How to teach students to take ownership of their learning
Students who take ownership of their learning are more engaged, resilient, and empowered. Teachers can foster student ownership by teaching metacognitive skills and self-efficacy in their classrooms.
How to strengthen teacher evaluation systems to improve student growth
Teaching evaluation systems should support student growth. If students aren't growing, it's probably due to skewed data. District leaders can fix a skewed data problem and create a strong evaluation system with a few important changes.
What does student growth mean in practice?
I want to talk about the hot topic of Student Growth, but I’m going to take the long way around. So let's begin with a little pop quiz:
Student growth and progress
The easiest method to determine growth is to take a measurement, take a second measurement at a later time, and subtract the results.
Regarding a growth mindset and assessment
Is it possible to foster a growth mindset in the presence of high-stakes testing? I would argue that it is, so long as we keep ourselves grounded in the purpose of assessment.
Why I got into teaching
When I was in high school, I loved spreadsheets. I used to design measurement tools to test my friends' abstract psychological constructs like "Movie Trivia Content Mastery" and generate data tables of the results.
Why do we assess?
In the shadow of high-stakes state testing and accountability, sometimes “assessment” can feel like a four-letter word (test).
