Finding Your Grading Compass

As teachers how do you feel on the reports giving day? How do you feel about giving grades? Do you defend the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to “motivate” students? Or do you enjoy keeping intricate records of students’ marks?

Carol Ann Tomlinson, William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundation, and Policy at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, states that she'd seen student assignments as a mechanism for generating grades, which she recorded faithfully in her grade book so that when parents came to school for conferences she could justify report card grades ("See—here are the 19 grades I averaged to arrive at Jason's C.") The more grades, the more secure she felt.

She was worried about students who went home class after class, quarter after quarter with low grades. In a naïve way, she understood that such discouragement does little to motivate students to embrace the next task with trust or enthusiasm. She also worried about the kids who were supremely motivated to get As but had little interest in learning. She wanted to be her students' mentor; it was a difficult role reversal when she abruptly became their judge.

What she has come to know

That epiphany caused her to be more reflective about grading. These led her grading practices to reflect what she believed about teaching and learning—rather than to dictate how she taught.

"

• Grading itself contributes little to learning. Grading is a small part of a much bigger, more important cycle of instruction, assessment, and adjustment—which does lead to learning.
• My job is to teach for success. To do that, I have to abandon "gotcha" testing and grading.
• The better I teach, the better students' grades will be.
• I need to have a clear set of indicators of success on each assignment and for each unit of study. My students also need to be clear about those indicators—and contribute to creating them.
• If I have students who consistently make low grades, there's something lacking in my teaching or in my relationship with those students.
• If I have students who consistently make very high grades with no struggle or need for support, I'm underestimating their capacity—and wasting their time. An A that doesn't represent personal struggle and growth is a lie.
• I need to grade fewer pieces of student work. Most student work should be practice—a time for making errors and figuring out what didn't work. Grading too often and too soon discourages that nonnegotiable element of learning.
• Consistent, specific feedback on a student's competency in essential goals is a more potent teaching tool than a letter or number grade will ever be.
• I need to provide my students with models of quality a bit beyond their current reach and then scaffold their progress in reaching that level. Students need to see what quality looks like.
• No matter how hard I try to replace my judgment in grading with foolproof criteria for success, grading will always have some element of subjectivity in it. Being a professional means exercising professional judgment.
• I should use rubrics and similar tools that define success as a guide rather than as a commitment. I cannot and should not promise students that if they cite four references rather than three or use varied transitions between paragraphs, an A is guaranteed.
• I need to involve my students often in analyzing their own work and that of their peers according to specified criteria for success. Then I need to teach them how to plan to improve their performance.
• I need to regularly—relentlessly—show students the connection between the quality of their habits of mind and their work, their progress toward performance goals, and their achievement of those goals—and beyond. In other words, I need to help them exercise their capacity to determine their own success. "

Embracing these conclusions has made her a better teacher and made her students more thoughtful, engaged, and self-confident learners. These principles are a compass to guide and stretch her as a teacher.

Think about them. Question them. In the end, what matters is not that teachers have identical approaches to grading, but that we all have approaches that stem from and reinforce what we know about teaching and learning.

Source: Effective Grading Practices, November 2011 | Volume 69 | Number 3 Pages 86-87

The Rule of Six by Thomas R. Hoerr

Thomas R. Hoerr says "Each individual needs a different kind of support. We should deliver critical feedback in such a way that the listener hears it, considers it and acts on it. Good leaders praise, but they also push, prod, and let teachers know when their performance isn't satisfactory."

What is the Rule of Six?
Creating a context in which teachers can use negative feedback constructively is an important - but difficult - part of the principal's job. The rule of six helps.

• This rule recognizes that all communication takes place within the context of a relationship. According to Thomas, if you want to build a supportive relationship, you need to give the other person in the relationship at least six positive comments for every negative one.
  

Your "deposits" - positive comments or interactions - must remain greater than your withdrawals

We must work harder at focusing on whatever others do that is effective and worthy of praise. Leaders should do this because people deserve to have their achievements noted and also because it creates conditions that enable us to deliver difficult messages when necessary.

