Lessons from A Treehouse

Ever since my first son was born 9 ½ years ago, I had a vision for building a treehouse in the tall pine standing in the back corner of our yard.  After loading up the van and filling the garage with supplies, I finally began working on it this past weekend.  Now that I have three sons, I figured this was the perfect time and the tree, being mature and relatively straight, would make the ideal foundation for the fort. 

As with all of the projects I do around the house, my three boys (4, 6, and 9) LOVE to “help” once I bust out the tools.  And, truth be told, they are actually getting pretty good.  The four year old can drill a killer straight hole, the 9 year old knows how to use the pneumatic nailer without putting a nail through my (or his) finger, and the 6 year old can easily identify whatever tool I am asking for and get it to me quickly.  Of course, they also love to take my scraps and build their own stuff, ask if we can play soccer while I am straining to hold up a beam, or turn my cordless drill into a blaster.  It is all part of the experience for them.  And for me.

This past Saturday was a particularly hot and humid day for working outside.  And heat, as well as improperly cut angles due to my horrible math skills, has a tendency to make me crabby.  So, when my oldest was derailing my mission with questions about what he wanted the fort to look like and do versus what my budget and skill set would allow, I began to run out of patience.  Yes, a two-story house with an observation deck, dumbwaiter, and windows in the roof would be awesome, but let’s be realistic, son.  Plus, I also have a thing about ingratitude.  Be a little thankful that you have a dad willing to spend his weekends busting his knuckles on a project for you in the first place, and try not to complain about what it is or is not.  Hey, I’m only human.

It was in the midst of these very defensive thoughts that it dawned on me: as leaders we often drive ahead towards our mission objectives without asking if those we are leading understand where we are pointed or even stopping to consider if they are interested in going along.  I mean, my boys knew I was building a treehouse, and in their minds that was awesome.  But, I did not take the time to explain to them exactly what it was going to look like or do.  I just expected them to love it and be grateful.  Plus, in the midst of my labor, I became too busy (and a little stressed) to pause and show them my vision for the final product.  I kept saying, “hey, trust me, I know what I am doing.”  But why should they trust me?  Shouldn’t I be asking them what they wanted?  It was for them after all and not me.

Our kids in our classrooms are the same as my sons.  They have vision, skills they want to put to use, ambition, desires, and the ability to communicate.  Too often we are driving ahead with the curriculum, the desire to get to a specific place in the text by a specific time in the year (I am so far behind!), our pet projects, the expectation of meeting a certain achievement or growth target, or getting a certain number of kids to hit a certain mark on a standardized test (that we won’t see the results of until the following fall at the earliest).  In the midst of this we fail to hear them and get their buy-in for where we are headed.  “Trust me, I know what I am doing.”  Ever utter that phrase as a teacher?  I know I have.

I stopped the building project last night.  I examined my 9 year-old’s sketches (he is a rather talented artist by the way).  All of his visions were doable.  They could be tied into the final project without breaking the budget or exceeding my skill set.  The treehouse will have a deck, a pulley system for hauling up “stuff”, and a hatch in the roof for pointing a telescope out of.  And I am excited to build it.  And they are more excited to help me.  What visions do your students have for your classroom?  Have you asked them?  I wonder if you would be as surprised as I was to find that they could be incorporated into where you are headed and that they won’t derail the curriculum or your growth projections.  In the process, you might just earn a bit more trust and get a little more buy-in.

Finding NWEA's Mean CGI and its Percentile for your Class

I have been asked by teachers how to find the average Conditional Growth Index for their class.  Although NWEA includes the median CGI for a particular class, many teachers are interested in mean instead of median.  Below are the steps for calculating this.  It might be useful for a teacher who is interested in comparing how her overall growth in between testing events compared with others like her:

