Educating the Family

As my school goes through the ups and downs of transitioning to a standards based system, I have become increasingly aware of a need to educate parents. I am in a unique position to do this as I have taken a bit of a head start in the standards based effort. With all of this in mind, I have started developing  a set of video lessons for my team web page that are designed to inform parents about how things work in my classroom.

This makes sense as I've heard several questions like the following:

• What do scores of 1, 2, 3, and 4 mean?
• What are Measurement Topics, Learning Targets, and Assessments?
• How can I find out how my child is doing at reporting times?
• How can I find out how my child is doing at any time?

While the video lessons will address all of these questions and more, I'll briefly address them here as well. (It's important to note that these explanations reflect the inner workings of the Davis Language Arts class and not necessarily classes taught by other teachers.)

• What do scores of 1, 2, 3, and 4 mean? These scores can be used to report achievement levels on individual Assessments of Learning Targets and for Measurement Topics. They are defined as follows:

• 4   Proficient With Distinction (aka - Exceeding the Standard)
• 3   Proficient (aka - Meeting the Standard)
• 2   Partially Proficient (aka - Partially Meeting the Standard)
• 1   Not Yet Meeting (aka - Far Below Meeting the Standard)

• What are Measurement Topics, Learning Targets, and Assessments? These are three levels of content being assessed.  Think of them as a boxes.  The largest box is the Measurement Topic. Inside that box is the next size smaller box (actually 10 of them) representing Learning Targets. Inside each of those ten boxes are Assessments. There are 1-3 of these smallest boxes for each Learning Target.

• Measurement Topic (e.g. - Reading Informational Text)
• Learning Target (e.g. - Students will identify the author's purpose.)
• Assessment (e.g. - Moodle Assignments 6-1 and 6-2)

• How can I find out how my child is doing at reporting times? The school reports scores on a midterm and trimester schedule. At these reporting times, language arts scores are reported on report cards and in Infinite Campus by Measurement Topic. As expected, most of the scores are usually 2 for some time. This is because a student has only met some of the Learning Targets. This doesn't necessarily mean a student is doing poorly. Let's face it; a student can't learn everything at once. Over time, a successful student will meet or exceed all of the Learning Targets within each Measurement Topic, earning a score of 3 or 4. Some scores may also be left blank for a similar reason. Since a student can't learn everything at once, some Measurement Topics may be saved for later in the school year.

• How can I find out how my child is doing at any time? This is one of the great parts of standards based scoring. At any time, parents can look within Infinite Campus and see exactly how their child is doing. They can do this because listed under each Measurement Topic is a series of Assessments. If a student has at least a 3 on all of the Assessments to date, then the student is doing well. If a student has yet to earn at least a 3 on an Assessment that has become past due, that student is behind the pace. (For parent's benefit, this Assessment is labelled "MISSING" once it is past due.) If a student has earned at least a 3 on Assessments that have yet to become due, that student is ahead of the pace.

If all goes well, the parent support video lessons will prove helpful. More importantly, if parents get in the habit of looking for explanations on line, a line of communication is opened. If a parent needs further clarification, each video lesson will end with the same point: "If you have questions and/or want more information, please contact Mr. Davis at the following email address." Transparency is what parents want, and transparency is what I'm trying to provide.