January 2023
In this HSA Bulletin
In the Spotlight!
High School Articulation Audience Survey
2023-24 course submission period begins February 1
January webinar recording and slide deck
FAQ of the month
In the Spotlight!
We’re kicking off the new year with a feature on the Measuring Student Learning Project (MSLP), designed by Gil Compton and colleagues in the College and Career Readiness unit of the Riverside County Office of Education (COE). The original project came into being when Gil was a principal at a large high school and was tasked with increasing the school's A-G completion rate. He designed a transcript analysis protocol that is now part of the larger Measuring Student Learning Project.
For 11 years now, Gil has been working with transcript analysis. He and the team at Riverside COE have taken more than 50 schools from counties and districts across California through the transcript analysis exercise. Please keep reading to learn about the project's seven modules, its guiding philosophies and how to contact Gil if you wish to keep learning.
Tell us about the Measuring Student Learning Project’s inception, design and implementation.
I was in my third year as the principal of a 3,100-student comprehensive high school in California when the superintendent walked into my office. The school’s A-G completion rate was then below what we both believed our students could achieve, at 50.3 percent. When I asked him for guidance, he replied that the specifics of improving the school’s A-G completion rate were my responsibility, as the school’s principal. This reality check placed me on the path to improve school systems at a local level, both during my practice as a site administrator and beyond.
Early in strategizing how to tackle this aspect of school reform, I met with my school’s leadership group to inform them that we were going to learn with a team at the Riverside County Office of Education. That office provided high school-to-UC/CSU ‘A-G’ transcript analysis. A decade later, the work of applying this learning has culminated in the Measuring Student Learning Project (MSLP).
Describe the Measuring Student Learning Project and how it allows you to track and analyze A-G access and completion.
The MSLP project includes seven modules designed to diagnose the school systems that generate a high school’s A-G completion rate. Building a deep understanding of the complex system we call a school is the first step on the improvement journey. The MSLP facilitators build this understanding by examining the data the system generates, making sense of the data by turning it into information and creating knowledge using the information. This protocol is initiated by diagnosing the school system using seven project modules, or diagnostic activities, and analyzing each of the following:
- Grade distribution (transcript analysis)
- Teacher perceptions of grading
- Student perceptions of grading
- Course essential standards
- Course syllabi for essential standards
- Grade book structures
- Grading practices as evidenced in grade books
More information on these seven modules are detailed in the document Seven Modules of the Measuring Student Learning Project (MSLP).
Improving A-G completion rates is easier said than done. Schools are complex and the work involved can be overwhelming. To build the bandwidth to improve complicated systems, school leaders need to build our personal and collective abilities. The project is grounded in three areas of professional competency:
- Data Literacy — The ability to read, work with, analyze and communicate with data. This is the skill that empowers educators to ask the right questions of data, gather information and build knowledge to make decisions and communicate meaning to others.
- Systems Thinking — Systems Thinking is a way of helping a person or group to view systems from a broad perspective that includes seeing overall structures, patterns and cycles, rather than seeing only a specific individual or event. Systems thinking involves shifting our focus from individuals and symptoms to underlying problems. Systems are complex, and to improve them we must be persistent and curious.
- Improvement Science — Continuous improvement efforts generally involve some variation of the following iterative cycle of activities:
- Facilitating investigative processes to understand a problem and the system that produces it
- Focusing efforts to develop shared aims for improvement
- Generating or gathering ideas for change
- Iteratively testing changes at a small scale before eventually bringing them to full and reliable implementation
These professional competencies are framed by three dominant spheres of thought:
- Equity — Educational equity means that each child receives what they need to reach their full academic and social potential (National Equity Project). For the education system to cultivate equity in schools, it must ensure equally high outcomes for every participant in that system, removing the predictability of successes or failures that currently correlate with a student’s identity, whether racial, cultural, economic or any other social factor.
- Improvement — The intentional planning and implementation of change to improve how a school or school system functions, as measured by student achievement.
