001and i'm starting the webinar so we'll wait for all of these items to sync the webinar is live our youtube feed is live dr g the meeting is yours okay i would like to call to order the august 17th eci committee meeting we will begin with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay can i have a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting salute second all in favor aye motion approved do we have anyone for public comment uh there is one person in the room and the hand is raised okay let me read the uh public con comment statement tonight's meeting is our
002regularly scheduled committee meeting in order to meet the requirement of pennsylvania's sunshine law it is necessary to report the names of all citizens who speak to the committee during the meeting to assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the committee state their name and municipality members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to no more than three minutes this limit will permit time for all those who wish to speak to the committee whenever members of the audience succeed this time limit the committee chair they ask the individual to yield to the next kind and with that we can have our first speaker dr g the um audience of citizens is at the end of the meeting um that's right but you read the statement now
003so you're good so i'm good thank you very much you're welcome thank you dr bauer for catching up i went i went to the agenda quick to double check i'm like oh i missed that no i i was at the agenda and did not see it and um i apologize yeah and then the hands raised um so we obviously will have a public comment at the end so we'll go to that um as soon as we're ready at the end after our presentations you let me off for one month and i forget the routine so but thank you so that means we're going to move to the agenda so first item on our agenda is student travel um just who is presenting the student travel dr bauer i certainly can [Music] no problem um so
004the first item here being student travel is a trip for our north penn high school cheerleaders and two advisors and five adult chaperones to attend the cheerleading skills camp in beach lake pennsylvania august 19th that is on friday so if approved tonight it would go before the board for action tomorrow the cost for the district is simply the transportation all other costs are subsidized by the students their families and their booster club so uh asking for a motion to uh move this trip to action on tomorrow night's action agenda so moved second all in favor oh any discussion okay all in favor aye okay motion passes good luck to our cheerleaders i hope they have a great time at the camp and they i was a cheerleader so i hope they have a great time
005and they learn new skills um so our next thing on our agenda is assessment uh dr hart and mr nicholson yep so before they start good evening um for dci committee um it's uh i can't believe we're in august and we're getting ready to go back to school already but i hope everyone had a really wonderful relaxing summer i was also a cheerleader dr g um at any rate i just wanted to um uh kind of before uh dr hart and mr nicholson present just kind of shared that the last time we were together we actually um talked about homework and some changes to the admin reg and so anytime you talk about curriculum and instruction you naturally uh leads to assessment so tonight um we're going to have the presentation um by dr hart
006our director of curriculum and equity and our second i our um hold on administrator of secondary education and renovation mr nicholson and they are going to particularly focus on uh the high school assessment where we've been and where we're headed um and so i'm going to turn it over to you dr hart i think you're going to open us up thank you very much um bob do you have the slides oh there we are great so um it is really a pleasure to be here with all of you this afternoon um and as dr waters said we're going to spend some time talking about assessment um and i'm delighted to have an opportunity to do that uh with pete nicholson today first time in eci in this particular role as you all know assessment is
007an integral part of the teaching and learning process it is the opportunity for us us to get a very good sense of what children already know as well as the degree to which they have understood mastered and even really synthesized and been able to make sense of content or skills that are being taught in during the school day we spend a lot of time both formally and informally engaged in conversation about assessment and so i want even though we're going to have this broad narrow focus um on the high school and some aspects of assessment at the high school i would be remiss if i did not take this opportunity to say that assessment is something that we're always engaged in conversations from k all the way up um through twelfth grade uh two of
008the areas that we've been focusing on primarily in the area of math because we have new resources in the elementary school we are now having some new math resources in the middle school as well and the idea and the focus of what does assessment look like the degrees in which students really are able to demonstrate their understanding in a multitude of ways was an integral part of that process as well um and so um kind of with that broad stroke i want to kind of provide a little bit of a frame of the way in which we're going to organize our presentation this evening we really think of this in two buckets the first is all of the structure and the framework around assessment when are assessments given how often are they given the continuity
009and consistency among teachers teaching a particular particular course or grade level while those are aspects that are really important when we talk about assessment it's not necessarily related to what the actual assessment is but we do think that those are really important um topics of conversation as we think about equity and making sure that the ways in which we structure our assessment schedules really do meet the wide range of needs of our students and so pete nicholson's going to focus on those areas and when he's finished i'm going to kind of take over and talk a little bit more about assessment but particularly authentic assessment it's definitely been an area of conversation for quite some time authentic assessment project-based learning are integral part in many aspects of our instructional program but we definitely recognize that
010it's not as consistent as we want for it to be and so we want to use this opportunity to talk a little bit about as dr waters said kind of where we've been highlight some areas where authentic assessments really taking place and then share the timeline of the work that we want to be engaged in one of the things i also want to say before we jump into the formal presentation um is that we do want to it's an interesting time to have this presentation because teachers will just be coming back um and we think about looking at continuity and consistency across content areas and courses teachers play and our department chairs play a really important role in those conversations we have a lot of expertise among our staff members we want to be able
