increasing achievement: identifying the greatest points of leverage

Increasing Achievement:

Identifying the greatest points of leverage

Dr. Dana Schon, SAI professional learning

director

Superintendents Statewide Mentoring9.25.12

Why identify points of leverage?Without focus, even the best leadership ideas will fail, the most ideal research-based initiatives will fail, and the most self-sacrificing earnest leaders will fail. Worst of all, without focus by educational leaders, students and teachers will fail.

~Doug Reeves

Outcomes: By the end of this segment, you will have…

Identified factors that have the greatest leverage in increasing student achievementConsidered how knowledge of greatest points of leverage can impact our work as educational leaders

Finding the leverage…“There is no fixed recipe for ensuring that teaching has the maximum possible effect on student learning, and no set of principles that apply to all learning for all students. But there are practices that we know are effective and many practices that we know are not.”

~John Hattie

Why what works doesn’t always deliver desired results…

95-97% of what teachers do increases student learning(Hattie, 2012), so…The question isn’t what works, but what works best? What has the greatest influence on student learning?

The typical effect across…

900+ meta-analyses50,000 studies, and240+ million students

Distribution of Effects

Review of Effect SizeAn effect size of .20 1.0Advancing achievement

9 months 2-3 years

% improvement in rate of learning

10% 45-50%

r variable and achievement

.10 .45

Adapted from Hattie, 2012

Effect Size and PercentilesLet’s say a student scored at the 50th percentile on a math achievement test.The teacher decides to implement formative assessment which, let’s say, has an effect size of 1.0 (formative assessment has an actual effect size of .9 (d=.90)). With an effect size of 1.0, we would anticipate the student would score at the 84th percentile!!

“Know thy impact”Keep learning the focus and consider teaching in terms of its impact on student learning.

How do you gauge your impact as the district leader?

An exercise

Important Insights…The most effective leaders and teachers know their impact.We should be aiming for an effect of 0.40..40 effect size as a STARTING POINT for discussion not as the basis of DECISION-MAKING

Visible Learning in Depthhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOv6trGOXfs

Questions