People will listen to negative feedback from good leaders even if it is painful to do so, if the relationship is strong and they trust the leader.

Source: http://www.ascd.org. apr09/vol66

Principals and Pancakes!?

Those Plates Are Hot!
Thomas R. Hoerr

As school heads ......

• Do you ever feel attacked?
• Do you ever need help?
• Do you find yourself in a corner?

Thomas R. Hoerr says,

"Good leaders don't avoid heat - they can't.
But they can look ahead and prepare for it."

Thomas explains....

• When (he's) in a heated situation and feeling attacked, (he) needs to remember that time can be (his) ally.
• Principals need to establish a personal advisory board, a network of people to turn to for advice or simply to vent .
• Anticipate what will cause people to get upset and work to change the situation, or at least talk about it before positions are hardened (or entrenched).

Learn the 3 important lessons Thomas, a school head, recognized while eating breakfast with his mother at a pancake house.

Read more at http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership
Source: www.ascd.org. Nov 2011, volume 69, no 3

Every child’s right to a quality education

All stakeholders of the school should play a part in fostering learning , in supporting every child’s right to a quality education. All have a responsibility toward making educational experiences high quality. Let's all make schools where:

• There is good behaviour, strong discipline, order and safety.
• Pupils are taught in a way that meets their needs, with their progress regularly checked and additional needs spotted early and addressed quickly, including one-to-one tuition in English or maths if they are falling behind what is expected nationally.
• Pupils are taught a broad, balanced and flexible curriculum, including skills for learning and for life.
• Pupils take part in sports and cultural activities, and their health and well being is supported.
• Pupils have the chance to express their views, and they and their families are welcomed and valued by the school.

The passion of successful leadership...by: Christopher Day* School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK

A key characteristic among the heads was that, regardless of styles and strategies, all revealed a passion for education, for pupils and for the communities in which they worked. The research revealed that the 10 headteachers sustained their success by the application of the a combination of 10 essential leadership qualities, skills and principles and that these enabled them to manage a number of tensions and dilemmas associated with the management of change.
See more.... http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING by: Dr. Aamaal Ali, Permanent Secretary

Development Planning is simply a description to plan to manage change with the intention of improving the school.
To move from where the school is to where the school is expected to.
Development Planning is a response for a systematic and whole-school approach to planning, especially where schools are expected to be more self-managing.
The plan has to be more than a statement of intentions

It has to have:
 identified appropriate priorities,
 with action plans, targets, tasks,
 time bound,
 defined responsibilities,
 outlined resources and financial needs,
 success criteria,
 and established staff development.

To make the plan work:
 Sustain commitment during implementation
 Check progress
 Over come problems encountered
 Check success of implementation
 Report on progress
 Recommence the planning process.

Reflection
 New heads – audit, then Plan
 Experienced heads – consult, delegate and empower
 Use a cycle Do – Review – Learn - Apply
 Leave documentation for the next head
 Remember this is about Planning for SELF MANAGING SCHOOLS
 Research recommends Heads to stay in any one school for 4 – 8 years

Be a Learner – from cradle to the grave

Ten questions for school leaders ; Howard Green, Educational Consultant

Introduction

The aim of these questions is to provide a focus for critical reflection by school leaders, and those who support them, on 10 key issues that could help to secure the link between leadership effectiveness and school improvement. They should be asked regularly by headteachers themselves, other senior staff and team leaders. Although the questions seem quite straightforward they have hidden depths, and would benefit from regular revisiting as a form of continuing self-evaluation. You can work through them sequentially or pick one or two that you find particularly relevant or interesting.

1. Are you leading as well as managing your school?
2. Is your leadership focused on school improvement?
3. Do you use evidence to help secure school improvement?
4. Does your leadership challenge others to improve?
5. Is your leadership creating a successful learning community?
6. Do you share your leadership?
7. Are you aiming to be a ‘good enough’ or a ‘perfect’ leader?
8. Are you using both sides of your brain and all three intelligences in leadership?
9. Are you a self-aware leader?
10. Are you a leader with an appetite for change?

