May 17, 2007

Our Town/ Our Teachers: A New Way of Looking at MCAS

Mention the MCAS, and you are likely to hear a number of opinions on its value to schools, students, and teachers. In an effort to get the most out of this standardized test and other assessment tools, Lawrence School Principal Jim Swaim attended the “Data-Wise: Step-by-Step Blueprint for Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning” conference at the Harvard Principal’s Center. A grant from the Brookline Education Foundation funded Swaim’s attendance as well as that of second-grade teacher Jonathan Norwood and Vice Principal Allan Cameron. Swaim and Norwood talk about the experience of attending the Harvard conference.

What interested you in this conference?

Swaim: One of the missions in Brookline is to use assessments within the classroom and to use the MCAS in a logical way. Our intent was to learn how to get a handle on doing this successfully.

Besides the Lawrence team, who attended the Harvard conference?

Swaim: There were participants from all over the nation and from multiple districts. The Detroit Public Schools sent about 30 principals. There were also administrators from Boston, Atlanta, and California. The diversity was so powerful and so interesting.

This was primarily a conference on how to use MCAS data, as well as other forms of assessment, to improve teaching and learning. What were some of the ways of looking at data that you learned about, and how is this different from how you were looking at data before?

Swaim: We learned to use multiple sources of data to create a really vivid image of the teaching, and what students are learning within the framework of that teaching.

Norwood: There is value to be derived from standardized tests when comparing across a large population, as long as results are taken as part of a whole rather than the whole itself.

You were introduced to a program called Data-Wise. How is this program different from Test Whiz, the product currently used to look at MCAS data?

Norwood: Test Whiz is a method for creating data that people can understand. Data-Wise is a tool for analysis, and provides a way to interpret, analyze, and implement change based on your analysis.

Swaim: It gives us a process and the end result of the process is to create within the school a culture of improvement by building the habit among teachers of using data to improve teaching and practice. We learned to look at assessment and not use it to make judgments about kids, but to make judgments about the kind of teaching and learning that is going on.

At the conference, you were taught protocols for looking at data. Have you been able to use these at Lawrence this year?

Swaim: One of the protocols we used the most was this issue of “What is the test asking the students to do? And what can we do in our practice to support that?” We chose to look at the open-response element of the MCAS because it requires children to write in a coherent way and explain their thinking.

What was the next step in this process?

Swaim: The teaching staff dedicated itself to look at what we do already and what we could do to support it even more. We came up with a school-wide scope and sequence. It unified people and gave them a better sense of what was being asked on the MCAS.

Why did you decide to start in kindergarten?

Norwood: If you wait until September of third grade to prepare the kids to write an open response, it’s too late. Of course, the instruction looks a lot different in kindergarten than it does in third grade, but by the time kids get to second grade we’re pretty close to a final product.

There has been a great deal of criticism of the MCAS, and of the notion that schools “teach to the test.” Based on what you learned at the conference, how would you respond to this criticism?

Norwood: The strongest advocates of these tests and those who create them do not want us to teach to the test or practice the test because it invalidates the results. Good, generalized instruction will help kids do well on the test anyway.

Swaim: Profoundly good teaching is what this is about — not about changing our teaching or teaching to the test, but improving practice. Kids who are well taught will do well on this test. We have control over this, and to think that we don’t is destructive.