"The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

"The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” • "The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.” • “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top,” McKinsey and Co., 2007

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” • W. Fusselman, Swiss-British art critic

"... the future of our economy, the strength of our democracy and perhaps even the health of the planet's ecosystems depend on educating future generations in ways very different from how many of us were schooled.” • Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap, p. xxvii

Ten years ago, seminal research based on data from Tennessee, showed that if two average eight-year-old students were given different teachers – one of them a high performer, the other a low performer – their performances diverge by more than 50 percentile points within three years. • “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top,” McKinsey and Co., 2007

Assessment literacy is not hard learning, but it is slow learning and it requires sustained and targeted support. • ABQ, pg. 160

Secrets to Change • Capacity building prevails • Connect peers with purpose • Learning is the work • Transparency • Michael Fullan

Understanding the Change Process • The goal is not to innovate the most. • It is not enough to have the best ideas. • Appreciate the implementation dip. • Redefine resistance. • Reculturing is the name of the game. • Never a checklist, always complexity. • Michael Fullan

When principals and superintendents are unable to distinguish sound instruction and assessment from substandard practice, the likelihood that teachers will value and implement effective practices is not great. • Daniel L. Duke

No amount of embarrassment can help teachers do what they are not capable of. • Michael Fullan

Formative assessment represents evidence-based instructional decision-making. If you want to become more instructionally effective, and if you want your students to achieve more, then formative assessments should be for you. • Popham (2008), p. 15

No assessment system can really be in balance unless the classroom level of assessment is fulfilling its role in supporting and verifying learning. • An Action Guide for School Leaders

Proposition • More skillful assessment will not improve student achievement unless it serves as a catalyst for adult learning and changes in teacher practice. • DuFour (2008)

Designing clear learning goals and objectives is a staple of effective teaching. We might even say that goal setting is a necessary condition for effective teaching. • Robert Marzano, Designing & Teaching Learning Goals & Objectives (2009)

Goals are the reason classroom activities are designed. Without clear goals, classroom activities are without direction. • Robert Marzano, Designing & Teaching Learning Goals & Objectives (2009)

Good teaching begins with clear learning goals from which teachers select appropriate instructional activities and assessments that help determine students’ progress on the learning goals. • Krajcik, McNeill, and Reiser

Well-structured learning goals make assessment tasks easier to construct, and well-constructed assessment tasks help operationalize learning goals. • Robert Marzano, Designing & Teaching Learning Goals & Objectives (2009)

You can enhance or destroy students’ desire to succeed in school more quickly and permanently through your use of assessment than with any other tools you have at your disposal. • Rick Stiggins

The gap between knowing and doing becomes as wide as the Grand Canyon when the new skills differ from familiar and comfortable habits. Educators can take between two and three years to develop these skills and use them at a high level of quality. • Joyce and Showers, Student Achievement Through Staff Development, (1988)

For formative assessment, teachers must not only be clear about what they want students to learn (the lesson objective or intended outcome for students who “get it”); they also must know typical student steps and missteps toward this goal (the typical learning progression). • Moss and Brookhart, Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom, (2009)

All too often, the term “formative assessment” conjures images of quizzes and tests, while in reality, formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning. • Gene Wilhoit, CCSSO

…the teacher's role in formative assessment is not simply to use feedback to promote content learning, but also to help students understand the goal being aimed for, assist them to develop the skills to make judgments about their learning in relation to the standard, and establish a repertoire of operational strategies to regulate their own learning. • Margaret Heritage, Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity?, 2010

…formative assessment [must] be regarded as a process rather than a particular kind of assessment. In other words, there is no such thing as “a formative test.” Instead, there are a number of formative assessment strategies that can be implemented during classroom instruction. These range from informal observations and conversations to purposefully planned instructionally embedded techniques designed to elicit evidence of student learning to inform and adjust instruction. • FAST SCASS, 2008

[An] unequivocal requirement [is] that the formative assessment process involve both teachers and students. The students must be actively involved in the systematic process intended to improve their learning. The process requires the teacher to share learning goals with students and provide opportunities for students to monitor their ongoing progress. • FAST SCASS, 2008

Assessment for learning should be regarded as a key professional skill for teachers. Teachers require the professional knowledge and skills to: plan for assessment; observe learning; analyze and interpret evidence of learning; give feedback to learners and support learners in self- assessment. Teachers should be supported in developing these skills through initial and continuing professional development. • Assessment Reform Group, 2002

It is essential that schools and districts provide teachers the time to work together to learn the curriculum, plan lessons and assessments, and continue their own learning in the academic disciplines they teach. • Schmoker, 2002

“If we take care of the learning, the learning will take care of the testing.” • Harvey Silver

Too often assessment is associated with reporting, not supporting. • Daniel L. Duke

Three interrelated conditions for formative assessment that teachers and students must: • Possess a concept of the standard being aimed for; • Compare the actual level of performance with the standard; and • Engage in appropriate action which leads to some closure of the gap. • Royce Sadler, 1989

We must be mindful of our students, but take them beyond where they happen to be. • Diana Senechal, Educational Leadership, March 2011

Students who don’t know the intention of a lesson expend precious time and energy trying to figure out what their teachers expect them to learn. • Moss, Brookhart, Long, Educational Leadership, March 2011

With good relationships in place, all other instructional strategies seem to work better. • Marzano, Educational Leadership, March 2011

Indeed, the single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify – in politics, community life, business, or the non-profit sector – is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems. • Heifetz & Linsky (2002), Leadership on the Line

Targets must be mastered by the teachers who must teach them. • Carol Commodore

The principle goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done – people who are creative, inventive, discoverers. • Jean Piaget

"The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”