you can see the testimonials from my team who talk about what a great leader I was. Need to take a large variety of digital inputs and outputs in their platform.

Can students design own credits? Up to sending school. School in charge of what credits they can provide. Mastery credits - foundational eg algebraic reasoning credit they must have before graduating at Hawken. Some others are advanced credits - 80 next to it means 80% of students have earned the credit. Rare credit may be 2% get a certain habit of mind skill. 

Socio-emotional growth being assessed.

School sets the mastery threshold. Can never master things, but mastery threshold in basic public speaking may be the basics, advanced threshold has to be set at a level that is available for all students to achieve but can be at a high level.

Hawken School

Some classes they can take all day every day for 3 weeks.

Bought an extension campus in the city. Take them there for 2 days, 4 days, go to different opportunities. 

Find your resources.

Get everybody on the same page. Hire talent. Then things will work.

If you don't like it all, go to different school. Don't be afraid to be specific to a core set of beliefs that you might expel some families. Can't be all to all. Either to faculty or parents.

Inspirational leadership!

2 ways to mobilise people - hope or fear. People get frustrated at first, some will start building, then bell curve will join in. Self generating now.

Why Hawken must lead - pdf

"Education in America is fundamentally broken"

This was an echo-location piece. Sounding people out. Wasn't designed to send out to the world, but wanted a sense of how ready people were to do the change. Told the Board about it and wanted to see what came back. Got most support from least likely. Current students least receptive. Triggered the dialogue.

Haeata Week Nine

Day One

We had some time in smaller groups across hapori to talk about Relationship Management in our first block and together we worked on coming up with a statement that described relationships for us. Our group used this statement that was made by another staff member, but we felt it summed things up for us:

Building trust and respect and creating a culture of belonging where everyone feels valued and safe to be who they truly want to be and to have the understanding to allow others to be who they want to be.

Another comment which I found quite useful was about the difference between restorative practise and restorative justice. Restorative Practices are the way that you talk to students. The way you shame them, or not, in front of others The way you approach them in the classroom, the way you talk to them when they make a mistake, the way you interact with students. Restorative Justice is the way that you deal with issues after they occur, the way you talk through problems with students and find solutions. I felt this was a good way of clarifying the difference.

Some of the new staff presented their digital korowai today - just another reminder of how great these are to give us an insight into their personal life. We are very keen to take this idea into our hapori for next year.

The second block was around assessment and we had a list of articles to read and reflect on. I read some really interesting articles during this time and wrote quite a few pages on reflection around these, maybe they will all make it into another blog another time! Meanwhile, here are a few links to some I found particularly interesting.

Principles of Assessment for Learning

Assessment Literacy

Personalised Assessment (school stories)

Working Inside the Black Box 

Assessment tools for Maori learners

Blog on NCEA by Principal Possum

In the afternoon we met some more whānau at our enrolment hui, and once these had finished, I read more of the articles on Assessment as I found some of them quite thought-provoking.

Day Two

Our hapori had some time this morning to discuss assessment  and we wrote a large list of assessment tools that we could think of:

NCEA Unit and Achievement standards, STAR, Gateway, CTC, SiteSafe, MOOCS, Royal and Trinity Music exams, Services, Te Kura, Peer and group reflections, Portfolios, ITOs, First Aid, Spirit of Adventure, Outward Bound, AsTTLe - the list goes on. We are not restricted to just using NCEA and it is good to get an idea of other assessments and pathways that we can look at. When I think of assessment I am always reminded of the quote by Albert Einstein in this picture.

An interesting question came out of our discussion, "Is it our job to be a vocational transitional facilitator?". In some ways I think it is. As senior school staff, much of what our students are looking for is the pathway when they leave school. We need to have some tools to enable this and support them in their journey. So, what about those that don't know what they want to do? How do we help support them? I feel it is about exposing them to a range of opportunities and ideas that they might get a spark from that can set them on a pathway for life.

Our next block was working on our relationship agreement. Previous comments had been collated by Andy with all of our views put into one document. Many of our comments were very similar and some underlying common themes emerged. Some of these themes were:

• It is vital to form positive relationships with all, including whānau
• Restorative practice can help maintain these relationships
• We need to create a safe environment for all
• One size does not fit everyone
• We need to preserve mana
• Student perspective is important

We also had discussions about what we would do in certain situations with students, for example swearing, fighting, communication with parents. This really brought home how different things might look from one end of the school to another, but also how different it can be from one incident to another. So much depends on the individual but there are certain base line strategies that can be followed and we focussed on these. We then looked at pro-active management strategies that we could use, personally, in our hapori and kura wide. Some of these are really simple but can make a big difference to our students. Examples could be:

• Correct pronunciation of names
• Showing a genuine interest
• Learning about our ākonga
• Modelling good responses in an age appropriate way

Day Three

We spent some time working on NCEA and assessment today as well as how the timetable might work for us before our hapori took a break and met at my house for a swim and some lunch together. It's always good to spend some social time together as a group and we are really lucky that we all get on well together - well, I think we do!!

