March/April 1998

Teachers in the Driver's Seat

Collaborative assessment proves a positive way to reform schools and improve teaching
By Anne C. Lewis

When teachers in the Monaca school district near Pittsburgh were first presented with new content standards in 1995-96, "they did what every good teacher would do-put them in a drawer," says Kathy Dabrowski, who is principal of three small neighborhood elementary schools in the 880-student district. But then Dabrowski countered with her own requirement: teachers had to turn in student work along with weekly lesson plans based on the new standards. Dabrowski followed up by discussing these plans and student work with the teachers, asking such questions as, "What are you doing here to get this work to a higher level?"

Monaca teachers from each grade level now spend half a day every month looking at student work together. Staff development experts from the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) help teachers with these discussions. Also, teacher representatives from each of the grade levels in the district meet with parents weekly for a few hours after school to look at how student work is measuring up to standards.

"What has happened here is tremendous," says Dabrowski. "If you go into any group of teachers and ask, `could you be doing your job better?' you will lose most of them immediately. But if you ask them to look at student work and talk about how it could be better, then teachers become really student focused."

Persuading teachers to discuss their own students' work and compare it with that of their colleagues' students is a delicate process that would have been a rarity only a few years ago. Yet today there are thousands of teachers using student work for a variety of purposes that go far beyond the practice of assembling portfolios. Three things have only recently made this possible: a political and policy climate that wants proof that students are learning to higher standards; reform efforts that now target schools as well as districts and that encourage teachers to share responsibility for student success; and, finally, the emergence of a research base that is giving teachers better clues as to how to move to higher levels of learning.

Beyond the Portfolio

Teachers have always examined student work, but almost always alone and for the purpose of grading an individual's work. The idea of sharing student work, however, has become more common with the growing use of portfolios as an alternative or supplement to standardized and other formal tests. A decade ago, the practice of focusing on student work was begun by a small number of academics as a way of getting teachers in touch with how students learn. The archival project of student work collected by the Prospect School in Vermont and Project Zero, which was developed by Howard Gardner and others at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, were primary influences.

In 1994, the federal Title I program began requiring that disadvantaged students receiving Title I services be held to the same standards as all other students. Since then, every state has developed new standards setting forth what students should accomplish. In addition, many districts are developing standards and assessment systems on their own. No matter what type of standards are adopted, however, student work has become a tool for making sure those expectations get translated into the classroom. Since few teachers are actually involved in developing standards, the rest "are not going to learn this stuff by reading books of standards," says Katherine Nolan, a consultant who helped write the New Standards, a comprehensive set of performance standards for five subject areas. These standards have so far been adopted by 25 states and 50 districts, including Monaca. Only when teachers come together to discuss standards and what high-quality work looks like can that knowledge get out of teachers' heads and into discussions with colleagues, Nolan says.

While the standards movement has fueled interest in looking at student work, the process continues to be used for a variety of purposes: for scoring and holding schools responsible for student performance; for writing standards and helping teachers understand them; or simply for helping teachers think about their teaching and learn more about their students. For example, student work was used as a tool by the LRDC and the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington, DC, to formulate proficiency exams based on the New Standards. In Kentucky, professional development activities centered on student work are helping teachers understand the differences among levels on the state's assessment tests (novice, apprentice, proficient, and advanced). Other reform organizations are using student work in schools they consult with to upgrade teaching, including the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Education Trust's K-16 Compact. Project Zero holds open, informal discussions of student work using the "collaborative assessment conference" every month. The meetings draw 30-40 teachers, administrators, and other interested educators from New England who come to engage in thoughtful conversations about teaching and learning through looking at student work.

Early Findings

While consistent links to higher achievement are only anecdotal at this stage, collaborative assessment of student work is showing some positive effects, especially in the area of professional development. Researchers who studied the reactions of 250 teachers who participated in New York State's effort to develop performance assessments through scoring student work decided the exercise did provide a variety of learning experiences for teachers. "Looking closely at student work in collaboration with colleagues helped teachers learn about standards, their disciplines, their students, and teaching," reported Beverly Falk and Suzanna Ort of Teachers College at Columbia University.

Lauren Resnick, the director of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, told those attending the 1997 assessment conference of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing that when professional development centered on discussions of standards and student work, teachers of low-performing students in districts using the New Standards were able to "move these kids off the bottom."

How to Do It

Though the phenomenon of analyzing student work to promote change in classroom practice is spreading quickly, it's still an elusive idea. No commercial entity has yet boxed the process into an easy, over-the-counter set of directions. No one proponent or strategy yet dominates either, although two approaches have emerged as the most common.

