When most people think of high-stakes testing and accountability, their thoughts usually turn to administrators, teachers, and school systems as the ones with the most at stake. Such thoughts, though understandable, miss the point, said Bev Sadler of the Acalanes Union School District in Lafayette, Calif., and Johanna VanderMolen of the Campbell Union School District in Campbell, Calif. The high stakes of testing supersede conventional expectations and actually encompass everyone, from students to parents to schools.
Johanna VanderMolen
"Everyone has to be thought of as accountable," said Sadler. "Students are accountable for what they are to know and be able to do; teachers need to be accountable for teaching in ways that enable kids to learn; administrators need to understand the content standards for the teaching profession and the methods of assessment; district offices need to provide those things that support the development of assessment; and school boards need to keep focused so that they make it possible for us to continue our work."
Such sentiments may sound obvious to some, but such is not always the case when it comes to what policy boards and various administrations view as their top priorities. "I once worked with a school board that had a debate over what color the hubcaps should be on school buses," said VanderMolen. "We need to stick with the real stuff, and our main job is to make sure that children learn."
Sticking with the real stuff, she and Sadler said, requires officials to be on the lookout for problems when implementing standards for their school systems and making arrangements for teacher evaluations and testing. "We hit a lot of land mines," said VanderMolen. "But when you hit them, you back up, regroup, and go out again."
One of the first land mines Sadler and VanderMolen encountered was teacher apathy. "Oh, fine. Go ahead and write standards. Been there, done that," were some of the sentiments expressed by teachers when state standards were first being drafted, according to VanderMolen. When the testing of those standards began, however, teacher attitudes changed significantly. "When we did a pilot run, some of the teachers just came unglued," she said. "They were saying, ‘My God! You're testing the kids! What are you going to do with those results? What's going to happen when those get out?' We had to reassure them that this was a pilot, and we would be rewriting things based on the responses we received."
School officials should think of standards implementation as a process rather than something to be done quickly, Sadler said. "If standards are going to make any difference at all, they really need to be approached from a systems perspective," she added. "It's not just curriculum and instruction but evaluation and professional development policies that offer support."
Such an evaluation system, Sadler said, should consist of three parts. "We worked with our teachers' association to revise our evaluation systems, and we came up with three performance demonstrations that would be used as the criteria for evaluation: classroom observations, student surveys, and student achievement." Each part of the evaluation was carefully developed to ensure a thorough understanding of the process, so no one would feel alienated or resentful of the process.
Of the three evaluation elements, the student surveys caused the most concern. "That was the big one," Sadler said. "We felt we really needed to have student input, but what does a 15-year-old really know about teaching? About assessment? How are they going to understand these things, and are they going to be honest on the evaluations?"
The solution, she said, was to implement a multilayered system. If a teacher was to be evaluated, an evaluation would be given to every one of that teacher's students. Surveys would consist of multiple-choice forms that could be scanned electronically so no response could be traced to any particular student. The questions would follow the standards as outlined by the school system, and the teachers would own the data at the end of the school year.
"If the data on the teacher survey was not favorable, you could decide not to share it with your principal or school officials," said Sadler. "But you did have to turn in the self-reflection form that accompanied the results."
Such a move might seem questionable to some, but Sadler argued that teachers would try to improve if they saw negative feedback on the evaluations. "It's human nature that if you get negative feedback, even if you can come up with all the reasons in the world why you got it and why things did not go well, it's still there, and you still think about it and try to do better because someone said something." Other portions of the evaluation, such as student achievement scores, also did not have to be shared during the pilot process, but they would become official parts of the teachers' evaluations in the following years, according to Sadler.
The process, though complex and time-consuming, can yield satisfactory results, according to Sadler and VanderMolen, especially if the process is implemented carefully. "It's been an interesting two years for me," said Sadler. "We're already seeing more focus on the part of teachers in their classrooms and across the schools. That's a good thing for everyone in our community."