More enrolment hui in the afternoon, meeting our awesome whānau.

Day Four

Excitement today as we met at the school site for our site visit. We were given a safety briefing, signed for our key cards and were taken on tours of the site. So great to be able to actually see what the spaces look like. It's meant to be finished by next Friday so we were keen to see where things were at. Having watched the fly-through on the Haeata website, I was amazed at how accurate it was! Even down to the colour scheme!

The outside spaces were lovely, in particular I liked the small stage type areas outside the hapori, lots of uses sprang to mind. I got a sneak peak at the Performing Arts area and was excited by the practise rooms (yes they are soundproof - 2 of us tested that) and the recording spaces. My one reservation, which I had from the flythrough and was confirmed in the actual space, is that the sound/recording booth for the auditorium is on the side, not at the back of the space. We didn't get into the space itself, but the front of house lighting rig looks pretty cool. The technology area in our hapori looks amazing and I can hardly wait to see how everything comes together next year.

We dashed back to school in time for more enrolment hui and then spent the afternoon working on more assessment and timetable clarification in our hapori.

Day Five

A day out for Ihutai (our hapori). We travelled over to Living Springs for the day which was an amazing site to work from.

It was nice to get away to a space where we could focus on planning and have some in depth discussion without any other distractions. We were well looked after with fantastic food (the muffins were enormous!) and a tour of the area, which included a bit of rock climbing by our resident expert, James, as well as a bush walk to an 800 yr old Kahikatea, one of the oldest trees on Banks Peninsula. It was a lovely day out and a great time together.

Only one week to go - this term has gone so quickly. I lost my voice on Thursday - tired and needing a break. So many of us are feeling the "end of term-itis" drain and I know we will all be looking forward to a break.

NCEA and Term 4

It is that time of the year when madness reigns. Students frantically dash to finish work, teachers are overloaded with marking and moderating results. We are trying to get students prepared for external exams. Term 4 is a busy one.
My reflection for this week - a Connected Educator Challenge - is about this assessment process and about learning.

One of the things I believe in, and our school supports, is assessing students when they are ready. I have seen many students miss out on gaining standards by not having the opportunity to be assessed when they are ready. Obviously there are some standards that you don't have a choice about when you do your assessment - a practical assessment in Science, a field trip or something that relies on external providers, but in general we work hard to give students plenty of opportunities to present their work.

In Music, we have a number of standards that rely on students making a portfolio of work. Performances can be collected during the year and compositions completed at various times. Along with having checkpoints for these to keep students on track, we have a number of students who finish them early, or struggle to finish them at all - hence the last minute rush in Term 4.

 I know of many staff and schools who would say "it's due this date and after that it won't be marked". I find this quite difficult to align myself with, as I believe that it's hard to push that creative process of composition, and also the physical performance skills. I know how difficult it is to write a piece and have it right, getting frustrated with a chord, or a passage that just doesn't work. Sometimes you have to be in the right head-space or it just won't happen. Perhaps you just haven't quite mastered the technical skill to enable you to play a piece until later in the year. For these reasons, I believe strongly in giving students as many opportunities as we can to get these standards finished. We have numerous concerts during the year that they can use for assessment, as well as performances they do outside of school with their own bands. This, however, leads to a busy Term 4! It's good that students have a focus and for some, it's probably the hardest they have worked all year, but it leads to busy marking and feedback sessions.

 My students at the moment are all very credit focused. What happened to the learning that I felt I had earlier in the year? In fact, I have just had a class where one of the students has copied his pie-chart of credits and made it into wallpaper for his desktop. He wanted to remind himself to get Excellence as much as possible. A nice idea, but I want him to learn as much as possible...

One thing I implemented into my music classes this year was a listening exercise to try and encourage them to expand their listening and give them work that was NOT assessed, but still contributed to their learning. Student felt it helped with all aspects of music, expanding their knowledge. I really enjoyed teaching this, as there was less emphasis on assessment and more on learning new things just for the sake of gaining knowledge.


There was a great tweet by Brett Phipps ‏@Phippsb53 on Sep 19

"If we called assessments "checks for understanding," our conversations would change drastically".

 I believe this is a really good idea - are we far too assessment obsessed? What are we trying to achieve?