The role of the head in school: Michael Fullan, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,

It has often been observed that the head of the school is a key factor in how effective the school is. But until recently we did not have a clear picture about what this role looks like in action. In this brief paper I will characterise the nature of school improvement in relation to the role of the head, and then raise questions about how we could produce more effective leadership. Newmann, King and Young’s (2000) recent paper provides an important framework for understanding continuous school improvement which focuses on student achievement. They claim, as we do, that the critical factor is school capacity – the collective competency of the school as an entity to bring about effective change. To understand school capacity is to understand the work of successful school heads. There are four core components of capacity according to Newmann et al:

• knowledge, skills and dispositions of individual staff members
• a professional learning community in which staff work collaboratively to set clear goals for student learning, assess how well students are doing, develop action plans to increase student achievement, all the while being engaged in inquiry and problemsolving
• programme coherence: “the extent to which the school’s programmes for student and staff learning are co-ordinated, focused on clear learning goals, and sustained over a period of time" ( 5)
• technical resources – high-quality curriculum, instructional material, assessment instruments, technology, workspace etc
This four-part definition of school capacity is crucial to understanding. It includes human capital, ie the skills of individuals, but concludes that no amount of professional development of individuals will have an impact if certain organisational features are not in place. One organisational feature relates to professional learning communities, which in effect is the ‘social capital’ aspect of capacity. In other words, the skills of individuals can only be realised if the relationships within the schools are continually developing.
The other component of organisational capacity is programme coherence. Since complex social systems have a tendency to produce overload and fragmentation in a non-linear evolving fashion, schools are constantly being bombarded by overwhelming and unconnected innovations (Fullan, 1999). In this sense, the most effective schools are not those which take on the sheer most number of innovations, but those which selectively take on, integrate and coordinate innovations into focused programmes. Finally, acquiring technical resources that support individual, collective and programme coherence is vital.
All the talk about the key role of the school head boils down to how principals foster school capacity building (in terms of the four components) in the service of student learning. We can take, as cases in point, recent findings in England, Canada and the United States. Day et al’s (2000) study of school leaders in England in 12 schools shows very clearly that these effective heads constantly work at helping individuals develop, continually work at enhancing relationships in the school and between the school and community, and maintain a focus on goal and programme coherence.
Similarly, Leithwood et al’s (1999) school leaders in Canada spend their time developing people, building commitment to change, creating the conditions for growth in teachers and relating to outside forces, while continually acquiring and targeting resources. In the same vein, Sebring and Bryk’s research into the Chicago reform shows that school leadership is a determining factor in school success. School heads lead the charge in focusing on instruction, school-wide mobilisation of resources and effort with respect to the long-term emphasis on instruction, and – above all – they ‘attack incoherence’.
There are many details within the school capacity work of school heads. Helping to develop individuals covers all the nuances of contending with the emotional vicissitudes of teaching, and dealing with persistently failing teachers. Similarly, working with a variety of teachers in establishing teamwork involves coping with the incredibly difficult matter of resistance to change.
It requires great insight and sophistication; to name one aspect, learning how to ‘respect those you wish to silence’ can pay great dividends both technically (improving ideas) and politically (with respect to improving relationships which affect implementation). Achieving programme coherence in the face of multiple disjointed policy demands and expectations demands outstanding leadership, as does the acquisition of technical resources.

Implications
If the above analysis is correct, there are two very powerful implications. The first concerns the preparation of school leaders, and the second involves the conditions under which they work.

