I have been wanting to comment on Sylvia Martinez's post Measure what counts, don't just count what's easy to measure for weeks now. This topic is definitely on my mind and it constantly comes up in discussions with other school leaders. We're all trying to make sense of what it is that we're trying to accomplish with students. Sylvia writes,
"While we may write in our grant narratives that we expect x% improvement in test scores and y% decrease in textbook costs, we really hope that 1:1 changes more than these bottom line digits. In secret, we hope that students and teachers fundamentally change what school means. How can you articulate that, much less measure it?"
As I think through this I want to share three items which help me frame this concept.
1. I'm in the process of reviewing the literature on leadership for 1 to 1 schools and there are two themes which are coming across loud and clear. First of all, there needs to be a shared vision and this vision has to be in place from top to bottom. The second, is that the focus has to be on student learning, not the technology. In Pamela Livingston's 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs that Work, Bruce Dixon states, "Leadership is now investing in vision development that is genuinely shared across the whole school community, and, most importantly, that seeks to sustain rather than just initiate innovations such as 1-to-1." Andrew Zucker in Starting School Laptop Programs: Lessons Learned, stresses the importance of leadership that is driven by the "educational goals and purposes".
The process that Sylvia is promoting is right in line with both of these themes. She says, "the bottom line is that you have to envision what success means..."
2. The Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) has a tool called helps schools figure out the Value of Investment. While I initially found it too much like a balance sheet, I can see the value of the tool. Look at this 2007 example from an Arizona school district and notice that how the "hidden wishes" that Sylvia mentions are interspersed with the quantitative hard data or hard dollar items. The educators who a developed this would have to have a thorough discussion of how they planned to measure each of these fuzzy concepts.
3. This 2007 study of the Denver School of Science and Technology from Zucker and Hug describes the school's Benchmark Assessment Program. The program was based on the idea that successful schools have a systemic process for collecting and using data on student achievement. The school decided to use the ACT standards as their benchmarks. While these targets are highly measurable and they're not the "hidden wishes" that Sylvia describes, they do provide the school community with a clear vision of what they are trying to accomplish. I have to applaud their efforts to establish these benchmarks, that are related to student achievement, at the start of their planning. This approach seems to be working for the students of DSST.
Somehow I'll find a way to use all of these in the future. I'd love to hear how others are framing these important components of a 1-to-1 laptop initiative.
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