Don't ask, don't tell about the A.C.T.

In seldom looking at this national exam, teachers demonstrate what information helps them and what doesn't

By Rick DuFour
Journal of Staff Development, Summer 1998 (Vol. 19, No. 3)

As a high school principal, I observed a fascinating phenomenon every year when our students took the American College Testing (ACT) exam. Students and parents saw this as a very high-stakes test, since the results affected a student’s chance to get into the college of his or her choice.

Furthermore, our high school’s results on this national exam were printed in the local newspaper and compared to scores from schools throughout Illinois

One might conclude that teachers would be very concerned about how their students performed on this examination, but such a conclusion would be inaccurate. During my 17 years as principal, I saw no evidence that teachers took the slightest interest in this examination.

No teacher ever anxiously inquired if the school had received the ACT results. No teacher ever asked to analyze the data once results were available. In fact, most teachers said they had never even looked at the test, and thus they had little idea what students were asked to do on the ACT exam.

But another national examination, or series of examinations, generated intense interest in teachers. Faculty members who prepared students for the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) examinations carefully studied past tests as well as national, state, and local patterns of student achievement on past exams. Their analysis was a critical component of their instructional planning. Teachers modeled their own tests on this national examination. They attended conferences where they met other teachers to gather ideas for better preparing their students for the AP exams. They bought materials to learn as much as possible about the nature of the exam. Throughout the summer, they telephoned me to ask if we had received the AP results. When the results finally arrived, they pored over them, examining where their students had done well and identifying areas of concern. This analysis then influenced their instruction, and the cycle was repeated.

The teacher response to these highly regarded exams could not have been more different. Why were teachers so disinterested in the results of the ACT exams and so focused on improving results on the AP exams? The answer is fairly simple: The ACT provided general data on student achievement in a discipline, while the AP test provided specific data on specific students enrolled in specific courses taught by specific teachers in our school.

The ACT offered some insight as to how well our students performed in "science" or "mathematics." But individual biology or geometry teachers did not have any indication of how well their students had mastered the content of their specific courses. The AP examinations, on the other hand, gave individual teachers valuable insight as to whether their students had achieved the clearly

articulated standards of course-specific curriculum. Based on that insight, they could shape their instruction for the next group of students.

This simple contrast offers a powerful lesson to schools interested in becoming professional learning communities. When teachers have relevant information that enables them to assess the achievement of their students in

relationship to explicit, agreed-upon performance standards, they can and do use that information to enhance their effectiveness. The challenge for schools is to develop processes that provide teachers with both relevant data and the time to work collaboratively to develop improvement strategies based on that data.

Every school should establish processes by which teams of teachers responsible for teaching the same course or grade level would be required to work collaboratively to:

1. Identify the essential knowledge and skills that each student is to achieve in that course or grade level.
2. Specify the standards by which student work and/or achievement will be assessed.
3. Develop assessment strategies that provide teachers with relevant data that enable them to make informed judgments regarding the individual and collective achievement of their students.
4. Identify and articulate improvement strategies based on their analysis.

Paper and pencil tests are not the only forms of assessment that could be used for these purposes. Rubrics — a written, agreed-upon criteria or guide by which a student product or performance is to be judged — offer a potentially powerful tool for assessing both individual and collective progress of students.

Some schools question the ability of a team of teachers to establish inter-rater reliability in the use of rubrics. Yet, the AP program is based on the premise that unacquainted high school and university teachers from throughout the U.S. and Canada can collaborate and agree on a rubric of performance with a scale of one to five, and can then reliably apply that rubric to exams from students throughout the world. Thus, it is ironic that some educators do not believe that four second-grade teachers in the same school could agree on and apply a rubric for assessing the work of second grade students in language arts or mathematics.

If schools are really serious about the concept of a professional learning community, they will engage teachers in a collaborative effort to identify the specific knowledge and skills students need to achieve in every course or grade level, specify the standards by which student work will be judged, develop assessment strategies that provide each teacher with relevant information as to how well his or her students have met those standards, and develop improvement strategies based upon teacher analysis of that information. When this process becomes part of a continuous improvement cycle, when it represents "the way we do things around here," a school has taken a big step on its journey to become a professional learning community.

About the Author

Rick DuFour is superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School District 125, Two Stevenson Drive, Lincolnshire, IL 60069, (847) 634-4000, ext. 268, (847) 634-0239 fax; e-mail: rdufour@district125.k12.il.us.

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