 
Week 3 - Outcomes and Standards
|  | Confessions of a Closet Maverick |
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MR IAN WHITEHEAD
Victoria, Australia
Part 1: Emerson Elementary School, Grade 4 1988
The Metropolitan Achievement Test
IN 1988, AS A YOUNG Australian teacher on exchange, I found myself teaching the Grade 4s at Emerson Elementary School, in Everett, Washington State, USA. My students would be taking the Metropolitan Achievement Test, I was told. At this time, I had never before seen a state-wide standardised test.
So did I target my teaching specifically to the skills and knowledge tested in the test? Not likely! In 1988 I had no previous experience of such a test and its implications for teaching and learning. Did I help the students with the expected test content, or give them more time? Of course not, that would have been unethical. Perhaps the novelty of an Australian teacher at Emerson Elementary School, in Everett, Washington State, USA, spurred my students to greater efforts. Nice thought, but the students in the adjoining fourth grades did just as well.
How else then could I explain the student outcomes of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests in the spring of 1988? Traditionally, the school's results hovered around the 45th percentile state-wide. In this battery of tests, the school moved from the 46th percentile in 1987 to the 67th percentile in 1988. In reading comprehension, where we concentrated our efforts, the scores moved from just the 32nd percentile to the 60th!
Teaching How to Take a Test
This was achieved, I now confess, with the utmost simplicity. Using the premise that this type of testing is basically 'a test testing the ability to take a test', we simply taught the students 'how to take a test'.
With the blessing of the principal and the co-operation of the fourth grade teachers, we devised a program to assist students achieve their optimum level. We practised the efficient transposing of information. We taught students the process of elimination. We emphasised that every question must be answered in the required time.
Avoiding Vegemite Sandwiches
Practice tests were available and we moved deliberately through these. Students became familiar with the format and the little tricks played by examiners writing distracters for multiple choice tests. We dangled the class party carrot (any unco-operative child would be given a Vegemite sandwich!). We spoke to the children about 'pacing themselves' and the fatigue factor. We even promised no homework for the week.
By test week the students were mentally and 'test-skill geared'. While other schools in the district remained at about the level of previous years, our school's results leapt by 21 percentile points.
We Had the Figures!
On a system basis, this was an eminently satisfactory outcome. We had figures; we had statistics. We therefore had 'proof' we were doing a mighty fine job.
Part 2: Emerson Elementary School, Grade 4, 1988
Visit by the Director of Instruction
It was a big day at Emerson. The newly appointed Director of Instruction was due. While friendly enough on the outside, she was an imposing woman, with a reputation for asking tough questions. The Emerson teachers' excellent preparation would, on this day, be exemplary. They would ensure their well-focused students would be particularly well-focused. On this day, the teachers' clean cut professional dress would be upgraded to wedding attire.
My mathematics lesson that day would continue the goal in getting the children to think creatively. I wanted my students to think outside the square, beyond formula solutions and rote learning methods. This goal was motivated by an experience very early in my time at Emerson.
Melissa, Robyn and TJ had finished their End of Chapter Math Test. Jimmy had yet to write his name on the test sheet: a scenario familiar to all teachers. Clearly, this trio needed some extension. I asked them to calculate the minutes between 10.45 a.m. and 1.15p.m. Even working collaboratively, the method they felt happiest about was to take 115 from 1045. Without a defined formula, they had nothing to fall back on. It set an early goal for my students.
The carpet in our large classroom had a design of colored parallel lines on a beige base. Without counting one by one, I challenged the students to come up with a method to approximate the number of lines in the carpet. The children produced a host of creative solutions.
Some counted the lines in a hand span, then extrapolated their finding. The more scientifically inclined measured the lines per ruler. Someone else extended the idea by using a yard ruler. One student put a section on tracing paper and then over-laid each section. Counting by seventeens proved a little clumsy until one observer suggested she trace twenty lines before cutting the paper. Another counted just the red lines. As the colors were clearly in a pattern, she simply multiplied her results by the numbers of colors.
Small bottoms sticking in the air, nudging rulers along the floor was just part of the scene greeting the Director of Instruction as her face pushed against glass section of the door. Children doing calculations on the board and mini debates on the relative merits of particular methods made up the educationally dynamic, if mildly chaotic scene.
'What's going on in there?' the Director pointedly asked my principal, Mr Gaylord Schank. He knew, and thoroughly approved of, my methods. 'That's Mr Whitehead. Our Australian exchange teacher. Let's go and find out.'
'No', she apparently said. 'I don't want to know. Let's just keep going.'
Naturally I was delighted at the outcomes. The students were thinking creatively. They had shared their results. Solutions had been figured out without resorting to formula or text-books. I was providing a dynamic and open-ended curriculum. Learning was 'out of control,' exploding, invigorating. Truly, I was living my philosophy of a teacher being a 'salesman of learning'.
Part 3: Yallourn North Primary School, Victoria
Reflections a Decade Later
From the language of these scenarios, it might be considered the outcomes in the math's lesson scenario encapsulate my recommended 'model'. But in many ways, this more artistic approach to student learning outcomes has more weaknesses than the politically motivated models used in state-wide testing. Beyond the odd anecdotal tale at a Parent Teacher Conference, there was no record of these outcomes. There was no particular order or logic to my range of creative activities. Nowhere on a report card, or a student's individual file, was evidence ever recorded of the lateral thinking involved.
