Chapter 3: On Common Ground

Reeves, D. (2005). Putting it all together: standards, assessment, and accountability in successful professional learning communities. In R. DuFour, R. Eaker, and R. DuFour (Eds.), On common ground (pp. 44-63). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Abstract: This chapter is about three things, standards, assessments and accountability. The first main theme of the chapter is about standards. Standards as they are right now are not effective as a foundation for improved school achievement. Standards need to be reworked so that they are rational, relevent and focused. These are called “power standards.” In order to be power standards, these standards need to have endurance, leverage, and need to be essential to the next level of achievement. The next main theme is that standards need to accompained by common assessments in the classroom. Assessments need to be for learning, not assessments of learning, an important distinction. These assessments need to be consistant, timeless and differentated. In order to have a successful assessment, immediate feedback is important. The third major theme of this chapter is that there needs to be accountability systems that take into account test scores, teaching practices,curriculum and leadership.Accountatiblity shouldn’t just be about data producing.

Reflection:
I personally found the stuff about common assessments to be pretty interesting. They talk a lot about consistancy in assessment, where all work in that grade and content level is graded on a specific grading scale. I think there are pros and cons of this. I guess it is good because it makes everything “fair” and grading is consistant among teachers. The problems with this? One, it may be hard when grading things such as english essays or opinon papers, to grade them all with the same consistant grading system. I guess this kind of takes away from the teachers individuality and stuff, making them all grade on the same level. Some teachers may look for different things in a paper. I guess I could see where this would be a tough task for teachers to do. Rubrics would probably be the best answer for having consistance in grading. I can see the good and the bad in this though.