Bringing Teacher Voice to Student Assessment
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan launched the RESPECT Project (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching), a $5 billion initiative aimed at transforming the teaching profession to better serve students. Many of its key pillars—career ladders for teachers, evaluation systems that give teachers the feedback they need to improve, and improved compensation—speak to the issues we hear about so often from teachers, and the issues our organization is dedicated to improving. We were honored that he identified Teach Plus as a valued partner in bringing teacher voice to the table and are proud of Policy Fellow alum Shakera Walker, who introduced the Secretary and answered questions during the open forum.
A key refrain in Secretary Duncan’s speech was the need for teachers themselves to have a role in the decisions that affect their classrooms and their students. We’re thrilled to announce a new opportunity for teachers to do just that. We’re beginning the rollout of Assessment Advisor, a powerful web platform for teachers to review the assessments they give to students. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we know every teacher has an opinion.
This is a project of the first national working group of teachers we’re ever convened at Teach Plus. In each of the cities where we work, we’d hear a handful of teachers talk about how the assessments they give help them improve their instruction. Then we’d hear the majority of teachers wishing for that type of information and lamenting the fact that their assessments weren’t aligned to their instruction and had no value in helping them improve. All assessments are not created equal, and it’s time teachers had input into the direction of this billion-dollar industry.
Based on the working group’s idea, we've developed a site where teachers will be able to rate the assessments they give to students in the following categories: Overall, Alignment to My Instruction, and Usefulness to Improving My Practice. The latter two categories include "pros" and "cons" that teachers can check. We've been in conversations with several district and state leaders who are eager to use this information to inform decisions about which assessments to adopt and which to discard.
This month we are inviting those in our Network to participate in the beta-testing process, reviewing any district, state, or otherwise widely used assessment. A couple hundred reviews have already been completed, and any teacher who submits a review will be entered to win a Kindle Fire. We’re planning a high profile, multi-city, public launch in late March— the heart of state testing season. For those of you non-teachers in our audience, log on and see what teachers have to say!
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Top stories in education policy this week:
$5 Billion Offered In Grants to Revisit Teacher Policies: The Obama administration proposes a new grant competition called RESPECT: Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching.
Teachers want moratorium on layoffs and new evaluation system: Los Angeles teachers and UTLA approved an initiative that calls for the development of a new multi-measure, teacher-driven evaluation system, as well as a moratorium on teacher layoffs.
In Memphis Classrooms, the Ghost of Segregation Lingers On: The merging of Memphis City Schools with suburban Shelby County is ostensibly designed to equalize opportunities, but many worry that it will in fact jeopardize Memphis' successful reform initiatives.
Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say: A growing body of research shows that the educational opportunity gap between affluent and low-income students is widening, even as the gap based on race has narrowed.
CPS must learn from successful turnarounds: This editorial argues that the rest of the country can learn from Chicago, where new research shows that dramatic strategies for transforming schools are starting to pay off.
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