wk2 assignment-project post mortem

When I started my first teaching job the district was already in the first stages of a multi-year initiative that focused on curriculum.  The overall goal was to update the current curriculum and create a better flow of what was taught at what grade levels.  This was a big undertaking involving all the teaching staff and was planned to take a few years to complete.  When I was hired as a high school social studies teacher the sequence of courses had been determined with objectives identified.  The next step was to create common assessments that each grade level teacher would use.  The idea behind creating common assessments was to make sure that all students, regardless of who taught them, were being assessed in a similar manner.  Our grade level divided the project into two parts, common project based assessments and quarterly exams as mandated by the school board.

This was ten years ago and I still use some of the materials my team developed, even though I no longer work for that district.  The project based assessments we developed were the big success of from the project.  As a rookie teacher I knew of project based assessment, but had never used them in a “live” setting.  Through collaboration with more experienced teachers I learned a lot about how to develop and use project based assessments.  I occasionally run into former students when I visit my hometown and often times they mention how they remember some of the projects we developed and implemented.  There was a lot of positive energy during the creation of the common projects as everybody shared, refined, and critiqued each others ideas.  It was a positive experience and an environment where professionals collaborated and shared materials they were enthusiastic about. 

The other part of the project, developing quarterly exams had more mixed results.  Although the group worked well together creating projects, there was less consensus on what a standardized test should include.  This was further complicated by the vague instructions from the board office to create a standardized test to measure student performance.  Right from the start there was a split between how much the test should be worth.  Half the group wanted to use the test for reporting only, but not for grades.  The other side wanted it to be weighted fairly heavy so students would take it seriously.  Other splits surrounded around how to prepare students for the test, types of questions, and the overall rigor.  Our group leader tried to get clarification from our department head and administration, but their responses were also vague about what they wanted.  One possible thing that might have helped our group would have been a SOW document that clearly defined what the board wanted (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008).  In the end tests were developed, but there was no standardization about how the tests were delivered or used for grades and the results of the tests varied widely between teachers.  Eventually the tests were dumped after three years when the school board stopped requiring reporting of the quarterly exams since our problems were not unique to our content area.

In conclusion, the team and the project worked well together on parts of the project that they understood and had enthusiasm for.  The quarterly exams requirements were unclear and there was a lot of resistance in the school as a whole to create standardized exams.  The lack of support by the teachers combined with less than clear expectations by the stakeholders resulted in materials being developed that were not effective in measuring what they were intended to measure.  Creating better guidelines and communicating them to the teachers building the exams might have resulted in a better outcome for the quarterly exams.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.