011to leverage that there's some really amazing things that are already happening we want to be able to build on that as well um and we recognize that we cannot do that in a vacuum um so you'll see the timeline and i want to kind of provide the kind of the why uh we've kind of organized the timeline in the way that we have so having provided that frame i'm going to turn it over to mr nicholson to talk a little bit about our goals and some of the structural pieces around assessment all right thank you dr hart thank you dr waters and thanks to the committee for having us present this evening um i'm not going to go back through with dr hart just so uh you know put so well for all of us
012but i want to jump in here a little bit and talk about the goals for this year some expectations that we're going to start with for the year and then some things that we're going to explore throughout the year and really as dr hart said as teachers come back uh starting tomorrow with our district wide database with our data retreat and really looking at assessment and looking at consistency so some of the goals as she's she's so uh nicely put is consistency related to assessment across the the different course of like groups and just consistency overall with the assessments that we're giving specifically tonight at the high school but overarching uh throughout the district we talked about aligning assessment and the goal of reflecting the goals and parameters of the homework administrative reg so we
013just heard about the admin reg earlier this evening it was talked about and you went over it in july so realistically the piece of that that really frames this is the idea that at the secondary level no more than 10 percent of a student's grade should be comprised of homework so that kind of frames the discussion of overall grading assessment and what should comprise a student's grade in a particular course and then finally the goal as dr hart will speak a little bit more about is enhancing and increasing students authentic assessment experience so not just taking paper and pencil tests not just taking true false multiple choice essay formats of assessments but really making sure that we are measuring what students know and what they can do in authentic ways um project project-based learning and
014some non-formal assessment ways that will lead to students showing success and their learning in other forms and formats mr gilmer so i said that part of this are kind of the expectations and the ideas that we're starting the school year with again starting with data retreat tomorrow at the secondary level the first one is ensuring that grading criteria are are made very very clear from day one with students and with families there should be no surprises in what comprises a student's grade it shouldn't be at the end of the school year where we find out that you know something was worth x percent of a grade or that this assessment or that project really drug a student's grade down or really help the student to buffer their grade when they really didn't know or couldn't
015do what was asked of them so making sure that there are no surprises and we're very upfront with what will comprise the grade and what we expect students to know and do as the school year progresses another expectation is looking at our holidays looking at the district calendar and really coming up with days and dates that we should not be assessing students so we shouldn't be assessing students obviously on some of the holidays where we don't have school but we also shouldn't be necessarily assessing students the day after um a longer term break so we we had that and we communicated that last year if many of you remember around some of the breaks the spring break the winter break and some other religious holidays but we're working now a little bit more concerted way
016with technology to make sure that teachers aren't even allowed to put it in their grade book for certain dates those assessments around some of these holidays so working through that and then finally establishing a time frame between the presentation of new content and assessment so when i talk about this we don't want a teacher delivering new content today on wednesday and then assessing that content tomorrow without any kind of practice any kind of feedback on what the student can do or what they know about that new content and really making sure that we are giving ample time for students to practice for students to take in what they learned and be able to provide some feedback to the teacher whether they know that information or not prior to being assessed on that new information mr
017gilmer and then other things we want to explore throughout the year and this really i spoke a little bit earlier and dr hart did as well about consistency this slide is all about that we really want to enhance and increase consistency across the board with assessment uh first of all consistency with a teacher across the marking period or across the the gradebook and the pieces that fall into the final grade we shouldn't have um you know three assessments in the first marking period one assessment in the second marking period eight assessments in the third marking period and so on and so forth we really want to have some consistency in what comprises a gradebook and what students are graded on throughout the year obviously there are some different pieces and portions and some things that
018we will um you know uncover and work with our department chairs and with our data teams to to work through there but really making sure that there is some consistency not just across teachers but even with the teacher across the marking periods looking at course alike standardized grade books so we want to make sure that there is consistency in what comprises a student's grade and let's say biology honors no matter who that teacher is at the high school whether it be teacher a or teacher b there should be consistency in what's being asked of the student and really what is being seen in infant and campus that plays into the student's grade it shouldn't fall upon which teacher you get to really determine what you're being assessed on or what you're being asked to know
019and do as a student so making sure not necessarily that between different courses because there's so many little idiosyncrasies um you know between a math course a science course an art course but ensuring that if students have the same course they're getting the same experience variation in types of assessments and dr hart's going to talk about authentic assessments and some second chance learning in just a few minutes so i won't dive deep into that um but it goes back to what i had said earlier we're not just taking multiple choice uh assessments we're not just taking fa assessments we're doing things that are a little bit more authentic and making sure we're varying the types and ways that students can show their proficiency in the coursework consistency of weight of assignments across features again making
