The Role of Assessment in Driving Up Standards

1. The role of assessment in driving up standardsIFS Residential Conference;Cambridge, UK: April 2009 Dylan Wiliam www.dylanwiliam.net

2. Science Design Overview: science and design We need to improve student achievement This requires improving teacher quality Improving the quality of entrants takes too long So we have to make the teachers we have better We can change teachers in a range of ways Some will benefit students, and some will not. Those that do tend to involve changes in teacher practice Changing practice requires new kinds of teacher learning And new models of professional development.

3. Learning is slow 6099 + 1 = ? (Foxman et al., 1980) • Correctly answered by some 7-year-olds • Incorrectly answered by some 14-year-olds The “seven year gap” (Cockcroft, 1981) Progression in measuring (Simon et al., 1995) Spread of achievement in an age cohort apparently much greater than generally assumed

4. 860+570=? 75% increase 5 years Source: Leverhulme Numeracy Research Programme

5. Average increase: 10% per year CSMS (Hart, 1981)

6. So variation in achievement is large… sd=age/10

7. sd=age/5

8. …very large indeed… sd=age/4

9. Why is this? Three generations of school effectiveness research • Raw results approaches • Different schools get different results • Conclusion: Schools make a difference • Demographic-based approaches • Demographic factors account for most of the variation • Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference • Value-added approaches • School-level differences in value-added are relatively small • Classroom-level differences in value-added are large • Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

10. Within schools Between schools OECD PISA data from McGaw, 2008

11. What makes an effective classroom? In many countries, classroom variability is at least 4 times school level variability • It’s not class size or the between- or within-class grouping strategy It’s the teacher • The commodification of teachers has received widespread support: • From teacher unions (who understandably resist performance-related pay) • From politicians (so the focus is on teacher supply, rather than teacher quality) • Having a good rather than weak teacher (±1sd) increases performance by more than one GCSE grade • Being taught by the best teacher from a group of 50 means that a student will learn at four times the rate of a student taught by the worst teacher in that group • And the gains for the lowest attainers are greater than for other students • So that in the classrooms of the best teachers • Students with behavioural difficulties learn as much as those without • Students from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from advantaged backgrounds (Hamre & Pianta, 2005)

12. There are two ways to make teachers better Replace existing teachers with better ones • Important, but very slow, and of limited impact • Teach for America/Teach First (at most 1% of teaching force) • Raising the bar for entry to teaching Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers • Not because they are not good enough, but because they can be better • (so ‘good enough’ is not good enough) • The “love the one you’re with” strategy • It can be done • Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter to students • Even when they’re hard to do

13. 1000 1000 800 800 600 600 400 400 200 200 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Teacher quality Teacher quality Raising the bar for entry to teaching Mean: 50 Mean: 55 (0.5 sd increase) Lowest 30% removed

14. Is too slow… The correlation between teacher quality and student progress is around 0.2 This means that raising teacher quality by one standard deviation will increase student progress by 0.2 standard deviations Raising the bar for entry into the profession so that we no longer recruit the lowest performing 30% of teachers would over twenty to thirty years, increase average teacher quality by 0.5 standard deviations. This would increase student achievement by 0.1 standard deviations • an increase of the speed of student learning of 25-30%, or, put another way • an increase in the average score on a typical test of one point (e.g. from 50 to 51) • A small, but valuable effect (annual value of £8bn)

15. Advanced content matter knowledge <5% Pedagogical content knowledge 10-15% Further professional qualifications (MA, NBPTS) <5% Total “explained” difference 20-25% So our policies need to be more specific The dark matter of teacher quality • Teachers make a difference • But what makes the difference in teachers?

16. Cost/effect comparisons

17. The formative assessment hi-jack… Long-cycle • Span: across units, terms • Length: four weeks to one year • Impact: Student monitoring; curriculum alignment Medium-cycle • Span: within and between teaching units • Length: one to four weeks • Impact: Improved, student-involved, assessment; teacher cognition about learning Short-cycle • Span: within and between lessons • Length: • day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours • minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours • Impact: classroom practice; student engagement

18. Unpacking formative assessment Key processes • Establishing where the learners are in their learning • Establishing where they are going • Working out how to get there Participants • Teachers • Peers • Learners

19. …and one big idea Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs

20. Aspects of formative assessment

21. Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents, weather, etc. A KLT teacher does the same: • Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in essence building the track) • Takes readings along the way • Changes course as conditions dictate

22. Looking at the wrong knowledge… The most powerful teacher knowledge is not explicit • That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work • What we know is more than we can say • And that is why most professional development has been relatively ineffective Improving practice involves changing habits, not adding knowledge • That’s why it’s hard • And the hardest bit is not getting new ideas into people’s heads • It’s getting the old one’s out • That’s why it takes time But it doesn’t happen naturally • If it did, the most experienced teachers would be the best, and we know that’s not so (Hanushek, 2005) • We need to create systematic approaches to, and spaces for, teacher learning

23. Two competing drivers in design Some reforms are too loose • e.g., the ‘Effective schools’ movement • Allows customization to the local context • But can suffer from ‘lethal mutations’ Some reforms are too tight • e.g., Montessori Schools • Undoubtedly effective • Not possible to implement everywhere • Fails to capitalize on affordances in the local context

24. Designing for scale: tight but loose “In-principle” scalability requires • A single model for the whole school • But which honours the specifities of each subject and age-range • Understanding what it means to scale (Coburn, 2003) • Depth • Sustainability • Spread • Shift in reform ownership • Consideration of the diversity of contexts of application • Clarity about components, and the theory of action

25. The “tight but loose” formulation … combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the “tight” part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints, and particularities that occur in any school or district (the “loose” part), butonly where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.

26. So what do we need? What is needed from teachers • A commitment to: • the continuous improvement of practice • focus on those things that make a difference to student outcomes What is needed from leaders • A commitment to: • creating expectations for the continuous improvement of practice • ensuring that the the focus stays on those things that make a difference to student outcomes • providing the time, space, dispensation and support for innovation • supporting risk-taking What is needed from the system • A “signature pedagogy” for teacher learning

27. Signature pedagogies

28. In Law

29. In Medicine

30. A “signature pedagogy” for teacher learning? Monthly meetings of ‘teacher learning communities’ (TLCs) of 8-10 teachers that follow the same structure and sequence Activity 1: Introduction & Housekeeping (5 minutes) Activity 2: How’s It Going (35 minutes) Activity 3: New Learning about formative assessment (20 minutes) Activity 4: Personal Action Planning (10 minutes) Activity 5: Summary of Learning (5 minutes) Peer observations between TLC meetings Run to the agenda of the observed, not the observer

31. Summary Raising achievement is important Raising achievement requires improving teacher quality Improving teacher quality requires teacher professional development To be effective, teacher professional development must address • What teachers do in the classroom • How teachers change what they do in the classroom Formative assessment + Teacher learning communities • A point of (uniquely?) high leverage • A “Trojan Horse” into wider issues of pedagogy, psychology, and curriculum