1. Login to MAP.  Under “View Reports” click “MAP reports”
2. Under “Achievement Status and Growth” click on “Projection or Summary”
3. Select the term rostered and term tested as appropriate.  To run a fall to spring comparison (as my district does), choose the spring term for both
4. Select the class (or classes) for which you want to run the report
5. Select the appropriate “Growth Comparison Period”.  Again, my district is interested in fall to spring, so that is the one I select.
6. Under “Norms Reference Data” leave “2015 Norms Data” selected.  CGI is not included in reports run with 2011 Norms.
7. At the bottom of the screen, click the blue button “Create Spreadsheet” and then download and open the spreadsheet
8. If you have two or more separate test areas per class like my district does, you will have to separate the spreadsheet into multiple tabs to disaggregate the tests.  For instance, I only want to run the CGI on my class’s math scores, so I remove the reading scores from the spreadsheet.
9. Once I have separated the subjects, I apply the following formula:
1. Find the column labeled, “ConditionalGrowthIndex” - in my spreadsheet it was in column AL.  This column contains the individual student CGI scores
2. In the empty cell below the values in this column, place the following formula, “=AVERAGE(AL*:AL*) - in my spreadsheet the values were in cells AL2 through AL16 so it looked like this: “=AVERAGE(AL2:AL16)”
3. Once averaged, I found out that the mean CGI for the math scores in my class was 0.96, or .96 Standard Deviations away from the mean growth of similar kids.  Mean growth is represented as 0.
10. If I want to find out what percentile 0.96 is so that I can see how my overall growth compares to others, then I have to apply another formula to that figure.  The formula (which I place in the cell below the AVERAGE) for calculating the percentile is as follows: “=NORM.DIST(AL17,0,1,TRUE).  The values for this formula are explained below:
1. NORM.DIST allows you to find where the value for X (in our case 0.96) fits on the bell-shaped curve
2. X in my case applied cell A17, adjust your location for X as needed, but remember it should be the mean of your class CGI
3. According to NWEA, the mean for their CGI formula is 0, so use 0 as the second value in your NORM.DIST formula
4. The Standard Deviation NWEA uses for calculating CGI is 1, so use 1 for that value in the NORM.DIST formula
5. You want your CGI results to be cumulative, so use “TRUE” as the final value in the NORM.DIST formula
11. Applied correctly, this tells me that my class average of 0.96 CGI is in the 83%ile for overall growth compared to other teachers like me.

I know this is a lot of steps, but hopefully it provides a useful metric for looking at both individual student growth in your classroom and how your overall growth might compare to others like you.

Great Educators are Thorough

A few weeks ago I had to have a root canal done on my number 14 molar.  Apparently I have a pretty high pain tolerance, because when I went to the dentist complaining of some discomfort related to hot or cold beverages, he opened up the tooth exposing the root and exclaimed, “Wow!  This is pretty bad!”  That is something you never really want to hear your dentist say, by the way.  After letting the fluid drain for a bit, he prepped the tooth for the job.  For those of you who have never had a root canal, it involves exposing the nerve chambers within the tooth and then using a metal file (like the one shown below) to scrape out the infected/damaged nerve.  

One of the keys to a successful root canal is to ensure that all of the nerve has been removed, thereby eliminating the chance of future pain for the patient.  In order to ensure all of the nerve has been removed, the dentist will often take X-Rays of the tooth with the file in the nerve chamber so that he or she can see the contrast between the file and the tooth, allowing him or her to see the depth to which the nerve has been scraped and if any nerve material has been left behind.  Once the entirety of the nerve material has been successfully removed, the dentist fills the nerve canals of the tooth with an epoxy-like material and seals off the top of the tooth with a filling or crowns the tooth, protecting the worked-on area.

Due to some difficulties both with my tooth and with my dentist’s X-Ray machine, the procedure described above took a touch over two hours.  During that time, my two oldest sons were in the waiting room and I was praying they were not destroying it.  At the same time, I was grateful for his thoroughness.  For example, at one point he was having a difficult time getting an accurate picture of the depth of the file in my tooth.  He took several X-Rays, over and over telling the hygienist, “I want to see this more clearly.  If we have left anything behind, Pete is going to be in some pain and I don’t want that.”  At no point did he say, “Whatever.  I can’t get a good picture.  I’m sure it is good enough.”

Those dreaded words.  Good enough.  How often do we say those words regarding the education of the students entrusted to us?  What exactly is good enough anyway?  With my root canal, good enough was making sure no nerve material was mistakenly left behind.  With our students, is good enough making sure they pass?  Getting all of their homework turned in?  Completing the missing project?  Getting through our class?  Walking with their peers at promotion/graduation?  Growing by a certain metric on a standardized test?  