The first approach-illustrated by Standards-Based Professional Development: Getting Standards into the Classroom" developed by the Education Trust-assumes that standards are in place, and the task is to make sure student work reflects them. The other approach-exemplified by the "Collaborative Assessment Conference" developed by Project Zero-seeks to emphasize what teachers can learn by examining student work before it's judged. According to Steve Seidel, a research associate at Project Zero, such discussions can lead teachers to look beyond their assignments and toward recognizing students' creativity whether or not it is directly related to an assignment.

Despite the philosophical difference between these two approaches, they share some commonalties when it comes to the actual process of looking at student work. Often a trained facilitator leads a group of teachers through a step-by-step format, usually called a "protocol." Discussions may involve scoring work according to a specifically defined set of rubrics (descriptions that define different levels of quality from worst to best). But discussions can also focus on the quality of the assignments themselves. Much of the professional development now given by the Education Trust, for example, is on designing good assignments, often beginning with teachers doing their assignments themselves. Essentially, contends Ruth Mitchell, an assessment expert who works with the Education Trust, examining student work "is a strategy to look at teachers' work." Students can do no better than the assignments they are given, she contends, and if a teacher's assignment is divorced from standards, it becomes a "mystical experience" for students.

Crucial Ingredients

For many educators and schools, the hardest part may be getting started. Most experts with experience in collaborative assessment say it takes a high level of trust among staff. In the "Tuning Protocol" developed by the Coalition of Essential Schools, for example, discussions are carefully designed to keep the conversations about student work focused and away from personal criticisms. Its structure gives equal attention to feedback that is "warm" (supportive) and "cool" (more distanced). To break the ice, Katherine Nolan brings her own personal collection of student work to discussions. "If you use work too close to teachers at first, they will shut down. You have to be neutral," she says. Once teachers begin to share ideas, they can move to bringing work from their own classroom. She pushes them to ask, "Can our kids do any better than this?" and helps them build exemplars of student work from across their district.

As Nolan's example shows, another crucial ingredient to all models of collaborative assessment is the presence of an objective third party. Most schools that are trying to focus on student work rely on outside experts and/or outside funding to help them develop teachers' capacity to analyze the standards in student work and change their assignments and practices. Seidel's effort to develop conversations based on student work in Massachusetts began with consultants who spent 15-20 days a year in a school-a model he says is too expensive. The project is now working with "district coaches," usually staff members who serve as resources for teachers.

Even if the expertise, time, and trust needed to stimulate group conversations around student work exist, there still is the problem of whether teachers are able to understand what the process can teach them. Researchers who studied the three-year effort to use teachers to write new standards for the North Philadelphia effort of the Education Trust found that the process "was frustrating to those without a strong background of content knowledge and a wealth of teaching techniques."

Similarly, when the Philadelphia district sought to help teachers develop units of study based on standards, school officials learned how much teachers lacked theoretical knowledge about teaching and learning. So for 1997-98, teachers were given curriculum frameworks based on the district's standards, and summer and school-year workshops are being held to help teachers integrate standards in their disciplines, one by one, using student work as the guide. It will take four years to cover all the standards, according to Nolan, who is working with the district.

Such barriers will have to be overcome if standards-based reform is to take hold, according to Lauren Resnick. Raising standards will become the personal goal of teachers and students, she says, "only if a concerted effort is made to engage teachers and students in a massive and continuing conversation about what students should learn, what kinds of work they should do, and how well they should be expected to do it."

For Further Information

D. Allen. Tuning Protocol: A Process for Reflection. Providence, RI: Coalition of Essential Schools, February 1995.

T. Blythe et al. A Guide to Looking Collaboratively at Student Work. New York: Teachers College Press, in press.

K. Cushman. "Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Tool Kit." Horace 13, no. 2 (1996). Available from Coalition of Essential Schools, Box 1969, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; 401-863-3384.

Education Trust. For information about this organization, contact Ruth Mitchell, Education Trust, 1725 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006; 202-293-1217.

B. Falk and S. Ort. Sitting Down to Score: Teacher Learning Through Assessment. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Teaching, 1997. Available from National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Teachers College, Box 110, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027; 212-678-3432.

Harvard Project Zero. For more information about the Collaborative Assessment Conference, contact Sara Hendren, Project Zero, 323 Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-495-4342.

R. Lopez et al. Get Rolling! Washington, DC: Education Trust, 1998.

R. Mitchell. Front End Alignment. Washington, DC: Education Trust, 1996.

S. Seidel et al. Portfolio Practices: Thinking Through the Assessment of Children's Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Project Zero (NEA School Restructuring Series), 1997. Available from Karen Chalfen, Project Zero, 323 Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-495-4342.

Anne C. Lewis is an education policy writer in the Washington, DC, area. She has been a national columnist for Phi Delta Kappan for 15 years.