Principal’s Notes

December 2, 2008

This week in leadership:

Comprehensive Assessment System

The district Curriculum Cabinet group has been discussing the development of a district-wide comprehensive assessment system. We recently agreed that the development of an assessment vision or goal statement needed to be crafted to guide the district’s work in this area. Here at the high school our work in course competency development and competency assessment is an integral component in completing a comprehensive assessment system. With that in mind the district has contracted with a consultant from Measured Progress who has been tasked with working with us on assessment practices at all grade levels in some capacity.
In our high school leadership meeting this morning we began to articulate key components that might frame an assessment vision. I have included some of the important points that might be included in our vision. A comprehensive assessment vision should:
· Inform students, parents, and teachers about what a student knows and is able to do
· Should guide instruction
· Should be dynamic over time
· Include a student's ability to self assess; to gain a self-awareness of abilities
· Allow for the sharing of similar student data to be discussed by teachers of commonly taught courses for the purpose of elevating student achievement
· Include end of level benchmarks
· Include the practitioner voice in system development
· Engage in effective use of data and associated training to achieve that end
· Promote learning

Competency

We also discussed the progress on competency work. Departments continue to be in different places with this work. Going forward will depend on where each department is in the process. Some things you can expect may be department sharing and discussion of work completed to date, rubric discussion and development, sufficiency and acceptable levels of proficiency.

Given the many discussions about learning expectations and their direct link to competencies that took place during the NEASC meetings, I believe we are getting a handle on the true value of this effort. I want to reassure you that we will be diligent in moving forward with this work and will complete it on our timeline, which will likely not coincide with the D.O.E.’s June 09 timeline. We have been responsible in making our way through these uncharted waters so that we do not put something in place that will negatively impact our students.