What if it was your tooth?  What if it was your child?  How would you define good enough then?  Do you have a measure by which you define success with each individual child?  If so, what is it and how do you know you have hit it?  If not, why not?  If it were your child, how would you want his or her teacher to answer that question?  Since every one of the students entrusted to us is someone’s child (and therefore perhaps their whole world), shouldn’t we all have an answer to that question?  And shouldn’t we be prepared to show evidence of what that measure is and where each child is according to that measure?  I am certainly glad my dentist knew what to look for.  My tooth is now pain free.  Great educators know what to look for with their students, too.

Brave Knights and Heroic Courage

C.S. Lewis (far and away my favorite author) wrote, “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

I am currently reading, The Tales of King Arthur to my three sons, ages 4, 6, and 9.  They love the book, the illustrations, and the conversations that follow after each section we read.  Invariably we dive into some version of the conversation that follows after we have finished reading for the evening: “So, who is your favorite knight?” or, “Who is the bravest knight?” or, “If you could be any of the knights at the round table, which would you be and why?”  And the answers come flying back at me, “Tristram because he is the most courageous.” or, “Gawain, because he defeated the Green Knight with honesty.” or “Lancelot, because he is awesome!” (they had not gotten to end of the book when that comment was made by the way).  My heart sings at their enthusiasm for the book and at their engagement with the characters.  It also sings because they have not yet grabbed broomsticks out of the garage and tried bike-jousting:

Another reason my heart sings at the reading of these style of books with my boys is because it inspires them to believe the world is magical, mystical, and capable of inspiring awe.  Occasionally while driving the boys somewhere I will steer the car with only my knee and tell them I am using the force to move the car from one lane to the next.  I raise my hands above the steering wheel, wrench up my face in mock-effort, make a Skywalker-like grunt and drift the car over a lane using only my knee (yes, I check my blindspots and mirrors first).  That “magical” act of the force is always met with hoots and hollers and cries of, “Dad, that is amazing!  Do it again.”  But, I typically feign exhaustion and say I have used up all of my force-energy for the day.  Then, they go on revelling in the mystery of force for the remainder of the ride home.  And I ride home with a self-satisfied smile hoping I have encouraged them to dream deeply about the mysterious powers of the world and hoping one day it will either help them to face a difficult challenge, or inspire them to create and write about their own mysterious world.

I sometimes wonder if we are robbing today’s school children of knights, mystery, the force, and heroic courage.  Are we too results focused to allow for this kind of “distraction” in our curriculum?  I hope not.  We are charged with brightening the destiny of the children entrusted to us.  Not just helping them achieve a certain desirable score on a test, or some other cruel enemy that the world will throw at them.

The Truth Comes Out in the Laundry

“The truth comes out in the laundry.”  That is a phrase my wife said to one of my sons this past weekend.  I won’t get too much into the details, but apparently there was evidence that he was wearing one particular item of clothing a bit more often than perhaps would be recommended.  Those of you who are parents of boys probably know exactly what I mean.  They pick favorites and those favorites get worn threadbare.  Not exactly what one would call hygienic, but typical nonetheless.

The phrase did not stick with me in relation to laundry, though.  It stuck with me in regards to student assessment.  I know assessment is nothing but a four letter word to some educators (think about it).  But, like with laundry, the truth often comes out with it.  I know exactly how easy it is to get in the mindset of, “I lived up to my responsibility of teaching them, now they have to live up to their responsibility of learning it.”  Yes, there is responsibility on both sides of teaching and learning.  At the same time, it is also true that some (and maybe many) will not have demonstrated mastery by the end of a particular unit of study.  How will we know?  The four driving questions of a PLC are helpful here: what do our students need to know and/or be able to do?  How will we know when they have learned it?  How will we respond when they haven’t learned it?  How will we respond when they have?

Like my wife’s comment to my son about his laundry, quality assessments are grounded in feedback.  And that feedback is driven by assessment.  “Son, let’s talk about how often we should change our…”  To our students after an assessment it might be, “Isabella, let me watch you write this number in expanded form so I can see your thought process.”  Or, “Abby, let’s read this paragraph together and discuss its meaning and relationship to the main idea before we write about it.”  Consider the many ways we can do this below:

A balanced assessment system is grounded in feedback. #lccrc pic.twitter.com/zz1iRpaSOf

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 14, 2016

The truth comes out in the laundry.  And not all laundry (when speaking of student assessment laundry) has to be summative.  As a matter of fact, most of it shouldn’t be.  But, we can’t know there is a problem unless we are actually doing the laundry along the way.

