Supposing that teachers have already deconstructed historical state assessment data, teachers might begin by revisiting those performance indicators that were aligned to items that students struggled with over time. Coming to understand what the performance indicator truly means is an important and often overlooked first step. Discovering what the items aligned to it challenged students to do can help teachers better understand how to respond instructionally.

For instance, many states have adopted standards or subskills or performance indicators or whatever it is your state is calling it that articulate the need for students to use graphic organizers. As a teacher, my interpretation of that skill would inspire me to begin using many graphic organizers in the classroom and to train my students to use them effectively. However, when you revisit some of the state assessment items mapped to this skill area, interesting realizations are made. For instance, students are sometimes presented with a passage and a question to respond to. They are asked to represent their response by using a graphic organizer. The challenge? The organizer itself is already partially complete. So in this case, using graphic organizers isn’t as simple as the PI would lead you to believe. In this case, using graphic organizers also includes inferring the thought process that is already partially played out in the test booklet before them. In this way, using graphic organizers becomes a highly critical task….it becomes very much like a mathematical process.

When teachers are provided the time and the guidance that is needed to begin having meaningful conversations about assessment data, powerful discoveries are made. And when they are given the time and the guidance needed to revisit items that have been an issue historically, what is uncovered is that much more significant.

Working through these processes collaboratively allows teachers to begin targeting skills in a much more specific and strategic manner. Constructing classroom assessments around these well-targeted areas of provides teachers with the kind of data that leads to significant change.

Processes like this provide teachers with the tools that they need to be real “architects of change”…and I love being a part of that kind of work.