Florida Educational Leadership Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment 1

Florida Educational Leadership Standards

Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment

Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment – High Performing Leaders monitor the success of all students in the learning environment; align the curriculum, instruction, and assessment processes to promote effective student performance; and use a variety of benchmarks, learning expectations, and feedback measures to ensure accountability for all participants engaged in the educational process.

Knowledge

I have the knowledge and understanding of:

Student growth and development Applied learning theories Applied motivational theories Curriculum design, implementation, evaluation, and refinement Principles of effective instruction Measurement, evaluation, and assessment strategies Diversity and its meaning for education Adult learning and professional development models The change process for systems, organizations, and individuals Technologies in promoting student learning and professional growth School cultures The purpose of education and the role of leadership in modern society Global issues and forces affecting teaching and learning

Dispositions

I believe in, value and am committed to:

Developing a school culture that focuses on collaborative assessment of student learning

Using data to help improve teaching and learning Using a systems approach to collecting and analyzing data for improvement in

curriculum and instruction A school vision of high standards of learning

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Continuous school improvement Ensuring that students have the knowledge, skills, and values needed to become

successful adults Student learning as the fundamental purpose of schooling The proposition that all students can learn Lifelong learning for self and others Professional development as an integral part of school improvement A safe and supportive learning environment Preparing students to be contributing members of society the ideal of the common good The principles in the Bill of Rights The right of every student to a free, quality education Education as a key to opportunity and social mobility

Skills

Throughout my internship experience and coursework at FGCU I have learned and evidenced through integrated essays and artifacts the following list. As an administrator I will facilitate processes and engage in activities ensuring that:

The vision for learning is developed with and among stakeholders Progress toward the vision and mission is communicated to all stakeholders The school community is involved in school improvement efforts The school community is regularly appraised of student learning through multiple forms

of assessment The vision shapes the educational programs, plans, activities, and actions Existing resources are used in support of the school vision and goal Curriculum and assessment implementation plans are regularly monitored, evaluated,

and revised Diversity, multiculturalism, and global perspectives are integrated into the curriculum

appropriately Professional development promotes a focus on student learning Barriers to student learning are identified, clarified, and addressed Diversity is considered in developing learning experiences Lifelong learning is encouraged and modeled there is a culture of high expectations for

self, student, and staff performance Technologies are used in teaching and learning Multiple opportunities to learn are available to all students Curriculum decisions are based on research, expertise of teachers, and the

recommendations of learned societies

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Knowledge of learning, teaching, and student development is used to inform management decisions

Emerging trends are recognized, studied, and applied as appropriate

Florida Educational Leadership Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment

Everyone can learn. Education is the key to opportunity and social mobility in our world

today. Amendment XIV of the United States Constitution states no person shall be deprived of

“life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. While education is not a right

guaranteed in the Constitution, it is considered to be the vehicle that presents opportunity,

provides knowledge necessary to be an active member of society, and teacher skills needed to

obtain resources which will lead to the possession of property (Legal Information Institute,

2009).

The primary responsibility of school leaders is to provide a high-quality education for

students and guarantee student learning. A school leader works with the school organization

to develop a vision for learning, that is, aspirations for what the institution wishes to become.

This vision directs the organizational culture, the norms, beliefs, and values that are shared by

the stakeholders in the organization. At the core of a school’s vision is student learning, as this

is the ultimate purpose of schooling.

Current educational practices are far different today than they ever have been in the past.

Where once the educational landscape focused on inputs such as resources and materials,

today’s forum focuses on outputs, specifically equality of performance. It is no longer enough

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to show that students have been taught from a particular appropriate curricula, today we must

show that a defined level of student learning has been achieved (IBM, 2002).

In effective organizations, four internal dimensions of the organization are aligned. Each of

the four components: ecology, structure, culture, and milieu, are dynamically interactive within

the organization. A change in one component will result in a change in all other components as

they are directly linked. The organization as a whole interacts dynamically with it external

environment, including social, political, and other systems (Owens & Valesky, 2007).