Great Educators Celebrate

I recently had the privilege of traveling to Katy, TX for the What Great Educators Do Differently conference.  What a fabulous experience!  Not only did I have the chance to learn and grow with some of the best in the education field, but I also had the chance to interact with many fine people from Katy and around the world.

All weekend, attendees were challenged to think about their current practice and ask themselves (and each other) if what they were doing was simply good enough, or truly great.  

We were asked to overcome our fear of taking risks for the sake of inspiring our students:

If we are afraid to take risks, what kind of culture does that create with our students? @RafranzDavis #WGEDD pic.twitter.com/coD0SgJs0w

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 9, 2016

We were asked to challenge our grading practices:

Boy, do I remember doing that @pernilleripp #WGEDD pic.twitter.com/aJbQrKA3Xo

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 9, 2016

Our homework practices:

Examine homework practices and time spent talking in class instead of allowing Ss to work @pernilleripp #WGEDD pic.twitter.com/dMoenctXqm

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 9, 2016

We were asked to challenge that which we were calling true innovation:

Missed @Great_Educators in TX? Link to 1000+ image photo walk :) https://t.co/DpYbHGnOGl #katyisd #txeduchat #leadupchat #leadupkaty #wgedd

— c64KID INNOVATIONS (@c64kid) April 12, 2016

We were asked to tell our story (or risk someone else telling it for us):

In the absence of knowledge people make up their own @Joesanfelippofc #WGEDD pic.twitter.com/YipZ8fKjxj

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 9, 2016

And we were asked to seek forgiveness from our students others when we blow it in the above categories (or others):

If you ever mess it up when dealing with a kid go and ask for forgiveness. And be sincere about it @casas_jimmy #WGEDD

— Pete Helfers (@petehelfers) April 8, 2016

And that is just a small snapshot of a very small number of the highlights!  We also edcamped, collaborated, and challenged ourselves and others to think differently, act differently, and lead differently for the sake of students, teachers, administrators, and communities.  To say it was inspirational seems like an incredible understatement.

To continue to the learning, collaborating, and growing, I want to throw one more thought into the pool related to what great educators do differently than average, so so, or even good educators. Great educators celebrate.  This thought came to me on the plane ride home from Houston.  I settled into my seat, put my earbuds in, and was ready to checkout for the flight home.  However, because I was sitting close to the front galley, the movements of the flight attendants caught my eye around 30 minutes into the flight.  They were reaching for their phones, peering out the window, and taking pictures of the rather beautiful sunset.  It struck me that neither of the two flight attendants doing this looked like this was their first flight.  I would guess that they were both veterans by their composure and the way they conducted themselves on the job.  Surely this wasn’t the first sunset they had seen from 30,000 feet.  Why the pictures?  I think it is because it is in the nature of some of us to want to celebrate that which is beautiful.  It was a beautiful sunset after all, but one might think that flight attendants of all people would think such a sight as ordinary and that their treatment of it would also be ordinary.  I could almost picture the conversation: “Hey Sophie, did you see that sunset?”  “Yeah, I saw it.  Nice, but not as nice as yesterday’s” and off with the beverage cart Sophie would go.  But that is not how it went down.  They both stopped to marvel and to photo it before getting back to their work.

Average educators see spectacular things in students every day.  Many of them think things like, “Yeah, nice project, but you should have seen Susie’s last year.”  Great educators stop to celebrate all that is beautiful, marvelous, or spectacular in their classrooms every time they see it and then continue on with their work of helping every other child do their most beautiful, marvelous, or spectacular work.  And then go on celebrating that, too.

Comparing Whole Numbers

Earlier I wrote about using NWEA’s Conditional Growth Index as a way of measuring growth in a school district.  One of the reasons this is a good mathematical way to look at data is because it compares whole numbers that are less likely to be greatly affected by future norms changes.  I will use two examples from our own data to explain.