020sure that you know if we have a large assignment or a large project from one teacher it's similar with the other teacher and that the experience between the two is similar between students consistent practice and strategies for supporting students really how we're going to make sure and this will play in on the next slide with some second chance learning how we're supporting students that might be struggling or even how we're supporting students that need to uh maybe be pushed a little bit more because they can do better and they can they can have some additional um you know additional work that they're able to do that can progress their learning even further and then finally consistent review of student performance to look at trends really looking at the data sitting down when we have consistency
021when we have all these things in place sitting down on a constant basis with our data teams with our course like teachers with our content teachers to make sure that we are looking and monitoring and addressing some trends we're maybe seeing where students may be having a challenge with this concept here and how teachers across that content are going to address some of those issues or students are really knocking out of the park in this teacher's course with this content what can the other teachers of that course glean from the teacher to make sure that students are getting that experience and really growing and learning in the same way that that their peers are and with that i believe i'm going to hand it back to dr hart all right great thank you so much
022uh so one of the things um that um mr nicholson talked a little bit about was this notion of second chance learning um and this ties into some of the structural pieces regarding the time between when um content is presented and assessed and then how often we kind of kind of move on to new assessment new content as well in my role we spend a lot of time being very focused on the realization that children learn and in different ways they also learn um some a little bit quicker some need a little bit more time and it's really important for us as we're thinking about assessment calendars um and assessment opportunities that if children have a second chance to be able to really master or learn information just because we teach information and we test
023if we find that children don't really understand it it really is on our it's really our responsibility to kind of take a pause see what has not been you know learned how can we do things a little bit differently to ensure that the students really do master understand um and are able to really transfer some of the skills and knowledge that we're teaching into other situations and so you can see on this slide one of our goals is to make sure that second chance learning is integrated um into our practices so that it is an integral part of what kids know that they have opportunities to like try it again i think there are sometimes there are conversations but we give kids a second chance they won't really pay attention the first time um the
024research doesn't really you know um really um show that as well right if i need a little extra time we want to be able to provide that as well and so we want to make sure that that's an integral part of kind of what we're doing uh we have had an opportunity um as a curriculum team to be able to review guidelines of some of our neighboring districts um and the guidelines are things that we feel like are really nice fit um from some of the um the philosophical perspective and the conversations that we're having around um assessment and homework and we want to kind of use that as a foundation for the work that we're going to be engaged in next slide um so as we talk about this notion of authentic assessment um
025as mr nicholson said you know we can have kids write essays we can do multiple choice we can have fill in the blanks we can do true and false but at the end of the day we teach skills and concepts so they're able to transfer those experiences into real life opportunities no one gets together on a friday night and goes hey five times five right we use it to solve things in our lives um and so we recognize that as i said earlier um we definitely have wonderful examples of authentic assessment being implemented in a number of our um classrooms across the high school but we recognize that we want for that to be more i'm consistent so i want to take a little bit of time to kind of walk through this timeline with
026you and kind of let you know where we've been where we are and where we're going um so in may um one the may professional development session spent time on the high school team spent a lot of time really identifying exemplars and really celebrating staff successes um i think um sarah radekin played an important role i think in that um conversation along with pete nicholson just really having people recognize the work that's already taking place and learning from one another and really setting a foundation for where we want to be going um this summer i think for the first time uh we've had work together wednesdays where our entire admin team got together to focus on a variety of topics um in preparation for the upcoming school year and one of the a couple of
027those work together wednesdays the admin team really did focus on goals and what are our goals from an instructional perspective as we look at our data think about what we want for kids uh to be able to do in those um as we kind of move into the following year and how do we leverage some of our current best practices to make sure that we're able to reach those goals um and so that would be really rich i think really powerful conversations um i think this idea very often of kind of saying you know how can we build on what is already here we've already begun um this month in august and we'll continue some of the work in september i'm really setting the stage um to really have an authentic assessment kind of take
028off um our curriculum team has been reviewing templates uh for best practices um we've done a fair amount of research i'm hanover's done a really nice template that really kind of talks about this is kind of um if we're kind of shifting to authentic assessment here are some exemplars here are ways to kind of take things that we may be doing um and really being able um to enhance them so they're more reflective of the tenets of project based learning or authentic assessment uh we've begun to share some of that information with department chairs and teams and we'll really take a much deeper dive as we're moving into um the fall uh we've allocated time in our august um professional development days uh to really begin that conversation so that teachers are you know starting
029the year with this lens as they think about assessment moving forward uh we have allocated our time in november there are two days two of our professional development days um in november where we have um their secondary folks having pd while our elementary teachers are engaged in conferences and this will be time where teams will collaborate um and develop assessments refine some of the logistical considerations that pete nicholson talked about a little while ago as well our ultimate goal is really to implement authentic assessment in each of the courses by the end of the year and we recognize and i think i talked a little bit about this in the very beginning that while we put some things in place right we make the best decisions with the information we have we recognize that it's
