Rol Fessenden responded to issues relating to employee ranking and
school's as places to sort and select, or places for all to learn.
Rol then described his experiences on a sabbatical from his regular job to
work at the Dept of Education in Maine. The following is a snip from his
post:
**********snip*******
There was a lot of individual kid assessment, teacher assessment,
educational programs for teachers, extra-dimensional opportunities for
kids who wanted, school assessment, process assessment, and so forth. Not
nearly as much as we would have liked.
*********end-of- that snip and a new one*****
This effort was not about low expectations, but about high expectations.
Nor was it about sorting and selecting, only about education. On the
other hand, neither was it short on assessment. Virtually everything we
did, we attempted to assess and understand in terms of what it delivered
to the educational experience of the kids. As you can guess, some of it
was extremely difficult to assess, and we never came to a good resolution.
This effort could go on for another 25 years, and we would still only be
scratching the surface. The purpose of the assessment was, as it is in
business, to understand how to improve. Our over-riding goal was to have
each working group conduct its own assessments, and we provided standards,
expertise, and some guidance. We reported to the executive committee on
where we observed apparent opportunities. No one ever viewed this
assessment process as anything except helpful.
Therefore, I would argue that employee assessment is about high
expectations, the expectation that everyone can, and will, perform. It is
actually not about sorting and selecting so much as it is understanding
what is not working so we can all do a better job the next time. My
personal view is that if someone is failing, then a manager is failing
too. If a kid is failing, then a teacher or administrator, or the
materials, or the method, is failing, too. One cannot solve these
failures through intuition or witchcraft. One has to engage the mind,
think about the possible points of failure, then develop experiments to
test hypotheses.
******final end of snip*****
Rol, first of all, thanks for responding to the post. I appreciate your
commitment to doing the best and working with others and a willingness to
"get out in the educational field" to help us as we muck around.
Everything you described in the educational setting fits with my
experiences. I can really understand the power of assessment both as a
diagnostic tool for individual students as well as program evaluation.
The question I have. What is similar and what is different about
assessment in education and in the business world? My guess is that
educational assessment may be more sophisticated and widely used than in
the business world. What is your experience?
I look forward to your response.
David Wilkinson
School Improvement Specialist
Des Moines Public Schools (IA)
Davidwilk@aol.com
--Davidwilk <Davidwilk@aol.com>
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