Preparing school leaders
There is no doubt, as I have said, that effective schools virtually always have strong school leaders. The measure of a strong school leader is one who develops the school’s capacity to engage in reform – a capacity which is stronger at the end of the leader’s term than at the beginning. What is less certain is what proportion of school leaders are that good. I know of no study that can tell us the proportion of school leaders who are effective at enhancing school capacity. If I had to estimate, it would probably be in the two-in-five range.
Secondly, I know of no study that has both identified effective school leaders and traced their effectiveness to the preparation he or she received on the way to becoming a head. This, of course, is the mandate of the new National College for School Leadership (as well as the responsibility of schools and LEAs). The task, put explicitly, is to recruit, develop, nurture, support and hold the head accountable. The measure of effectiveness should be a dramatic increase in the proportion of school leaders who can develop greater school capacity -–moving from our hypothetical two in five to four in five.

Conditions of work
The conditions under which heads work greatly affects the quality of people attracted to the role, and their effectiveness once they are in the role. Currently, in most jurisdictions around the world there is a shortage of candidates to take on the position of head. It is not seen as an attractive position. Part of the problem relates to the neglect of leadership over the past 10 years. There was a hiatus during the 1990s, during which time there was a failure to cultivate leadership for the future. In doing this we have lost a generation of leadership training, resulting in shortages at all levels.
In addition, the job itself has become increasingly problematic. During the period of the past decade there has been less opportunity to learn on the job. The need, then, is to pay explicit attention to the cultivation of leadership.
Just as teaching is a lonely profession, school leadership is more so. There are numerous ways in which the isolation of principals should be overcome. At the most comprehensive level, the job of the school head will become more worthwhile when the overall infrastructure of reporting improves. Put differently, when states align policy and investments, integrating accountability and development, the position of school head will become more pivotable and more productive.
For an excellent example of co-ordinated policy at state level, see Barber (2000).
On the principalship itself, the opportunity to learn on the job through problem-based conferences, networking and linking to the big picture will make the position exciting and uplifting (see Elmore and Burney, 1999, for one example at school district level). In short, school leadership must be doable and rewarding. It must offer opportunities to learn on the job and to give heads the feeling that they are part and parcel of a larger effort to make a difference in society as a whole.
One last caution. As important as the principal is, quality teachers are obviously even more important. Thus, policy development must enhance the status, role and accountability of the teaching profession. First, quality teachers make quality heads. The stronger the pool of good teachers, the stronger that future heads will be as they come from the pool. In numbers, heads will be only as strong as the teaching force is in the first place. Secondly, because schools are organisations and because the principal is the head of the organisation, it falls to him or her to focus on school-wide capacity which is essential to bringing out the best in teachers.
Ironically, up to the present everyone acknowledges how crucial school heads are, but there has been little attention paid to making them more effective. This will have to change if we are to "go to scale" in seeing the majority of our schools do well.

References
Baker, M, 2000, High expectations and standards for all, no matter what, London, Department of
Education and Employment (now Department of Education and Skills)
Day, C, Harris, A, Hadfield, M, Tolley, H & Beresford, J, 2000, Leading Schools in Times of
Change, Buckingham, Open University Press
Elmore, R & Burney, D, 1999, Investing in teaching learning. In L Darling-Hammond and G
Sykes (eds), Teaching as a Learning Profession, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, pp 236–91
Fullan, M, 1999, Change Forces: the Sequel, London, Falmer Press; Bristol, PA, Falmer Press
Leithwood, K, Jantzi, D & Steinbeck, R, 1999, Changing Leadership for Changing Times,
Buckingham, Open University Press
Newmann, F, King, B & Young, P, 2000, Professional development that addresses school
capacity: lessons from urban elementary schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association
Sebring, P & Bryk, A, 2000, School leadership and the bottom line in Chicago, Kappan,
February, pp 440–43

Values of Great Leaders that make a Difference

Innovation- The creativity to see, be, and do things in a new way.
Integrity- The strength to fulfill commitments in the spirit as well as the latter.
Initiative- The ability to take action independently and lead.
Service- The compassion that sees other people's needs as important as your own.
Truth- The continual search for what is right; morally, intellectually, spiritually, socially, politically and economically.
Excellence- The commitment to the highest personal and professional standards.
Determination- The refusal to terminate dreams in the face of adversity.