030really important that we have professional development feedback practice as we're moving through the spring as well we want to make sure that when teachers have taken a risk to try something a little bit different if it hasn't gone exactly as they anticipated how can we give feedback how can we provide opportunities and plc's um to be able to reflect on what has worked what are some things that we want to refine and get better at so that we know that those experiences for students are as rich as possible um while we recognize them that there is work to be done there are some really amazing things that are already taking place and i won't be able to highlight everything but i did want to kind of to showcase a couple of things um particularly and
031though we're talking about math but i did highlight i think in the very beginning um with the new um math resource in our middle schools um there's a tremendous amount of focus on student and teacher collaboration um the opportunity to reassess skills give kids opportunities if they haven't been able to master something the first time to kind of give it a world again and a lot of student choice um as well embedded within that resource are lots of opportunities for a student to really be able to engage in project based activities that really do give kids an opportunity to take those skills and strategies that are being taught and really be able to apply them in realistic and authentic situations um social studies department lots of opportunities between mock trials um the idea of to
032change project that happens in world history and kids have an opportunity to create infographic in american history sorry about that um as well um within social within science there's always opportunities around labs um and some of our other um classes around business and technology that idea of authentic assessment is an integral part of those um courses already um and so we want to kind of be able to highlight that um celebrate it and then also kind of make sure um that we can take some of the tenants and share it um across some of the other content areas as well so some next steps i said this in the very beginning so i'll kind of wrap up with it um as well we recognize there's a tremendous amount of expertise um among and between our
033staff members um and so we do want to um we've started to but want to really make sure we have nice big robust committees uh with department chairs and teachers to really explore lots of the topics that we've talked about tonight related to assessment um in the four big areas and you can see those there are really some logistical considerations to make sure that we're really much more consistent i'm in the structures um that we use around assessment we want to be able to kind of take a deeper dive so people really understand what we mean by authentic assessment what project-based learning really is second chance learning how do we really incorporate that in and really be able to um have a very good sense of that we recognize it does not happen by chance
034uh that we have to be really intentional in allocating time for the discourse allocating time for research allocating time for teachers to really develop um assessments that really do fall within the attendance of what we're hoping for um and so you can see here on the slide that we have a number of professional development sessions that are set up beginning in november and then throughout the year uh to be able to get the ball rolling and then um in the fall in preparation for january but to also have times of february and may where people have an opportunity to kind of come back and say where are we how has it gone what has worked what has not uh we wanted for children to our students to be able to do this and demonstrate this
035have we done it to the degree that we've wanted them to um there might be some unintended um ahas that we'll be able to share as well so it's really important i think from our lens um that there's a lot of robust conversation and then we can be really supportive as people are making this transition and i think that is the end of our presentation uh and we'll be very happy to entertain any comments or questions that anyone has um i'll start off um so um relative to the timeline um in your last slide we talked about next steps um i know you talked about meeting you know the time throughout the year to really be able to focus on um the authentic assessments and the conversations that need to happen around that um project-based
036learning what are the things from i don't know maybe it's slide two or three that you see as immediate that can just be kind of guidance for teachers to start off the year with if i'm a parent or a student what can i see that's different um from last year to this year that could that are more immediate that does not necessarily take a year-long conversation um what what are the things on that slide that you see as more immediate that are more you know the department chairs are going to kind of just articulate this is where we're this is the guidance as it relates to assessment and that aligns also with our homework policy which of those things and maybe you could pull up the slide so we can look look at that so
037just as you're referring bob can you put back up the slide mm-hmm so sorry i don't know if you i don't know if you want to jump in you know that a little bit best i think we try to and i'll start the conversation then i'll pass the torch i think uh go back a little bit more i think it says the beginning of the year go back go okay there you go so i think the way that um the items that are on this slide are that we're starting the year with this right like automatically beginning the year um we don't necessarily need to have lots of conversations about these right um they're best practices um i think that it's really about being more intentional not that these things aren't happening but the idea
038that we're really clear and very intentional um would you agree with that pete i don't want to speak out of turn yeah no absolutely i think that this is a clear area that we need to grow in and we need to grow in to begin the school year is making sure that as i said that students families really know how their students are being graded what the the expectations are that there will be no assessments you know right after new presentation of new material and i think also if you go back to the the second slide the you know the consistent uh i guess communication of the homework admin reg and the fact that homework is not going to be worth more than 10 and as part of the homework reg the amount of time
039that students should expect to be working on homework i know that was a big piece of that homework uh admin reg meeting committee i think we met about 10 times there's a large group but you all know but just to reiterate uh you know i think these are the big takeaways that you should see this year that parents will see this year that we're hoping that you see less homework for in many cases for students to help balance that's that work or school life balance um and the many facets of of mental health and stress that our students are dealing with i also think you'll see more consistency related to teachers being explicit about when assessments are what types of assessments will happen and exactly how students will be graded in their courses so can
