improving school performance: a cautionary tale …šонференции/ron... · math and...
TRANSCRIPT
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29th 30thOF SEPTEMBER 2016
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
USE OF THE EDUCATION QUALITY RESEARCH RESULTS: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
IMPROVING SCHOOL PERFORMANCE: A CAUTIONARY TALE FROM CANADA WITH A HAPPY ENDING
T. SCOTT MURRAY
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SCHOOLS GENERATE THREE TYPES OF OUTCOMES:
THEY IMPART:
Technical skills and knowledge
Cognitive skills that are needed to apply technical
skills and knowledge
Attitudes and beliefs that encourage the application
of these skills in work
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… BUT THE GAME HAS CHANGED:
Schools main job used to be select the top performing students who would
go on to post-secondary education, the rest got basic skills
Now education systems need to impart higher levels of skills to a much higher proportion of
the population to prepare them for the demands of post-secondary education
To achieve this goal schools need to improve the literacy
and numeracy skills of students
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IRONICALLY THE SOVIET SYSTEM REALIZED
THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF LITERACY IN 1948
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THE DEFINITION OF LITERACY HAS
EVOLVED CONSIDERABLY OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS
Advances in theory have have provided a means to understand the determinants of task difficulty
The improved understanding of task difficulty has supported the development of much more reliable
assessments
Literacy is now defined as a continuum than moves from learning
to read to reading to learn
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LEARNING TO READ TO READING TO LEARN: WE NEED MORE
PEOPLE ABLE TO FUNCTION AT LEVEL 3 IN THE PRE-FRONTAL CORTEX
Students and workers need the cognitive skills to support efficient acquisition of technical skills and knowledge and then to apply these skills in work to globally competitive levels
0
Level 1
225 275 325 375 500
Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Learning to read Reading to learnProficiency dominated by mechanics of reading Proficiency dominated by cognitive strategies
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THE THRESHOLD BETWEEN LEARNING TO READ AND READING
TO LEARN FALLS AT A CRITICAL THRESHOLD IN BLOOMS REVISED TAXONOMY
Creating
Evaluating
Analyzing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
The critical boundary between Level 2 and 3
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…AND IN THE SOLO TAXONOMY
Prestructural Unistructural Multistructural Relational Extended abstract
QUANTITATIVE PHASE QUANTITATIVE PHASE
misses point
identifydo simpleprocedure
enumerate describelist combinedo algorithms
compare/contrastexplain causesanalyserelateapply
hypothesizereflect
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CANADA HAS INVESTED HEAVILY IN USING
ASSESSMENT TO IMPROVE LEARNING OUTCOMES:
CANADA:
Participated in PIRLS, TIMSS and PISA to provide assessments
of literacy, math and science outcomes
Established a national assessment of literacy,
math and science outcomes
Established provincial assessments of literacy, math
and science outcomes at various grades
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THE RESULTS OF THESE ASSESSMENTS REVEAL THAT ROUGHLY HALF
OF SECONDARY GRADUATES DO NOT REACH LEVEL 3. THESE RESULTS HAVE
PRECIPITATED LARGE INVESTMENTS BUT PISA SCORES CONTINUE TO FALL
540
535
530
525
520
515
510
505
500
2000 2003 2006 2009 2012
534
528 527
524 523
534
529
525
Reading
Science
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OUR ANALYSIS SUGGESTS A DIFFERENT APPROACH
TO ASSESSMENT IS NEEDED…KEY WEAKNESSES INCLUDE:
All the current assessment resultstell teachers is that a significant number of them are doing a bad job
Assessment results only arrive when the assessed students have moved to the next grade
The assessment results are seldom adjusted to account for differences in the characteristics of the students being served or for factors over which teachers and schools have control
Assessments results are not reliable for individual students so do not identify the students are struggling
Assessments provide relatively little information about students in the lower ranges of the scales, the very students who need help
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ACCOUNTABILITY AND PERVERSE EFFECTS:
SOMETIMES THE RESULT IS NOT AS EXPECTED:
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THERE IS NO MECHANISM
TO TRANSFER INNOVATIONS ONCE IDENTIFIED
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SCHOOL PROFILE
FOR ONTARIO
ONTARIO UNDERPERFORMS ACROSS THE BOARD…
The analysis of socioeconomic gradients
(Figure 3) indicated that Ontario students scored well below
their counterparts in Quebec and Alberta, across the full range
of SES. The school profile above shows that the SES intake of
most schools in Ontario is above the OECD mean. However,
the majority of Ontario’s schools scored below the regression
line, indicating that they were not performing as well as other
Canadian schools with comparable student intake. Thus,
Ontario’s relatively low overall performance is not attributable
to a few low SES schools with low performance. Rather, it is
associated with a more general pattern of slightly lower than
expected performance among the majority of its schools.
Source: J. D. Willms, UNB
700
600
500
400
V
IV
III
II
I
Level
Socioeconomic Status
-1 0 1
Rea
ding
Sco
re
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A NEW GENERATION OF ASSESSMENTS
IS YIELDING THE LONG AWAITED SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT:
ASSESSMENTS THAT GIVE INDIVIDUAL RESULTS IN REAL TIME AND IDENTIFY STRUGGLING STUDENTS I.E.:
The Early Years Evaluation that assesses physical, social and
cognitive skills in Grades 1 – 4 in real time
The Bow Valley College web-based adaptive real time assessment of the reading
mechanics that underlie learning to read
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EARLY YEARS EVALUATION
COGNITIVE SCORES BY LETTER NAMING FLUENCY
Lett
er-N
amin
g Fl
uenc
y (D
IBEL
S)
Kindergarten Year
EYE (above 2)
EYE (1 – 2)
EYE (below 1)
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
50
40
30
20
10
0
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BOW VALLEY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ASSESSMENT
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Vocabulary Real Word recognition
Pseudo-word recognition
Spelling Digit Span
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SUMMARY OF DECODING AND VOCABULARY LEVEL BY LATENT CLASS
Latent Class
Very limited
Limited
Adequate
A
PRINT SKILLS
COMPREHENSION SKILLS
A B C D
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A NEW GENERATION OF ASSESSMENTS
IS YIELDING THE LONG AWAITED SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT:
The SkillPlan teacher in-service literacy instruction training that provides teachers with a deep knowledge of how to help struggling students
Professional learning communities that serve to transfer promising practices and awards that acknowledge innovation
Extra resources for schools serving disadvantaged populations
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Provides them with information they need in real time to help struggling students
Provides the skills needed to help struggling students
Acknowledges innovators
Provides measues that can be aggregated to higher levels
THIS NEW GENERATION OF ASSESSMENTS:Values teachers
Transfers innovations rapidly
Rewards teachers serving disadvantaged populations
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2016
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!