In the first sample containing real data from our school district, Column AQ indicates whether a student met “typical” growth as projected by NWEA.  Column AR indicates students’ Conditional Growth Index from the measurement period.  Note that in two of the instances a “yes” counts as exactly 0, meaning the projected and observed for both of these students was exactly the mean (0 CGI and 50th %ile).  Also note that for two students, their “no” counted for a positive 0.01 CGI and their growth was actually in the 51st percentile.  What this means is that, although the students grew less than projected, their peers with the same starting RIT and similar instructional days in between the measurement periods (tests) grew even less than what was projected.  So, in these cases a missed projected score counts as a positive value when looking at the CGI scores because the students actually grew more than the mean of the “pool” of their like peers.

In another real example from our data, two students had the same exact projected growth of 8 and the same exact observed growth of 8.  Yet, one student’s CGI counts as a negative value (-0.08) while the other’s counts as a positive value (0.07).  Why might this be?  

Let’s start with what exactly is being considered when stating what is “typical” and comparing it with what is “observed”.  When making a projection of what “typical” growth is, NWEA simply takes a student’s starting RIT, starting grade level, and number of instructional days in between measurement periods and puts all of those scores into a pool.  In order to make a projection they use past examples and say, “students who began this grade with this starting RIT in the past and had this many instructional days in between exams in the past experienced this much growth on average in the past.”  They then use that information to make projections of what might be typical of similar students in the future.

When calculating observed growth they simply subtract the starting RIT from the ending RIT and the difference is what is called “observed”.  However, with CGI they are calculating the observed as compared with the same pool of students as described above.  The ones in the same grade, with the same RIT, and a similar number of instructional days between measurements.  The result?  In the first instance where the projected and observed both equal 8, but the CGI is negative, what it means is that the “pool” grew more than projected at the beginning of the measurement period.  In this case, an observed of 8 is actually -0.08 of a standard deviation below the mean growth of this pool.  In other words, most kids in the pool grew more than the projected of 8.  The mean growth was a bit closer to 9, so this student did not observe as much growth as the mean.  In the second instance where a projected of 8 and an observed of 8 results in a positive CGI of 0.07, the pool actually grew less than what was projected so that “meeting” what was projected results in the growth being 0.07 of a standard deviation above the mean growth of the “pool”.

I hope this clarifies why one would see these types of values in their data and how to use it.  Comparing whole numbers when measuring growth makes sense.  And the CGI allows us to do what makes sense with the data.

Calculating District CGI for an Overall View of Growth on the MAP Test

NWEA now publishes a Conditional Growth Index score and percentile as part of their suite of reports for districts administering their assessments.  The score allows for comparing student growth across RIT and grade levels so scores are more easily “pooled” together.  The reports do not, however, contain a district level CGI (individual and grade level are standard).

If you would like to calculate the overall CGI for your district, follow the steps below:

1. Download the “Combined Data File” from the Data Export Scheduler in MARC.  If you do not have this option, see your MAP administrator.
2. Sort the resulting .csv file to separate the tests.  Our district administers math and reading, so I end up with two tabs in my spreadsheet, one for each subject.
3. Find the column that indicates the growth period you are observing.  For my most recent data, I was interested in the Fall to Winter growth period so the column I was in search of was titled, “FallToWinterConditionalGrowthIndex”
4. Apply the following formula to the range of cells under that column heading, “=AVERAGE(*:*)”  Mine appeared as follows: =AVERAGE(V2:V1809)
5. Apply the following formula to the cell cell where the average CGI is displayed, “=NORM.DIST(V1810,0,1,TRUE)” V1810 is where the average CGI was displayed, 0 is the mean, 1 is the standard deviation, “True” ensures the formula returns the cumulative distribution function.
6. The above formulas result in the ability to see the percentile of the district’s combined CGI according to normal distribution.

Why might this be useful?  It may offer a different picture of growth health for a district rather than simply adding up “yeses and nos” on an Achievement Status and Growth Report.  It may.  The reason being that in a traditional counting of yeses and nos method, a district may not get the complete picture of all growth.  For instance if we were to average all of the yeses as “1s” and nos as “0s”, then there is no credit for “close” or “knocking it out of the park”.  In looking at CGI, some of your students may have experienced 4 standard deviations above typical growth and there “yes” now counts as 4 instead of 1.  Similarly, another student may have missed their growth target by 1 RIT point and now their “no” may only count for a “-0.01”.  The result?  What might be a more balanced look at overall growth in a school district.

The image below demonstrates our district’s most recent growth results as calculated by the formulas (and others) described above. Hope it helps.