040i expect that an infinite campus um there will be a like loaded teachers will have the ability to load the assignments so that as a parent i can see okay my child has is taking you know english 101 and here are the assignments that make up their grade or is there a syllabus or the um like how will i know as a parent specifically what makes up their grade not just 10 as homework is test because that's not the same telling me 50 is test is not the same as saying to me here are the things that are going to be great at this marking period where do i find this if i'm if i'm a parent and as a teacher where do i put that right like i'm speaking for both if i'm a
041teacher where to where am i loading that and if i'm a parent where do i look for that sure and i think i i believe it's more the the latter than the former i don't believe well i think we have room to grow there and maybe we're there eventually where you will you'll be able to open on day one and see all of the grades that will make up the first marking period i think right now we're looking more to look to the grading policies that have have been traditional and trying to make them more robust at the high school level um to include more of these pieces in there like i said i love when this work is done and as this work is being completed where we're working through this consistency where we
042have some you know again i think they use biology honors if we look at bio honors where we know that these are the pieces these are the takeaways that students are going to be graded on in the first market period for all bio honors that eventually can we get to that place i think absolutely for now for day one this year i think uh you know with teachers just coming back this coming weekend and the work we have to get done i don't believe that's logical for this year but i do believe we can help and we can work on um ensuring that the grading policies are a little bit more robust and include more of that information for for folks yeah actually it's kind of follow up on that one of the things that
043i don't see on the list that i think could be added is this the second chance learning i don't know that that's necessarily something that has to wait um i understand that there are those who are reluctant to do it um as you said you know some articulating the idea that you know they don't pay attention the first time they get a second chance there may be a lot of reasons why they don't pay attention the first time if that is the case you know it could be family troubles at home it could be work it could be illness it could be they just didn't pay attention the first time you know if the objective of these classes is for students to learn the content then if they do very poorly on an assessment a
044second opportunity simply gives them a better opportunity a second chance to review that content hone in on the areas where they did poorly and relearn the content um to me it's very logical step um so i would hope that that's something else that we could consider doing um early on uh because i think that's more of a um cultural shift more than anything um you know not necessarily something that would require you know a lot of planning or professional development and i say that and i want to be very clear about this that i do think we need to strike a balance here right we talked a lot about consistency and i do want to make sure that it's understood that those of us that are on this committee those of us on the board
045respect the agency of teachers and and their expertise right we don't necessarily say that every assessment needs to be the same that all of the projects that are being done necessarily have to be the same just that there is consistency among what is being evaluated right in relation to that that grade because it is problematic when you have the same course and and and students are talking about oh you got that teacher versus oh you got that teacher right like that's that's not a sign of i think um a best practice environment right so we want to make sure that that when we're doing this we are respecting the ability of teachers to still you know have control over you know what is happening in the room um but still not be so divergent from
046their colleagues that um you have teachers that you have situations where people are are less inclined or more inclined to take one section over another um what else can i say here uh um yeah i mean what we're talking about here in terms of this plan i've heard the term consistency a lot it's consistency it's relevance right like if i as a professional or any professional were exclusively evaluated in our ability to memorize content and then show our ability the next day to produce that content that we've memorized without using resources without any other mode of um delivery in terms of our ability to to demonstrate proficiency we'd probably be considered derelict right i mean certainly we expect professionals to use tools around them to do their job better why we don't ever expect that
047of students in any realm is you know a practice from the beginning of time when public education was was new and it's another one of these things that i just think that we do because it's always been done that way and i think that we are now with this initiative starting to move toward um a newer more relevant model of learning you know and then like i said the third component there consistency relevance and simply persistence toward proficiency right if you didn't get it the first time what is the harm in giving somebody a second opportunity to look at it and take another chance um that's my personal feeling on it but i do believe that that these are important um these are important strategies that are going to make education not more not just
048more relevant but it will stick with them longer right there's too many times students will memorize cram information take the assessment and then a week later if you ask them even the same assessment they'd probably not do nearly as well they might get 10 points worse because it was in their short-term memory and it's been used and now they've moved on from it um to be able to connect it to something authentic um actual action-based uh implementing the learning into a project that's where the real learning takes place that's where learning takes place in anywhere so i think that this is a step certainly in a direction that's going to make north penn a stronger school district and institution for learning that's great feedback i appreciate that a lot thank you um i i guess
