Middle School
	On Assessment in the Middle School

On Assessment in the Middle School

Progress Reports and Assessment
Reporting on Progress
Windows and Mirrors
Assessment as On-going Narrative
Putting Standardized Tests in a Progressive Context

Progress Reports and Assessment

With first quarter progress reports about to go out and family conferences just around the corner, I thought it would be useful to say a few words about assessment. Assessment is an on-going process at LREI; it is a means to an end, but not an end in and of itself. It's aim is to improve student understanding of key ideas and skills.

In the middle school, teachers strive to develop assessments that are learner-centered and focused on student understanding in relation to the particular goals identified for each area of inquiry. Rather than being separate from learning, assessment plays a central role in the instructional process. The assessment process also sheds light on which instructional strategies are most effective. Through thoughtful assessment, the teacher gains critical feedback for choosing and utilizing those teaching strategies that can best help a learner progress towards the goals of a particular unit of study. Opportunities for meaningful assessment also allow students to gain deeper insight into areas of strength and challenge and allow them to develop plans to address growth in both of these areas.

The Family Conference is an extension of these assessment activities and should be viewed as a dynamic opportunity to talk about growth and development. The student's presence and participation in these discussions is of vital importance. The Family Conference affords the student an opportunity to reflect, applaud, and problem-solve with two of her/his most important advocates, family members and her/his advisor. These conferences should be approached with a forward-looking perspective. As prior performance is reviewed, all of the participants should seek to work together to identify strategies and opportunities for learning that will support the student's continued growth and development. Family conferences are an important part of the educational experience at LREI. They are important for students, parents/guardians, and teachers. Like all learning opportunities, the Family Conference requires trust and a willingness to take risks on the part of all participants. While the conference may not be tension-free, it does provide an opportunity for inquiry and understanding. Here are two discussion ideas that you might want to consider as you prepare for these important dialogues:

• share with your child memorable experiences from when you were a middle school student and consider why such memories may be important to the educational life of your child
• explore how you and your child approach the concept of learning and reflect on why looking at the differences and similarities in your responses might be important.

In preparation for these conferences, Middle School students have spent time reflecting on their work thus far this school year. With their advisor's guidance, students have identified areas on which to focus during the next marking quarter and developed plans for achieving these goals. Your child will have these reflections with her/him during your conference. Here are some additional topics/questions that you might reflect on before your family conference:

• Your child's work habits at home--when are the most and least successful?Which assignments, or types of assignments, seem to lead to the most success? To be the most frustrating?Is our organizational plan working for your child? How is your child managing her/his time?When you and your child discuss school/school assignments at home, are there consistent themes that should be discussed at the conference?
• Are there extracurricular commitments or extenuating circumstances that should be discussed at the conference?

The Family Conference in the middle school places the student at the center as an active participant. We do this for a number of reasons:

1. to encourage students to accept personal responsibility for their academic performance;to help students develop the reflective skill of self-evaluation;to facilitate the development of students' organizational and oral communication skills and to increase their self-confidence; and
2. to encourage students, parents, and teachers to engage in open and honest dialogue.

There’s no doubt that conferences are hard work, but the potential for learning that can take place when all participants commit to the process is clearly worth the effort.

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Reporting on Progress

Next Tuesday, students will be coming home with their progress reports for the first quarter. The reports provide an important opportunity for shared discussion about successes to date and challenges to address as we move forward into the second half of the year. As I've mentioned before, these reports will follow our new format, which we believe will provide greater clarity with regard to how your child is assessed by his or her teachers. The new format has also ignited some important discussion among the faculty about the expectations we have for students and how we communicate these expectations. The goal of these discussions is to figure out how we can most effectively connect our assessment practices to our guiding principles about teaching and learning, which drive our daily work. These are important and exciting discussions to be having.

For sixth grade families, this will be your first set of reports with letter grades. Letter grades are based on a set of evaluations in three categories that are outlined on the report card. There is some variability in these categories across subjects. The reported letter grades reflect a student's progress in comparison to grade level expectations. For example, a "C" means progress that is approaching grade level expectations and a "B" signifies progress that meets grade level expectations. However, within these ranges could be unsatisfactory class participation balanced by excellent quiz scores and/or homework assignments. It is natural for there to be some anxiety around grades. As with all assessments, it is important for students and parents to view them as representative of where the student stands as learners at a particular moment in time. Areas of struggle as indicated by reported grades can be addressed by committed hard work.

Our decision to move to reports that will show a student’s progress over the four quarters was motivated by a desire to help students to see the work of a particular quarter in a broader context of their overall learning experience. Prior to receiving the reports, take the opportunity to speak with your child about his/her perceptions of the work he/she has completed this past quarter. This will help to frame your discussions when you go over the progress reports together and help you to prepare for Family Conferences.