- Innovation — An innovative educational environment encourages all participants (teachers, administrators, students and parents/guardians) to explore, research and use every available tool to uncover something new. It involves a unique way of looking at problems and solving them.
When MSLP facilitators work with school and district teams, one of the first things we ask team members is: Which school of thought best describes you? Do you identify as an equity champion, an improvement worker-bee or an innovator-change agent? Our most successful teams have all three perspectives covered, the logic being that when all schools of thought are present, checks and balances strengthen a team’s ability to learn and solve problems together. Teams learning site-specific pathways to improvement is a fundamental component of improving systems. Diversity of thought insulates the team from “groupthink” and narrow perspectives (Smith, 2020). As MSLP facilitators, we take the time to model team discussion and teach the participants to practice the power of participation, not the power of persuasion.
The diagram below braids together the project’s professional competencies of data literacy, systems thinking, and improvement science with the schools of thought of equity, improvement, and innovation. The result is a mental model teams can use to learn together to improve.
What are some of the successes you’ve seen since implementing the Measuring Student Learning Project?
Case Study - Increasing Academic Success in High School Math
Often the school team identifies multiple areas of improvement, and the conversation shifts to identifying high-leverage areas that, once improved, cascade into other areas of need as well. For instance, after examining grade distribution for math courses, a team of math teachers identified the need to improve students’ success in the first semester of Algebra 1. The teachers examined how a lack of success in the first semester had an impact on all subsequent math classes. Students who failed the first semester were informed they would be repeating the full course. This, in turn, decreased students’ engagement and motivation in the second semester, which then resulted in poor performance and often poor behavior. The requirement to repeat the course was a school practice and not policy, but math teachers were still willing to go to the mat for it.
Of the 372 freshmen enrolled in Algebra 1, 92 earn F grades for the first semester. When the math team was asked to examine the distribution as a percentage, the majority of students who earned F grades were clustered between 47 percent and 59 percent. The team debated working with the students on the condition that if they earned a C grade or higher in the second semester, the teacher of record would submit a grade change to C for the first semester. Many resisted this proposal, but after examining UC/CSU validation rules and the wide variance in grade distribution among teachers and in grading practices, the teachers agreed to the “experiment.” Sixty of the 92 students earned a C grade and had their first-semester grades changed. That meant two more sections of Geometry the following year, two fewer sections of Algebra 1, and more students remaining on track to complete the A-G math requirements. A-G completion rates increased by 5 percent in subsequent years and were maintained during the pandemic, when many schools experienced declines.
What else would you like schools to know about this project if they are considering implementing something similar?
The Measuring Student Learning Project is grounded in the working theory of access plus success equals completion. Students must first have access to courses of rigor. Identifying barriers for individual students and student groups, school teams identify where inequities exist in the current system and diagnose to understand the source of the barrier. Is it policy, practice, messaging, expectations, prerequisites, the master schedule or something else? Once barriers are removed and access is increased, the focus shifts to student success. School teams quickly learn that when students who were historically excluded from courses of rigor gain access, an examination of current instructional strategies and supports follows.
The heaviest lift for school teams in the Measuring Student Learning Project is to recognize and accept that school systems generate students’ academic outcomes. It is easy to place the responsibility for academic success on the students and their families. However, this view lacks nuance and understanding of a complicated system. The MSLP engages school teams in a re-examination of the individual and collective responsibility of educational professionals and where the locus of control lies with respect to student learning. Through the MSLP modules, school teams examine key decisions and actions that directly bring to bear on student access to and success in courses. The systems students navigate within schools are established and upheld by educational professionals, and the teams learn how these systems favor particular student groups over others and identify entry points into the improvement process.
Schools and Districts interested in learning more are encouraged to contact Gil Compton at the Riverside County Office of Education College and Career Readiness Unit. Email: gcompton@rcoe.us | Office: (951) 249-8836 | Cell: (951) 595-2323
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