049i would and i would i completely agree about the second transformation i'd like to see that earlier in the year i don't think that we need to talk about things um for an entire year in order to i think there are things that we do need to talk about like authentic assessment that takes a lot of planning project-based learning i also want to push just a little bit on the concept of telling being able to articulate to students what is going what specifically is going to make up your grade because if we're preparing students to go into college i have a college student now she gets a syllabus she can see clearly what her grade is going to be made up of these are going to be the assignments and here's when they're going to
050do i understand that we're trying to get to a place of consistency um and what is that saying about not letting good be the enemy of great or something maybe it's flipped creepy but the point being that um maybe this year is a phase in here where we're just saying to teachers listen we want you to at least have an infinite campus what you're going to be creating from the beginning of the marketing period so that families know and and so that families students who need a little more support from their families can provide that as well maybe it's not as consistent as we would like it to be this year right so maybe that part isn't there but maybe at least the practice of starting to put some of that in maybe it's not
051an infinite campus maybe it's communicated in some way um so that students know this is how many assignments i even have in order to that's going to make up my grade um i think that something we should be teaching our students because that's what it looks like when you go to college um or even go out into the work world you know what kind of your uh projects are that you have to do that your boss is expecting you to complete um so i would like to kind of push a little bit on the idea that along with second chance learning that that's something that could be more of guidance at the beginning of the year and that that could be something that we more phase in um to the year as opposed to saying
052well we don't have that list that's perfect for biology now and therefore we're not going to do it until next year just a thought there um i think with dr bauer and then mr foster yeah i was just gonna say uh dr g you kind of as i raised my hand at the start of your comments but you really got to the place where i was thinking that i think when you initially and mr fusco you mentioned kind of the agency for teachers when you say i want to know the detail of what's going to be graded that to me as a high school teacher potentially teaching 180 days sounds daunting right like i don't know what i'm grading when and how but you do have a sense by marking period hey look there's going
053to be three assessments this marking period um one will roughly be at the beginning of october then you'll see one in november and then one just before winter break you know and you can expect two projects those types of details i think is a is a great transition to more detail because i i teach a graduate course i'm sure you've taught graduate courses as well i can tell you exactly what's due every night of class i'm not sure they're there with 180 days but i think they can give you the big overarching thing so families and students aren't surprised um so i really think us pushing hey we want you to provide as much detail as you responsibly can right at the start of each marketing period i think that's completely reasonable um so i
054like that kind of as a as a push towards that direction so and can i just say i also think that there has to be some flexibility also in that understanding right because this is new right and what you're suggesting dr valeri i think is is totally in line with you know what is reasonable at the same time things do come up right if for some reason you say there's gonna be three assessments and there happens to be two you know we just went through two years of unexpected you know chaos so you know there is an understanding that that it isn't a hard and fast contract commitment yet right it's that over time you know once there is more consistency among this and we've had time in professional development you know that teachers are
055going to be more comfortable you know with this idea of saying okay here's the way the the each marking period will lay out and here's what you can't anticipate but i do want to be able to give flexibility to teachers too because this is new and i do believe i do see this being something very daunting for them you know and i don't want them to watch this video and think that that we're you know coming down you know we want to work with them with this right we want to partner with them in this to make sure that this is going to be um responsive to the needs of students first and foremost but also understanding that that is a lot of work on their part that this is going to entail and that
056we want to be supportive of that and of them in this process mr mcvean oh what does a regular education teacher say during this conversation right um so certainly to the point of when parents should you know have a very clear idea of what their their students are going to be assessed on and how it's going to work it comes down to the lms so so often as well right so we're teaching upper dublin we're on schoology and i can put an assignment up and i can post pretty much anything i want um to explain what that assignment is going to be and and have the rubric up there as well i'm pretty sure that as north penn works with infinite campus and canvas together that's also there i'm getting a thumbs up from dr
057bauer so certainly even if it's not the very beginning of the marking period uh a teacher can as time goes on get a lot more detail um if they haven't said okay this exact date two months from now is going to be this type of assessment but i i think that i think that we're we're well equipped to help teachers that way uh i want to thank dr hart for talking about uh giving educators a lot of time and like building that in intentionally to look at how we can make the adjustment from some maybe more traditional teachers of which my gray hair illustrates i might be becoming now how we can get more traditional teachers we've been doing in a while you know transition to authentic learning and for the parents who might be
058looking this up later trying to figure out what authentic learning is you know as a history teacher and history was brought up i can have students write an essay on the factors that play at the end of world war one that led to this type of treaty that led to world war ii or i can sit the students down have them negotiate as the nations involved in that in that treaty as well and the point i'll try to make there is you know when you have students take part in these activities that are not paper and pencil and not scantron multiple choice to get back in the day that gives them a lot more agency over their learning as well so they uh they see a role that's different and they want to try that
059out in that age group particularly and so that's a positive thing i really appreciate uh dr hart uh and mr nicholson including some professional development time there on the issue of second chance learning i think we can all agree that there's absolutely a place for it for sure i think uh if you ask any educator particularly here in north penn where we have some great ones if they're going to allow a student to uh you know try to make up some work try to have another go at it as a result of uh personal family issues things like that we've got students who leave school and go straight to work for four or five six hours every day you know we have to be conscious of that i think teachers are my only concern my
