Performance vs Progress

A teacher I use to support some years ago, was trapped in a vehicle with me recently as we ventured to a city 200 miles North of Houston for a Math Conference. The conversation that disrupted the silence was pertaining to her recent release of state assessment scores. She wasn't so excited about the fact that she had set the expectation for the percentage of her students who would pass at 80% and fallen short by 20%.

Searching for the words to cheer this young gazelle up, I had to be strategic in my approach because I care so deeply about students and those who stroke their propensity to learn. What I said could either leave this teacher entering another year of setting unreasonable expectations and falsely striving for perfection or could steer her into purposeful and intentional goal setting with her students.

Goal setting seems to be set on performance. Students record their performance at benchmark moments when summative assessments are taken. But the real conversations and thought are centered around the differences that occur between each performance tracking. And ultimately when a student in May looks back on their performance from August/September, they should see some semblance of growth over the course of their time of learning.

It is down this path that I took this teacher who would be entering her 4th year of teaching. Research says that most teachers make their decision to either leave or jump ship between their 3rd and 5th year in Education. If I were to let a teacher who primarily deals with students with severe gaps in understanding and though aren't defined by their background, are bringing with them to school each day a disparity in terms of experiences- go on thinking it was SMART to set these expectations, I'd be doing her a great disservice.

Our conversation instead centered around sharing with her the importance of her digging into the Progress Measure of her students between 3rd and 4th grade. Often a component that is overlooked when the scores are initially released. Of course without being in front of a computer screen, the conversation didn't go as deep. She was able to physically look at whether or not her students had made any growth. Her vantage point was still very performance based and she went into what was left of her summer frustrated but hopeful.

Two months later we briefly revisited the conversation. This time, I was in my vehicle and she- in her own house. By this time she had been able to sift through and dissagregate her data. She had also gathered some observational data by engaging in conversation with her colleagues. This time she brought with her argument a more subjective stance because she was concerned that the students coming to her from the previous grade level might be entering with significant deficits. This bit of information gave me leverage for my entry way back into a pursuit to encourage this teacher towards goal setting.

I posed the following scenarios for her to ponder:

A. Let's say the students who enter your classroom this year have had 3 years of poor instruction (either by way of high mobility/turnover on their end or on the teacher end). Would you expect that group of students to score 70-80% passing or would you expect 70-80% of your class to pass STAAR?

B. Let's say the students who enter your classroom this year have had 3 previous years of very stable teachers who are veterans with instruction, no mobility and solid in terms of pedagogy. What would you expect your students' level of passing to be?

For the third scenario, I drilled down to specifics...

C. Let's say you are teaching a class the unit on Place value with whole numbers and decimals. If a majority of your students have lacked solid instruction in the unit of place value for 2 or more years, then you're dealing with a Tier 2 issue that needs to be addressed through re-mediation alongside a Tier 1 framework for an entire unit. Can you realistically expect mastery of place value to the hundredths place when your students lack a fundamental understanding of the base ten system?

When a grade level or even a school experiences some level of proficiency within performance over a score such as 90% or higher; or receives various distinctions within a certain subject matter, it shows that there is a solid system in place. Once that has had the chance to weather time, and change. Perhaps teachers & teams are veterans and have stayed in one place for a sustained period of time. But it can also be that students are bringing in a high level of independent knowledge and intrinsic desire for learning.

However, when a school experiences the opposite and for years tends to perform below sufficient performance levels, we automatically blame the Teachers' ability to perform or perhaps the classroom management. It might even get so nasty that we blame the behavior of students and their socio-economic backgrounds. When really, it's a systemic issue. Perhaps that system lacks creditable leadership, suffers from high mobility and staff turnover (inclusive of staff members who lack a strong knowledge base and experience). 

Both of these are realities and yet performance is the constant of this reality. But progress is not dependent on either of these realities. Often progress is stifled in places where students' performance have no bearings on the ability of a teacher to lead learning. But that doesn't have to be the case. Even a student with high levels of performance can be enriched and deepen their knowledge base through a series of rigorous tasks and set their own growth path. 

Similarly, in systems where performance is low, students have the luxury of charting their growth path and moving their abilities far beyond what they thought capable. 

My conversation with this old colleague was based on this premise. That regardless of the system you work within, your belief and practices must be grounded in progress over performance. Performance will come. But in some places performance will not be based on your ability as a teacher to facilitate learning. Perhaps, you realize that no matter how great you are within your current reality, performance is still showing to be constant. What you CAN affect, however, is the progress your students make. That is true no matter what students you serve and in any system you serve them in. Shoot for progress and performance will follow! But performance might not hang on the hinges of your 1 year influence in these students' lives...it might not show up until 3 years down the road. 

Trust, however, that when that body of students out-performs that year, credit is not due to the teachers they currently have; credit is due to the history of strong instruction they've encountered over a period of time within a system that was structured well.