[BHS Etree] ADMIN: STAR Testing Thoughts and Expectations from Principal Scuderi

[BHS etree]

Do not reply to this email, contact Richard Ng, richardng at berkeley.net 

Dear BHS Families:

With STAR testing approaching on Tuesday I wanted to share some thoughts
regarding why I believe that staff, students, parents, and the community
must make a concerted effort to support earnest participation and
performance on these assessments at Berkeley High School. 

The case I'm making here is not the case that these assessments, nor any
other assessments are perfect, but rather that these assessments can provide
us some valuable understanding of how our instruction translates into
mastery on a particular measure of grade-level standards, and how
consistency in participation and growth on these assessments can benefit
this school as a whole.

These assessments afford us an opportunity to see how our particular brand
of instruction and approach to content standards translates in terms of
proficiency on an assessment given to students and schools up and down the
state.

My expectation is not and has never been that we teach to a particular test,
nor will I ever advocate that. However, we will teach to clear and
articulable content standards, and as as we continue to get more adept and
creative in how we are teaching and delivering those standards, we should
see improvement in performance on these and other assessments, including the
wide variety of quality, homegrown, formative and interdisciplinary
assessments that many of our departments and communities already use or are
in the process of developing. 

Elsewhere, we have what I believe are compelling organizational, community,
and resource incentives to participate fully in these assessment programs.
Many of the creative things we do around professional development and
instruction at BHS depend on the structures we have been able to put into
place with grant monies from federal and local sources. The largest of those
grants, the Smaller Learning Communities Grant (which funds teacher
leadership and data support in all of our programs and not just in the small
schools) expires at the end of the next school year, and the administration
will be actively looking for ways in which we can sustain things like our
professional development in the teacher-facilitated, teacher-led
professional learning community model we currently employ. 

We are beginning to intensively explore numerous other opportunities for
funding sources to bring in, or in some cases maintain, programs that range
from professional development for teachers to social and emotional supports
for kids. Regardless of one's particular opinions about standardized
testing, STAR results, which produce scores on the Academic Performance
Index (API), play a significant role in making us competitive for external
revenue via grants as those scores constitute a metric common to every
public high school in the state. 

BHS needs to be eligible for various grants as those sources can help
sustain the space and capacity we need to remain innovative and effective in
our work with kids. Not generating and growing an API score leaves us
without one of the key common measures that competitive funding sources look
at when considering the allocation of supplemental funding. An API score is,
and will continue to be, not the lone factor, but a key factor in our
applications for support to those unfamiliar with other aspects of our
programs. 

The issue of standardized testing sometimes creates controversy and
resistance, particularly in places where these types of assessments yield a
teaching and learning culture that begins and ends with an emphasis on a
single test, and makes that single measure the driving force of all
instruction.

This is not the case at BHS and my expectations for teachers and students
with regard to STAR testing can in no way be plausibly argued as a move in
that direction. Our calendar demonstrates that the effort we are asking
teachers and students to put into these exams requires a minimal expenditure
of instructional time. With roughly 12 hours of testing next week the exams
will constitute approximately 1% of our instructional time for the year. I
see this as a more than reasonable amount of time to invest in a process
that allows us to see how our school and our methods of instruction
translate in terms of performance on the same measure that students and high
schools across the state use to assess proficiency in relation to content
standards.

If we are increasingly conscious of the standards, and carefully consider
the grade level rigor that they call for when designing our own unique
approaches to teaching them, the skills and concepts we endow our kids with
should translate to success on both the assessments we create and the ones
we take in common with other schools. Quality, multi-faceted instruction
should translate to an ability to demonstrate proficiency on everything from
assessments like extended writing assignments and performances as well as on
multiple choice exams.

Some argue that multiple choice questions, like those featured in the STAR
assessments, inherently lack value and are simply not rigorous as they
cannot test more sophisticated concepts and do not require critical or
rigorous thought. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, author of Driven By Data, responds
by saying that, "While this observation seems intuitively obvious it is
incorrect." Valid and rigorous assessment comes in many forms and where
open-ended, or project-based assessments have their rigor defined by
rubrics, multiple-choice questions define their rigor through options.
Multiple choice and open-ended or performance assessments "measure different
aspects of rigor of the same standard." 

Open-ended assessment "requires putting thoughts into your own words," he
writes, while multiple choice assessment involves, "distinguishing
critically between various plausible actions. These two angles simulate real
life and assessment environments that students will face in the future." He
concludes that a a truly rigorous test can be created from both open-ended
responses with challenging rubrics as well as with multiple-choice questions
or other formats with challenging options. Both test critical skills, and
when it comes to effective and rigorous assessment strategies, both are
often "necessary, complimentary sides of the same coin." 

I offer this not as a grand defense of the multiple choice format, but as a
way of demonstrating that the argument that our school should neglect an
assessment or the useful information it may in fact provide simply because
it is provided in a particular format is an overly simplistic view. 

At the end of the day we know that a single measurement cannot in itself
adequately articulate all of the deeply meaningful teaching and learning
that happens at this high school. We also know that the common formative
assessments and projects we continue to design ourselves will provide
quicker and more direct forms of analysis that can in fact be used
diagnostically, collaboratively, and more efficiently for the benefit of
students and teachers throughout the school year. That said, I see STAR
testing and STAR results as a key component of an overall package of
assessment and information that, when coupled with the professional
judgement of teachers, provides a rich and well-rounded foundation for
making evidence-based instructional decisions that will elevate the
abilities of all our students in a positive way.

I would deeply appreciate your support and assistance in making this week
productive and successful. 

Pasquale Scuderi

Principal, Berkeley High School

 

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