Vol. 11, Spring 2005

As the 2004 - 2005 school year comes to a close and professional learning communities shift their focus to planning for the coming year, QLD Connections offers support and encouragement for effective use of data-driven strategies for raising the bar on accountability and continuous school improvement. In this issue we explore the combined effects of focused goals, assessment FOR learning and shared responsibility for student achievement as a recipe for accelerating the rate and degree of student performance. We hope you'll find the ideas and resources in QLD Connections to be inspiring and useful.

Here is what you'll find in this issue...

QLD News...

By the Book

Shared responsibility for SMART Goals and meaningful assessment empower both teachers and students to achieve high levels of performance.

Although most of us acknowledge the power of goals in our own lives, they remain the single most underestimated and underutilized means of improving student learning — particularly in the classroom — in education today.

For insights into why — and how shared teacher and student engagement in meaningful goals and assessment can have a measured effect on student learning — read an excerpt from QLD's new book, The Power of SMART Goals — Using Goals to Improve Student Learning (published by National Educational Service in summer 2005).

Featured...

SMART School Improvement — early results from Harrison Community Schools

Chris Rundle, Superintendent of Harrison Community Schools, had cause to celebrate when the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) state test results were announced recently. In a letter written to one of the District's Elementary Title I Consultants, Chris noted that "the MEAP scores for the 2004-2005 school year will prove to be among the finest in the history of Harrison Community Schools."

When asked about the efforts within the district that resulted in the improved state assessment results, Chris noted that "these great results are tremendously correlated with a combination of factors: our leadership teams, our after-school programs for kids, and our work with the SMART Schools process over the past year."

Read more about the progress achieved in Harrison, Michigan and the early impacts of the SMART Schools Process in supporting continuous improvement in the district.

Tips from the QLD Learning Toolbox...

Part 1: The SMART Goal Tree — a highly effective graphic organizer

We use graphic organizers every day to organize thinking, plan and monitor plans, connect isolated pieces of knowledge, and make meaning. Graphic organizers are especially powerful when used by teams because they help distribute everyone's individual knowledge, making thinking visible.

The SMART Goal Tree is a graphic organizer used to formulate SMART Goals. It brings together the goal statement, indicators (standards) to be addressed, measures to be used to gauge progress, and targets that create realistic steps toward the goal.

Click "Part 1" to read more about the SMART Goal Tree and see both teacher and student examples in the accompanying excerpt from The Power of SMART Goals — Using Goals to Improve Student Learning.

Part 2: SMARTTools from QLD Learning — software brains and brawn to support data-driven goals and multiple assessment strategies to meet accountability challenges.

S.M.A.R.T.ToolsTM is an integrated suite of data-driven learning management tools that enables effective integration of standards-based curriculum design, instructional delivery, formative and summative assessment — with monitoring of student progress to three types of goals:

Click "Part 2" to read more about how S.M.A.R.T.Tools can support goal-driven instruction and assessment.

Professional Development

QLD integrates ATI Assessment for Learning practices into SMART Schools professional development offerings for accelerating data-driven learning accountability.

"Collective research over the last couple of decades has demonstrated that use of formative assessment for learning can have unprecedented positive effects on student achievement. Further, research shows that improved formative assessment helps low achievers more than other students and so reduces the range of achievement while raising achievement overall... Hypothetically, if assessment for learning became standard practice only in classrooms of low-achieving, low-socioeconomic-status students, the achievement gaps that trouble us so deeply today would be erased."

Richard J. Stiggins, Assessment Crisis: The Absence Of Assessment FOR Learning

Rick Stiggins and his colleagues at the Assessment Training Institute in Portland, Oregon help educators acquire practices for effective classroom assessment. QLD Learning Consultants, trained by ATI to facilitate the Assessment for Learning process, have integrated Assessment for Learning with QLD Learning's SMART School Improvement Process.

Click the headline to read more about Assessment For Learning and the research behind it.

Recommended

Assessment FOR Learning: An Action Guide for School Leaders, 2nd ed., by Steve Chappuis, Rick Stiggins, Judy Arter and Jan Chappuis

ATI's newly released second edition Assessment FOR Learning: An Action Guide for School Leaders, 2nd ed., helps administrators gain a clear vision of what excellence in assessment looks like and what it takes to achieve that vision.

Insights Q&A

Question: How can teachers effectively engage students in setting, understanding and monitoring progress to goals for accelerating learning?

Click the headline to read our answer and discover a handy guide created by Ellen Perconti and Bob Donaldson, Independent School District #1, Lewiston Idaho.

Reflections

How can you and your professional learning community use the SMART accountability recipe for student performance: focused goals + assessment FOR learning + shared responsibility for student achievement?

Click the headline to access the QLD Learning Team Goal Setting/Action Planning Form — adapted from the Tonowanda Elementary School, Elmbrook School District.

Use this helpful form to create a key SMART Goal for improving student learning, including ways to engage students in the learning and measurement process.

The Newsletter

We developed QLD Connections as a service to our colleagues, clients, customers, and friends, and look forward to hearing how well we're meeting your needs — and what we can do to improve. Use the form HERE to let us know!