The word 'model' used above to define the methodology rates it too highly. Even the term 'approach,' is a little flattering. Perhaps I could get away with defining the exercise in the terms of a good teacher 'doing his own thing'. In short, I was developing my own standards and outcomes, based on my experience, my bias and not a little creative flair. While I may have been fairly smug at the time, such mini maverick approaches are not sustainable in the system sense.
At the other extreme, the outcomes achieved by state-wide testing are hardly satisfactory either. At Emerson Elementary, it was a teacher's knowledge of testing procedures, rather than student skill, that led to such an improvement of results. A case of educational vandalism perhaps: the pedagogical equivalent of traveling to the next town to wreck their telephone boxes. While testing week was one of the most interesting experiences of my International Teacher Fellowship, to the students at Emerson it was a disruption to the normal flow of events. We did not stand on our desks making homework sheets into paper aeroplanes, to be marked where it landed. I didn't sing 'On the Good Ship Lollypop', and perform an accompanying tap dance because one student, in her research on famous Americans, had never heard of Shirley Temple.
Magnifying the Differences
The experience left me in little doubt that by adopting the 'Emerson approach' to the LAP tests in Victoria, I could gain a similar improvement in a single class at my own school, against a parallel class, where the tests were given with little or no preparation. If the teacher's attitude in that parallel class were in philosophical opposition to such tests, then the differences would be magnified again. State-wide tests with little relevance, and clear teacher hostility, create serious problems in trying to quantify learning outcomes.
Here then we have a tension between the system and individual approaches to student outcome models; the tension between competent and creative teachers doing their own thing and the state setting up accountability structures. The previous two decades in Victoria have framed the historical context to the standards and outcome debate. In the 1980s curriculum documents, such as Frameworks, were high on philosophy and dynamic curriculum delivery, but low on systematic accountability. Activities, such as those described in the mathematics lesson with the carpet at Emerson Elementary flourished in schools. The backlash of the 1990s prompted greater system accountability. The Curriculum and Standards Framework generated a massively ponderous list of student learning outcomes. In addition, for the first time in Victoria, state-wide tests were initiated for students in Grades 3 and 5. A sensible and considered balance between extremes was required.
The Way Forward
An inkling of the way forward and a sign of things to come can be seen in the success of the Early Years Program. Within this program exists the necessary elements of an enhanced system of standards and outcomes. Teachers obediently, rather than enthusiastically, took on board the biblically proportioned Curriculum and Standards Framework, (since redefined in the more strategic CSF 11). By contrast, Early Years has been taken on by teachers with an enthusiasm bordering on zeal.
In the design stage researchers examined exactly what it was that good teachers do. How do they operate? What strategies do they use? These are powerful questions, the answer to which is often missing from many curriculum designs. In Early Years, professional development conferences, with acclaimed and motivational speakers, set the scene. Schools established Professional Learning Teams to consider, share and implement these strategies. Many activities in Early Years are open-ended, thus establishing and extending skills within a single lesson.
Data Analysis Quantum Leap
But the quantum leap with Early Years has been the readiness of teachers to take on data analysis. In the past, the maxim: 'You never give a test unless you know the result' was enveloped in a teacher (read 'union') culture that resisted data on a state-wide basis. However, with Early Years, the research data was of good quality. Unlike the politically motivated LAP or MAT tests, the data generated was actually useful to teachers. Teachers learnt very little from LAP they did not already know. By contrast, the data generated from the Early Years' Observational Surveys and Prep. entry data focused very directly on the students. Teachers have no problems working with data, providing they can see how it can be useful.
The challenge, as we move forward, is for teachers to become good analysers of data. The duty of the system, as is seen in the Early Years Program, is to assist schools in generating quality data that can be used by teachers. Simultaneously, teachers should be encouraged to generate their own data.
Generating Quality Learning Experiences
With school and state data working together, quality learning experiences can be generated to enhance student learning. If the dynamic, open-ended and student interest-based curriculum of the 1980s can be combined with the accountability notions of this past decade, we can design an effective system built on the good work of two diverse political regimes. In the first decade of the century, the search is for a design that constructs the best of both worlds.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr Ian Whitehead is currently Principal of Yallourn North Primary School, in the Gippsland Region of Victoria. He has taught in many parts of Victoria, in schools ranging from seven children to those with nearly 700. Over the last eight years, he has been a regular contributor to 'Education Age', writing on a wide range of topics. During times of educational crises, the contents of these articles did not necessarily endear the writer to the Rialto Control Monitors. The highlight of his career was an International Exchange to Washington State in 1988. It was during this time, he was challenged to marry his preferred open-ended style of curriculum with the system requirements of sequential text books, closed activities and End of Chapter Tests. He believes many teachers in classrooms can do valued educational research but get little encouragement to do so. He is interested in educational trends and, while recognising the power and potential of technology, still believes that, basically, teaching is about relationships and personality.
Ian Whitehead can be contacted by email at:
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