Here at Envision Learning Partners, we believe that every student deserves to learn within a high-quality performance assessment system. That means every student goes to a school where:
targeted skills are announced (often in the form a graduate profile),
rubrics are widely shared and regularly used,
teachers are aligned on the quality of assignments and student work,
students can explain what they are doing and how they are growing,
and high expectations are not random or tracked; they are held for every student who attends that school.
If a school does not have these conditions in place, or isn’t actively working toward them, then I hesitate to call it a good school, no matter how high its test scores, shiny its hallways, or champion-like its teachers.
We in the performance assessment movement must clamor for focus on the quality of our students’ work—not proxies for their work, like test scores or classroom observations, but the work itself. How are you focusing on and highlighting your students’ work? Drop us a line to let us know!
I invite you to read more of my thoughts on the subject in “What Is a Good School?,” a short piece I wrote for EdWeek’s Learning Deeply blog.
Sincerely,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