060only concern is the logistics of it right when a second assessment has to come around uh by nature it may have to be different than the first one a little bit such that the exact same processes are not being asked of the student again sometimes we need a place to physically put a student who's making something up while the the rest of the class is going on do we have people that are available to to oversee a test or or whatever type of assessment that is if it's a project that was a presentation uh do we have enough time and enough audience members to give the right kind of feedback to that presentation so certainly i'd like to explore those things further i know that that'll be part of the conversation i see dr hart's
061hand up already so go ahead dr hart yeah i mean i was gonna say like you said everything that i was thinking so thank you for that i mean i think part of our goal um mp definitely you know chime in as well is we know that it needs to be done well we know that we want to be thoughtful and intentional about like you know what does that look like what are the structures and that there's continuity and consistency you know among in between teachers as well and so i never want to give the impression that we're just going to kind of you know we'll take forever to get it done that's not it but i do think um in my experience the collaboration the idea of kind of working through what can this
062look like it might look different in math and it doesn't you know in an english class or a history class you know you know what does that look like that is the piece the logistical piece um is the piece you know i think you know that's really the work right we all agree that we've not done our jobs if kids walk out and they've not learned what we wanted them to learn right it's we don't want that but we do want to make sure um that we've created a structure um that really does work um and that we've been intentional and really deliberate and sometimes that takes just a little bit of time and so i'm dr g i always really appreciate the push and making sure that we're doing our very best to kind
063of keep it moving um but i do appreciate just the opportunity to be able to say yes and we just want to make sure that we do it incredibly well i think the idea that we have some like inconsistencies we're trying really hard to dismantle that and as we try new um initiatives and ways in which to engage in our work we kind of want to bring everyone along together with understanding the why and the structure so that our students have the experiences that we really want for them to have um and i appreciate that dr hart um one of the things that i would say is you know you always have those early adopters right um i have i know now that there are teachers at north penn who are already doing second chance
064learning right um that's just part of what they've been doing and so i also think in terms of what mr fusco described as that culture shift is let's support those early adopters as well which is why i think like it's okay to roll it out and say this is something that we are wanting to move towards and have discussions at department meetings all year right and that moves you the needle a little bit closer to whatever let's say may or march when you actually want to say okay now we've had discussions now we've had those early adopters now it's march everyone's really should be or may everyone really should be at the point of this is the consistent practice across the building does that mean i guess if that makes sense in terms of like
065that's i think the push like let's let's at least start the culture shift which i think mr fusco described really well and again i think there's teachers already doing it because that's what i've experienced um mr nicholson yeah now dr g i appreciate what you just said and and i was actually going to jump in and speak a little bit to that if i recall when we initiated chromebooks and we were looking to to go more digital you know we did leverage our early adopters and while dr bauer was principal we leveraged them to run workshops for teachers that were a little bit slower to transition and were you know maybe a little bit more challenged or a little bit more apprehensive so you know we can definitely leverage the pockets of great things we
066have happening to make it more consistent across the the way and and trying to strike that delicate balance of not not trying to feel like we're digging our heels in and trying to pump the brakes on all this but making sure that if we're going to do something we do it right and changing culture is difficult right and making sure that it it's seen as a positive and seen as you know you know what i can do this not it's being done to me but really looking at how are my colleagues doing this and how can i institute this in my daily practice so you know really being intentional about it isn't trying to delay it it's just trying to make sure if we're going to do something we do it right and we do
067it in the best interest of the kids and making sure that the kids have a great experience and that they learn and can and they know and do no one can do what they need to by the time that course is over um i had two other quick notes on mine as part of the presentation one was um about um which you didn't say a lot about in terms of timed tests and kind of what are what are what you were thinking about in terms of what our practices should be um or how you were thinking to kind of discuss and consider what kind of regulate you know administrative regs or where where you you all stand on time because i didn't see anything about that kind of mention so student i'll give you a
068student is it a class and uh they have you know whatever 45 minutes to complete a test last three questions they just don't finish because they're a slower test maker are they all we'll say last four questions or something are they all wrong right like i think those are some of the kind of expected answer now i think those are some of the questions that we kind of need to ask right because if we if you're putting on your equity lens and thinking about what students need some students need a little more time does not mean that students can take three days to take a test we know this right but and this is again where you talk about teacher agency i want to give that right but i do think that that does that
069does sometimes happen right where the teacher's like okay well sorry those last two you didn't finish them i have mark wrong but you know you had today to finish it i think that's another discussion point is the timing of tests um for students yeah and um i wasn't sure if that was something that you guys talked about you know and in all honesty it hasn't been and that's why i was looking count on you to like push us to think about some things differently but i do it does tie into the notion of the equity and really knowing our kids and looking at patterns and you know if they have everything correct up to that point right they don't get to those last three what you know let's talk about that but it's definitely something