Aligning the learning environment, is going to be a necessity of the future. Learning

alignment is an ongoing process for delivering continuous improvement in the classroom so

that all students achieve at higher levels and meet achievement standards. Learning alignment

focuses on four factors that most directly impact learning results in the classroom: standards,

curriculum and instruction, assessment, and professional development. In order to provide this

learning alignment in schools, standards must be clear and measurable, curriculum and

instruction must provide students with the skills and competencies identified in the standards,

assessments must be based on skills that are measured in the standards, and professional

development opportunities must provide teachers the tools necessary to help students gain

those skills and competencies (IBM, 2002).

Standards are a balanced, coherent articulation of expectations for student learning.

Standards include accurate, high-quality content and skills. They provide the structure from

which deep and rich curriculum can be built (Carr & Harris, 2001).

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Standards –based education is the belief that all students, regardless of diverse

backgrounds, are capable of meeting high standards. Since the 1990’s, curriculum

development has focused increasingly on SBE. In response to this movement, state

departments of education, school districts, and schools underwent numerous curricular

reforms. “Higher standards” was typically interpreted by the public to mean that teachers

should expect more from their students. This resulted in a series of macro-level mandates

which included the writing of detailed statements of the knowledge and skills students were to

acquire, higher test scores to receive passing grades or be promoted, and more teaching of

English, science, and mathematics. Currently all 50 states have adopted state standards

(Anctil, Hass, & Parkay, 2006).

Standards are typically referred to as two types: content standards and performance

standards. Content standards refer to the agreed upon knowledge and skills that students

should attain from different content areas. These standards often include benchmarks, or

indicators, which are presented as specific statements of what a student should understand and

be able to do at a specific grade level or developmental stages. Performance standards are

used to assess the degree to which students have attained the standards in a particular

academic area. These standards require teacher judgment on the quality of performance

(Anctil, Hass, & Parkay, 2006).

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002 was an education initiative like no other

before in the United States. A key component of NCLB is high standards. NCLB required that all

states create their own standards for math, reading, and science within a specific time frame.

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With standards in place, states are required to test every student’s progress toward those

standards by using standards-aligned assessments. Each state, school district, and school are

expected to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) towards meeting state standards. This

progress is measured for all students by sorting the test results into subgroups for racial or

ethnic minority, economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, and students with

limited English proficiency. School performance is publicly reported through district and state

report cards. Any district or school that continually fails to meet AYP is held accountable, and if

necessary goes through a restructuring process (Anctil, Hass, & Parkay, 2006).

As part of my educational leadership practicum I worked on a large-scale project that

compared school performance & AYP data of schools to both the school’s performance in the

previous year as well as the overall performance of the district. It is interesting to note the

number of schools who received a grade of “A” but did not make Adequate Yearly Progress.

Judging by what is known about the location and communities of each school, it I s

disappointing to see that most school’s making AYP have predominately white and affluent

student population. In completing this comparison project I used these two artifacts. The first

, is a spreadsheet provided by the state that outlines AYP data for every school

in the county. The second, is a spreadsheet that shows school grade and AYP

status over the past seven years, as well as the Differentiated Accountability status of the

schools for the 2008-2009 school year.

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Curriculum and instruction encompasses what teachers teach, and how they teach it.

Curriculum and instruction are connected as they are both a part of teaching and each

influences the other. Various aspects of the curriculum are better suited to different

instructional strategies. Effective administrators recognize this and build on the human

resources of the organization through collaboration, mentoring, and staff development.

An effective learning environment will have appropriate instructional methods and

meaningful curriculum. Teacher’s instructional methods should be used to meet student’s

individual performance goals. There are several models of teaching including models based on

behavioral psychology, human development, cognitive development, and social interactions

which I discussed in depth in the integrative essay “Standard 2: Instructional Leadership”.

Teachers will of course have areas of strength and weakness when it comes to instructional

methods and strategies. However, it is important for teachers to have an understanding of the

variety of methods out there as different areas of curriculum and different students will require

differentiated instruction (Anctil, Hass, & Parkay, 2006).

This is where data-driven instruction comes to play. Data-driven instruction is a current

driving force in the era of accountability. Data-driven instruction gives administrators and

teacher concrete information on the performance of their students in a variety of targeted

areas. Data-driven instruction begins with the setting of performance goals. These are typically

derived from the state standards, however often professional learning communities set their

own independent goals as a component of ascertaining a school vision. With the performance

goals in place a hypothesis is generated to evaluate the links between outputs (instructional

Florida Educational Leadership Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment 8

and operational) and student performance goals. Data collection occurs which may come from

a variety of assessment tools, but should be specific indicators of the standards used in

developing the student performance goals. The data should be analyzed for areas of progress

and challenge, and appropriate interventions applied to instruction based on the results of the

data analysis (IBM, 2002).

