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First Things Second: A Blueprint for Assessing Students’ Current Academic Skills
In order to accomplish the assessment, instructional grouping, effective differentiation and pedagogy, and multi-tiered service and support goals implicit in the Blog Sections above, a research-based roadmap is presented below.
Critically, nothing in this roadmap is new. It simply needs to be adjusted to each district’s current conditions, resources, . . . and re-entry timelines.
To accomplish this, districts and schools may need to think—logistically, and relative to staff and resource (re)allocations—"outside the box.” At the same time, aren’t they already doing this in planning for their students’ unprecedented post-pandemic re-entry? We all are already outside of the box.
The “bottom line” is that, in this essential area of academic planning, districts and schools need to accomplish the following:
- Functionally and validly assess all of their students in literacy, mathematics, and writing/language arts early in the Fall as they return to school;
- Integrate and “StoryBoard” the results (see below), in each academic area, to determine the best instructional homogeneous and heterogeneous groups (to include cross-grade or cross-aged groups, as relevant) to maximize teachers’ pedagogical differentiation and students’ academic progress;
- Identify, specify, and integrate the students who need multi-tiered services, supports, and interventions in order to be successful into the StoryBoard;
- Align the StoryBoard with available (and flexibly deployed and used) staff and resources (including Intervention Specialists, paraprofessionals, computer-assisted instruction and intervention, after-school tutoring, etc.). . . with an eye toward student equity, and not student equality;
- Factor the results into (a modification of) the school’s post-pandemic schedule and logistics; and
- Evaluate on a quarterly basis, making “mid-course” grouping, scheduling, and/or logistical changes as needed.
[
CLICK HERE
for this Complete, Step-by-Step Discussion in the Full Blog Article, and a School Case Study Example]
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Parenthetically, the crucial student equity suggestion above has been discussed in previous Blogs.
April 11, 2020. The Pandemic Unearths the Raw Reality of Educational Inequity and Disparity:
COVID-19 Forces Us to Realize We Need to Change the Village]
November 23, 2019.
Maybe It’s the (Lack of) Money that Explains the Relationship Between Black-White Achievement Gaps and Disproportionate Disciplinary Suspensions?]
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While this does not need to be sequential, in order to complete this journey, districts may—first—need to address students’ social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs (as above) when they re-entry their schools in the Fall.
Then—second—schools will need to organize their schedules and staff so that academic assessments can be completed (as above) to functionally and validly assess all of their students in literacy, mathematics, and writing/language arts.
To accomplish this—just to suggest an “out-of-the-box” creative approach—schools may need to take a week and have different grade levels of students come to school on different days to be assessed, while other students are home learning virtually. This way, all of the staff in a school can be fully committed to completing the grade-by-grade assessments in a timely, effective, and most valid way.
In fact, this suggestion may not be so radical. . . as some schools already adjust their schedules and staffing at least three times per year to conduct interim, formative assessments.
And why not change the schedules and staffing for a short period of time? . . . if it results in valid academic assessments that allow schools to move ahead with high-quality grouping and instruction?
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First Things Third
: Support for Moving Ahead
Hopefully, the discussion above has helped create an academic planning blueprint that districts and schools can use right now to prepare for the re-opening of schools (some time) in the Fall. Clearly, an explicit part of this blueprint involves potentially putting students into Homogeneous Skills Groups.
And for those who react emotionally when discussions advocating homogeneous skill grouping or teaching students at their instructional (rather than age/grade) levels begin, we hope that our explanations and clarifications have resulted in a level of calm.
To be more specific
: The use of homogeneous skills groups is not ability grouping, and we would never suggest the “old-school” tracking of students.
Indeed, to this point and embedded in the discussions above, we have emphasized the importance of:
- Grouping students so that teachers do not have so many differently-prepared (relative to prerequisite knowledge and skills) student groups that differentiation is functionally impossible;
- Effectively monitoring students’ progress relative to formative and summative outcomes—to ensure that the selected grouping patterns are producing expected learning and mastery;
- Regrouping students in a timely way when they have made so much progress that the group they are in no longer makes pedagogical sense; and
- Grouping students on an academic subject-by-subject basis—eliminating the potential whereby the same students stay together for all subjects for an entire semester or year or, perhaps, across multiple years.
But beyond our assertions, we would like to note some additional voices that support our recommendations in this area. These include two large-scale studies in mathematics that show that many students with significant skill gaps never catch up to their on-grade-level peers. A study showing the significant number of states moving toward competency-based grading, student evaluations, and high school graduation. And, the fact that the Cleveland School District is now considering teaching students in skill-based groups—doing away with traditional grade-level classes.
[
CLICK HERE
for Complete Blog Message with these “Additional Voices”]
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Summary
This new two-part Blog Series addresses what schools need to consider
now
as they plan for their students’ academic re-entry this Fall.
In this Part I, we addressed why (and how) schools should
validly
assess—as soon as possible when students return to school—the functional, mastery-level status of all students in literacy, mathematics, and writing/language arts.
We then recommended that the assessment results—corroborated by classroom performance and previous assessments—be used to identify groups of students who are functioning above, at, below, or well-below their current grade-level placements.
Finally, we discussed how to organize students
who are functioning within one grade level of their respective grade placements
into Homogeneous Skill Groups and/or Heterogeneous Comprehension or Applied Groups. We provided a Third Grade example with literacy results, integrating the data into one of the six models of how most districts nationally are considering the return of students to school in the Fall.
In Part II of this Series, we will discuss how to use the assessment results to address the academic progress and enrichment of students who are “above” their grade-level standing, and the academic gaps of students who are below and well below their grade-level placements.
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Significantly, we anticipate that many educators will say that these ideas—while research- and statistically-based—are not realistic given time, resources, schedules, and even expertise.
Our response is:
- We need to know and be guided by the research-to-practice first as we approach our students academically this Fall. We then can strategically come as close to our evidence-based blueprints (given the available time, resources, schedules, and expertise) as possible.
If we are not guided by the research-to-practice, we will (in essence) be playing “instructional roulette” with our students’ futures—knowing that the risks are great and the results may be underwhelming.
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- If we don’t instructionally program our students for academic success, then academic frustration and related social, emotional, and behavioral problems— beyond where these students will enter this Fall—have a high probability of emerging.
These problems will then undermine these (and other) students’ academic engagement and progress as part of a vicious cycle.
The result
: We will be further behind—both academically and behaviorally—than when we started.
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- We need to “go slow to go fast.” That is, schools should not assume that they know where students are academically functioning—rushing to put students into different instructional groups in the absence of valid data this Fall. Moreover, they should not rush to begin instruction.
Clearly, students (and staff) will need some social, emotional, and behavioral time this Fall to re-establish relationships, debrief the last half of the school year, and re-set their routines and interactions. This “time” must include discussions regarding the death of George Floyd; racial bias, injustice, and discrimination; and the anguished protests that rightly followed yet another unjustified Black murder.
Academically, we need to accurately, and in a measured way (no pun intended), determine who is behind, and how far they are behind.
If this takes “a little more time” to get it right. . . so that students are then assigned to the “right” classes and instructional levels. . . where we can get it right on their behalf. . . then we will actually be ahead of the game. . . as will our students.
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As always,
I appreciate your ongoing support in reading my work. If you have comments or questions, please contact me at your convenience.
And please feel free to take advantage of my standing offer for a free, one-hour conference call consultation with you and your team at any time.
Best,
Howie
