On Thursday, 4/24/2014, I wrote about Warren Berger’s article, “Chasing Beautiful Questions.”

On Thursday, 5/5/2015, I wrote about my own insatiable curiosity to ask the question, “WHY?”

Last night, I pulled Warren Berger’s book off my bookshelf to revisit the topic of “A More Beautiful Question” as I reflected on the statewide release of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) data.

The California Department of Education (CDE) has provided a link to view school wide results of the 2014-15 SBAC.  These results have been eagerly anticipated for many reasons.  For one, the new assessments incorporate technology enhanced items that allow for mastery of content to be demonstrated beyond the former multiple choice option.  The new assessments are computer adaptive, meaning they adjust in difficulty to how a student responds.  But more exciting is the fact that these measures allow students to participate in performance tasks that challenge deeper thinking and application of knowledge and skills.

There is new terminology that accompanies these assessments.  Instead of “performance levels” (old terminology), the new language is “achievement levels.”  Instead of proficiency, the new levels are: standard exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met, standard not met.

For those of you who may not know my background, I’m somewhat of a data geek (and proud of it!).  The data was released to the education school community a bit earlier than the general public so that we could begin digesting its significance.  I immediately created spreadsheets and charts to process the information.

At first, I looked at Almond’s achievement as a stand alone piece of data.  I examined how each grade level achieved in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math.  My brain began to ask questions.  WHY is the percentage of students meeting/exceeding at this grade level higher/lower than that one?  WHY are our math percentages higher than our ELA percentages?  HOW are students from the different demographic subgroups achieving?

Then my analysis expanded to schools within the Los Altos School District.  I asked similar questions and dug deeper into the data.  And finally, I expanded my analysis to surrounding districts.

Why did I delve so quickly into the data? I’ll be painfully honest with you.  1) I wanted to understand the data so that Almond can utilize it to inform our academic program and prototype work.  2) I knew the media was going to report out the results and I wanted to be one step ahead of you.

While my initial motivation was and continues to be altruistic and focused on asking questions that serve ALL students, my secondary goal was necessary to appropriately respond to some of the observations that have already come my way. 

Here is how I’ve responded to initial reflections from our parent community:

It is very important that we look at this data by grade level so that we’re comparing apples to apples.  In doing that, Almond’s met/exceeded percentages were lower than other LASD schools in 3rd (by 1 and 2 percentage points from the nearest score) and 4th (by 13 and 7 percentage points from the nearest score).  However in 5th and 6th, there were some schools with lower percentages and some with higher.

In addition to analyzing our own district’s performance, I’ve also looked at the performance of surrounding districts (Saratoga, Cupertino, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Palo Alto).  As a whole, Los Altos is performing comparably and in some cases ranking only second to these like districts.

Our Almond Leadership Team looked at these results on Wednesday afternoon.  It is critical that we take a balanced approach to looking at this data.  We do not want to discount it and rationalize why our scores are the way they are.  Instead, we want to look at the information and allow it to generate questions to guide our work.  We need to provide an academic program that meets the needs of all students, regardless of their demographics and life circumstances.  This underscores the need for us to maintain our focus on personalizing learning for students so that the instruction they receive matches their learning needs.

This year sets a baseline.  We expect only the best from ourselves and will work tirelessly to provide our students with the learning they need.  It is our expectation that by doing this, our students will effectively be able to demonstrate their knowledge through this testing medium.

It is our shared goal at Almond to support ALL (that means 100% of our students) in meeting and exceeding standards.  We will incorporate these data results into the collection of multiple measures we utilize to design personalized instruction for our students.  In that process here are some of the “more beautiful questions” that we have already begun to tackle:

• What if every single student at Almond not yet meeting standards were able to do so in the 2015-16 school year?
• What if every single student already meeting standards were supported to exceed standards in the 2015-16 school year?
• How might we restructure our delivery of instruction to meet the varying needs of students for language arts and math?
• How might we gain more detailed information about the strengths and specific needs of each and every child?
• How might we learn from some of the technological challenges we faced last year in administering the assessment to ensure a positive experience that reflects accurate capabilities of all of our students?

While asking these questions, we will be certain to keep at the forefront of our minds that there is more to a child than a single number associated with academic achievement.  In Los Altos, and at Almond, we value what comprises a whole child.  This includes their talents as musicians, athletes, scientists, historians, collaborators, thinkers, and compassionate, contributing members of our community.