In the course School Curriculum, I was assigned the task of completing the William Cecil

Golden School Leadership Development Program module “Introduction to Student

Achievement Data”. The activities that correspond with this module are here .

As part of my practicum experience I spent time working in the Accountability Department

of Collier County Public Schools. The 2008-2009 school grades and AYP data had just been

released to the public. CCPS uses a powerhouse of a technology tool called Data Warehouse

which holds all student and teacher assessment data, both state and local. The project that I

created involved taking the AYP data from the Florida Department of Education and combining

this with the School Performance data collected from FCAT testing. I combined this information

into a spreadsheet for each school with comparisons to both district wide performance and the

school’s own performance in 2008. Using color tools in excel, I detailed areas of progress and

areas of challenge for each individual school and grade level. The intent is that this report will

be used in the fall when schools and grade levels are planning for instruction. The data could

potentially show that the fourth grade teachers had strong success with word meaning in

reading and was average for other grades. In a vertical reading PLC, this data could be analyzed

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and the fourth grade representative may share a new strategy for teaching vocabulary that was

a fourth grade initiative the previous year. This CCPS Progress & Challenges report is

.

Assessment of learning is a key element of any model of teaching. Most people think of

a test when hearing the term assessment. In many instances this is the case, but there are a

variety of assessment strategies and tools available to teachers. There is no one “right way” to

assess student learning. Providing student with multiple opportunities to demonstrate their

learning will help students to develop positive view of themselves as learners and they might

just find learning to be a positive experience (Anctil, Hass, & Parkay, 2006).

Assessments must measure expected outcomes as defined in the standards in order for

the data to be a meaningful derivation of student learning. Assessments must also be contrived

in a timely manner as they are the source that provides the feedback loop in the Learning

Alignment process. This provides data to be analyzed, of which the results drive the

modification of instruction to meet student performance goals (IBM, 2002).

Alternative assessments are gaining increasing popularity as more and more teachers

are offering abundant assessment tools to their students to show their learning. Some

common forms of alternative assessment include authentic assessments, portfolio assessments,

peer assessments, self assessments, performance-based assessments, alternate assessments,

and project-based learning (Anctil, Hass & Parkay, 2006). In the ed leadership course School

Curriculum, I was involved in a group project in which my group was asked to develop a

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curriculum for a school using a credible model. Our group chose to create our curriculum

around the Inquiry-based model. I was responsible for compiling the assessment components

of the curriculum and included descriptions of several of these alternative assessments within

the project. This can be viewed as .

Professional development is the final factor in learning alignment. In order to provide

high-quality teaching professionals must continually grow in their own professional

development. Teacher’s skills must be aligned to the standards. It is vital that teacher and

administrators understand the standards, the rationale behind, and the relation to the learning

results and what this means for students (IBM, 2002).

Additionally, administrators and teacher must have an understanding of results analysis

for assessment data. Administrators and teachers need to be able to look at results data and

identify factors that are affecting the student learning both positively and negatively. From

there they must have the skill to adjust the curriculum and instruction, or else the assessments

appropriately. Professional development must be utilized to warrant and accurate

understanding of effective interventions for particular circumstances, as well as how to

implement these interventions, and finally the impact of interventions on individual student

learning (IBM, 2002).

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References

Anctil, E.J, Hass, G., & Parkay, F.W. (2006). Curriculum planning: A contemporary approach.

(8th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

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Carr J.F. & Harris, D.E. (2001). Succeeding with standards: Linking curriculum, assessment, and

action planning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision of Curriculum Development.

Cornell Law School, (2009). Legal Information Institute. http://www.law.cornell.edu

Florida Department of Education. (2006). Florida school leaders: The William Cecil Golden

school leadership development program. https://www.floridaschoolleaders.org/

IBM. (2002). Change toolkit. http://www.reinventingeducation.org

Owens, R.G. & Valesky, T.C. (2007). Organizational behavior in education: Adaptive leadership

and school reform (9th ed). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.