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Windows and Mirrors

It was a very exciting and busy week. Our NYSAIS visitors were engaged in deep conversations with faculty and students and explored all aspects of our program. The week provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what we do and to consider strengths and challenges. In the faculty SEED group meeting this week, we talked about windows and mirrors as metaphors for ways of looking at the world and at ourselves.

The NYSAIS visit provided valuable windows and mirrors into our daily experience as members of the LREI community and as teachers and learners. At the same time, students, teachers, and families were engaged in a similar process as part of our Family Conferences, which are a time to celebrate, explore, wonder about, support, challenge, and plan. These meetings are not always easy; they call on all parties to enter into a conversation that places trust at the center of the dialog. When we find ourselves in that place, the Family Conference reveals itself as a moment for real understanding and empathy. I hope that you will let me know about any special moments that take place in your conferences.

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Assessment as On-going Narrative

On Friday, students will come home with their second quarter report cards. These reports include a narrative section that provides teachers with an opportunity to share insights, strategies, and goals that they have for your child. Always thoughtful, these narratives reveal the deep understanding that your child's teachers have about her/his learning and social experience in the classroom. The narrative goes hand in hand with the progress grid section and connects grade level expectations to the lived experience of the teacher and the student. The narrative is at once a story and an invitation to dialog with your child about successes and challenges to date and her/his plans for the second half of the year.

We hope that these reports will also make it easier for you see the story of your child's school year as it has unfolded over these first two quarters. That said, to the extent that these reports offer a window into the daily school experience of your child, they should also be seen in the larger context of your child's potential for growth and change. As we still have a substantial distance to travel before the end of the year, we hope that you will use these mid-year reports as we do: as one of a number of assessment maps that will guide us on our on-going journey.

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Putting Standardized Tests in a Progressive Context

The ERBs represent one piece of the assessment puzzle at LREI and it is important that they are seen in this light. They convey useful information, but not the full-picture of a child's achievement. While the content of the ERBs is generally aligned to grade-level expectations, there are areas where this is not the case. For example, a math concept that appears on the sixth grade test, may not be addressed in our curriculum until the seventh grade and teaching this concept out of context may not always make sense. Your child's teachers will make every attempt to identify these particular alignment areas. While much of our ERB prep is focused on reviewing concepts that have been addressed in the curriculum, teaching general test prep skills, and helping students to feel comfortable with standardized testing conditions, our focus tends not to be on "cramming" new concepts.

There were moments over the last three days when the Middle School building was eerily quiet as students concentrated on the ERBs. The regular sounds of students hard at work on projects and in discussions born of collaboration gave way to the focused attention each student gave to these standardized tests. At this week's parent rep meeting, the question came up as to how we use the results of these tests. In general, they serve two major purposes:

1. The ERB results allow us to look at the performance of a whole class or grade. We compare these results against our expectations for how we think the group should perform on those areas that are aligned with our curriculum. This helps us to identify skills/knowledge where students are meeting expectations and to identify, if any, those areas that may require some additional attention. While there are many important aspects of the curriculum that the ERB cannot and does not assess, it does provide a useful lens for looking at particular aspects of the curriculum.
2. In a similar way, the ERB results provide another perspective for looking at individual achievement and give rise to a number of questions:
   
   • Do the results seem to tell a similar story to what we see each day for a particular student or do there appear to be some discrepancies?
   • Do ERB results indicate areas of strength that we do not see in class? If so, how can we better draw on these strengths?
   • Are there areas of challenge that have not revealed themselves in the curriculum that would benefit from additional support in and outside of the classroom.

So for us, the ERBs are really an invitation to a conversation about learning. They are a piece of a puzzle that is always in process. They are important, but not all that is important.With this in mind, I think that it is important to say a word or two about the kind of work that our students are asked to do on a daily basis and how it is assessed. In addition to the more traditional forms of assessment, like tests and quizzes, as a progressive school, we are also committed to the use of meaningful authentic assessments. Authentic assessments ask students to read real texts and use real materials, to write for authentic purposes about meaningful topics, to confront meaningful problems that may have multiple solutions, and to participate in authentic tasks such as discussions, presentations, experiments, journal and letter writing, and regular revision of their work. Most importantly, authentic assessment values the thinking behind work, the process, as much as the finished product. As you review the progress report and ERB scores, I encourage you to ask your child about the kinds of authentic work that s/he has been doing. This conversation is as important as the information contained in the two reports you will be receiving.

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