Important Matters: Achievement Reporting

Arohanui ki a koutou
Achievement Reporting
This week you received mid-year written achievement reports for your child. I know that some of you were a little shocked and dismayed with the number of attachments in the email. We are also aware that the attachments were accompanied by quite a wordy email. Sorry for those with more than one child at the school!

Unfortunately I have come to realise that this "wordiness" is a necessity in new schools because all systems are new and, perhaps, quite different, and there is lots to explain. We are aware of still having much, much more to say/explain, but we don't want to overwhelm parents anymore than you already are!

However, I hope you will bear with me as I make a few comments/explanations regarding the reporting:

1.  Reporting on achievement in this way is an interim measure only. As I have mentioned, we are in the process of developing a piece of software which will enable our reporting to become a "living report". The matrices and the PLT (which will become more of a regularly updated learning journal) will be online and available at all times and updated regularly. The summary report on progress and achievement in relation to Amesbury/National Standards (OTJ report - which is a legislative requirement) will be added to each child's online portfolio every six months. However, the outcome should never be a surprise because it should only reflect what parents have already seen via the highlighting of the matrices. Once this is all set up, it means that you will receive information about your child's learning on an ongoing basis and not all at once. Please be patient with us in the meantime.
2. Some parents are unsure of the purpose (and hence, value) of the matrices. The matrices are Amesbury School's interpretation of the National Standards - hence they are called the Amesbury Standards. I will provide more information about this in a separate BLOG post. However, just quickly, the National Standards is a general statement about what students should be achieving at the end of different year levels and, because it is so general, it has to be interpreted in order to be used effectively. The matrices are the achievement indicators that we have developed to interpret the National Standards. These indicators are absolutely essential to being able to make an accurate assessment of where a child is at in relation to National Standards as we are required to do twice a year. Further, the matrices are essential to the development of personalised learning programmes for all students. These provide the next steps and the learning goals.
3. In short the matrices provide the evidence to back up the Overall Teacher Judgements. In the software we are developing, achievement reporting will be organised in such a way that parents can access as much or as little student achievement data as they want. Parents, students and teachers wiill be able to drill down from one report to another, but may choose not to.
4. The matrices are also the way we show "progress" - which we think is the most important aspect of students' achievement. How well is each child progressing? The summary report shows the child's achievement but because the matrices are highlighted in different colours to show each term's achievement, these show the progress each child is making over time. We have since thought that we could provide a simple gauge on the summary report which gives an indication of the progress being made. However, it is still useful for parents to see which areas the child is progressing in.
5. The summary report in relation to National Standards is only a snapshot in time. It does not in anyway indicate where a child's achievement will sit in the long term. Children are NOT being labelled. We are completely committed to having all our students achieving at or above national standards in reading, writing and maths and we absolutely believe this can be achieved, but it will take time. Some children came to our school with significant gaps in their learning, particularly in maths. We have already made significant inroads into filling some of those gaps. All children who have been identified as not achieving where we would hope them to be, have had Individual Education Plans written for them focusing on their individual needs and will hopefully lead to accelerated learning so that they begin to catch up.
6. It is very important to realise that the "standard" for national standards is generally higher than the national norms we have been using to gauge achievement for the past many years. Realistically this means that some students who achieved at national norms in the past are now not meeting the National Standards. It also needs to be noted that we are not basing achievement just on one-off tests. We are basing students' achievement on whether they can "do" an achievement indicator consistently, most of the time, independently and across curriculum areas. One off tests such as STAR and PATs are being used for triangulation purposes - that is, they add to the story but they don't tell the story.
7. Another thing to note is that National Standards includes a much broader range of achievement indicators than  previous assessment. Whereas once it was enough to base reading assessment on a child's ability to decode words and comprehend what was being read, National Standards requires students to decode, comprehend, use what is read in a range of ways, make good decisions about what to read, understand the purpose of the text etc. Critical literacy skills are now to be assessed and inform the judgement made.
8. Finally, because National Standards do need to be interpreted, and there is no national moderation to ensure that the way standards are interpreted is the same across the country, schools everywhere are making their own interpretations and inevitably there will be disparities in the "standards" both between schools and possibly within schools in the way overall  teacher judgements are being made. It is really important to realise that one school's standards may well differ from another school's standards. Our teachers did a huge amount of moderation - working together to produce the reports and to check both the highlighting of matrices and the overall teacher judgements.

If there is anything here that is unclear, please do not hesitate to contact me. In the meantime, I hope this long post assists you to better understand our reporting process as well as some of the complexities of current reporting requirements in NZ.