How do we find the time for UIP?
You really have to front load the process with principals early. You have to begin at the beginning of the year with your data because to do this well, schools need about 3 solid staff meetings to review the data, identify the root cause and then develop the action plan, if you are going to do it collaboratively.
The Data Driven Dialogue was a huge focus for us. This provided staff with direction regarding what to look for in their data and how to plan as a result of their data analysis. This work engaged many of our stakeholders in the data and improvement discussion and they were really ready and asking for more information as the UIP evolved and became clearer for everyone.
— from an interview with the St. Vrain School District in Colorado regarding the Unified Improvement Plan process… as posted to the CDE website.
I spent most of Part Two, yesterday, whining about the Colorado Measure of Academic Success — CMAS, the standardized testing administered by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) which is then used to rank school districts and individual schools into four categories. From highest to lowest, those categories are: Performance, Improvement, Priority Improvement, Turnaround.
For a school like Pagosa Peak Open School, which opened its doors in September 2017 and whose students may have never seen a standardized test, the scores on the spring 2018 CMAS test landed the school in the “Priority Improvement” category. Not an entirely unhappy situation, because district and schools that get ranked “Priority Improvement” or “Turnaround” benefit from special technical assistance — provided by CDE — to help them improve their test scores.
Or so I understand.
This technical assistance includes help with the UIP — the Unified Improvement Plan. Pagosa Peak has never had a Unified Improvement Plan, but we are getting ready to submit our first one to CDE. Basically, the UIP is intended to identify weaknesses in the school (or district) curriculum and propose steps for “improvement.”
Here’s some wording from Pagosa Peak’s draft UIP:
INCREASE WRITING EFFICACY AND CAPACITY
Writing skills will increase by implementing formative assessment practices during Writing blocks, implementing writing portfolios in grades 3-5, and targeted writing skill development in student projects. Successful completion of this improvement strategy will be measured by six outcomes… 70% of students will demonstrate adequate yearly growth in Writing on the CMAS writing test…
INCREASE MATH SKILLS AND ACHIEVEMENT
Math skills will increase by implementing formative assessment practices during Math blocks, implementing math portfolios in grades 3-5 and folders in grades K-2. Student projects with strong math applications will be designed and implemented each semester for grades 3,4,5… 25% of students will meet or exceed benchmarks as compared to 8% in 17-18 CMAS test. (Increase by 312%)…
INCREASE READING SKILLS AND ACHIEVEMENT
Reading skills will increase by implementing formative assessment practices during Literacy blocks, implementing reading portfolios in grades 3-5, folders in K-2 and Literacy based projects. Successful completion of this improvement strategy will be measured by six educational outcomes… 70% of students will demonstrate adequate yearly growth in Reading on the CMAS Reading test… 45% of students will meet or exceed benchmarks as compared to 14% in 17-18 CMAS test…
Although I sit on the Pagosa Peak Open School Board of Directors, the following comments are meant to express my own personal opinions, and in no way reflect the consensus of the Board as a whole.
I mentioned in Part Two that students in Colorado public schools are tested annually, and ranked against “benchmarks” in essentially three academic areas: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. The Three ‘Rs’. (Arithmetic is, however, referred to as “Math.”)
These three skills are valuable in modern American society, especially if you work at CDE. Especially, perhaps, the “Math” part of the equation. As we can see in the Pagosa Peak UIP language quoted above, you need some math skills in order to write a UIP. You need to analyze the performance of students across an entire school (or district) and summarize those performances in terms of simple percentages. 25%. 8%. 45%. 14%.
These percentage goals are based around the mathematical data generated by the CMAS testing process. How many right answers did Johnny get? Suzy? William? How can we increase the number of right answers?
Well, now. There are a few ways a school district (or a school) can increase the number of right answers on a government-imposed test. The most popular way is to “teach to the test.” Make it your school’s (or district’s) number one priority to get the maximum number of right answers into the computer. This requires not only teaching the content of the test, as a primary goal, but you also need to take time to teach the children how to take a test successfully.
One of the best ways to teach children how to take a test successfully is to give them lots of tests. Ideally, these would be Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic tests. (This repeated testing is typically referred to as “implementing formative assessment practices.” The word “test” is actually seldom used in public education discussions. We like to call them “assessments.”)
These are some of the strategies we will be implementing at Pagosa Peak Open School, over the next few years. These strategies have almost nothing to do with Project-Based Learning, which was the model selected by the Founding Board during a year of research into the best alternative education models. The Founding Board selected ‘Project-Based Learning’ because it seemed to offer the best chance for each child to discover their passion, their special talents, and to find meaning in the education process.
To discover the things that really make life worth living.
But we’re a public school, and public schools are not free. Not free to simply allow children to blossom. Public schools must force students into percentage blocks and benchmarks. That’s just the way it works.
Granted, a talented staff can devise “Projects” that will help students get better scores on the CMAS Reading, Writing, and Math tests. And that will be one of our goals at Pagosa Peak, going forward. In Colorado’s public school industry, CMAS scores are the gold we shoot for, no matter what we actually feel is important.
Yes, it’s a learning curve.