070that we can definitely include in our conversations and i do think it's a really important conversation as we really get to see you know who kids are and the ways in which they kind of navigate assessment um you know experiences so uh we'll definitely add that in so thank you and i'll jump on just because dr g you asked how our or what our thoughts were so just this is an immature thought but do i believe there's some room for time tests i do um you know when students sit for the sat they have a defined amount of time i just had last year find superintendency practice exam give a defined amount of time should that be at all that students see no we need to be including more of the authentic assessment and we
071do need to talk through that some more so that's a great point yeah i mean of course i'm going to push back and say to you that um you know again you look at the research and the research just does not support that it does not really um i mean it just doesn't like i mean that's why many um colleges are not ex um no longer requiring the sdks or ac teams i mean even my daughter's applying to law school this year some colleges aren't even requiring the elf act um and and colleges like um georgetown it's like not like random colleges off to the side colleges that are known for you know i think more and more what we're seeing is speed does not mean that i am smarter or that i am that
072i deserve a higher grade that speed is not does not mean that i that's not the way in which i can demonstrate learning we have some really gifted students who may just need time to demonstrate their learning if the purpose of assessment is to is for students to be able to demonstrate their learning then i do think we have to have some flexibility in our time timing of tests and i do think it's at least something that the committee should be talking about i don't really know what the exact answer is but i definitely think it's something the committee should be talking about does it mean we're doing away with saps no we don't have we have we can't do away with stds we have to give standardized tests it just is part of the
073educational system right um that we have to play in but i i do think it's important for us to also lean on some of the research and what it's showing and what we are doing that's best for students as it relates to equity um i had one other note aside from time test and that was about support asking the committee to really start to think about both of the middle schools and the high school where does the support lie like we're talking about assessment but where does the support lie for that student that doesn't grasp the content outside of the classroom how can we look at structuring things um a neighboring district is doing something called a luncheon learn next year where they're starting to have some flexibility in that lunch time uh mr mcgain
074is smiling because he's probably heard of it they're starting to have some flexibility to allow students to get to those teachers to be able to make sure they can they can get the support that they need um you know i just wonder i think again not not an answer but asking the committee to start to think about where does the support lie for students who do need to get additional support before taking a test or an assessment or getting additional support and help on a project or something like that um the high school schedule's so tight um and i know we have a couple things built in um but where can we even do better in that aspect um dr waters and then dr hart she's probably going to say what i'm going to say
075but i just wanted to let you know that we actually today this afternoon several of us were in a meeting mr nicholson had to step out to do i think some interviewing so he missed this part but we actually had a conversation with a couple of um the high school administrators and we talked about lunch and learned today um because a couple of us are also in a neighboring district that does that um and and kind of had success with it and our experience with our own children um so that is actually being discussed we talked about some different things we can maybe look to do with the schedule i honestly haven't had a chance to you know talk to the boss yet about any of this um so i don't want to say too
076much but we were having that conversation so i appreciate you bringing that up i also wanted to mention a lot of what i'm hearing today um and again we always appreciate your feedback all of you and i'm thinking about the time that we have allocated for the high school team in particular in the opening days of school they actually have time in their departments to talk about assessment talk about the new homework um admin regs so a lot of these conversations that are coming up and the things you're asking can we get this a little sooner i think we could absolutely add some of this to the agenda um the piece in particular about time tests that's an area that we haven't really talked about that piece but it's something i think would fit very
077nicely into the plan for one of the in service days so um again i just always appreciate these conversations um and um i think there's ways in which we can incorporate it into some of our planning for the opening days that's always a great conversation and why we have wonderful divergent thoughts on these calls so that we're able to kind of it's good to be i we as you know we are a committee that likes the discussion we like to be able to have that with you all so that um you know maybe it helps as a district we're on the same team we're all north penn's team i mean three of us are on other teams too but we're mainly we're on north penn's team for this committee and you know we all just
078want to get to the same place we all just want to be better and so thank you all for the robust discussion are there any other questions or comments as it relates to the assessment piece i would ask for a um an update on assessment um looking at the timeline maybe that would be in february mid-year um could be an update on assessment and um and then you know offline maybe you all could give us an update on some of the questions that we had about some things happening a little bit earlier um if some of that could be phased in um i think that would be great got it um okay i think that that was all on our agenda is there anything else dr bowers or anything else that you want to close
079out with or yeah nope that's everything i think we have uh i guess we're moved to public comment unless there's anything additional all right thank you um mr nicholson and dr hart um for uh you know entertaining us and for providing us the opportunity to be able to have a discussion i don't mean entertaining i think you were like entertaining like song but you know entertaining our uh questions i should say and um allowing us to be able to put our you know voices and ideas into into the mix thank you okay do we have anyone for public comment we do so i know we've read our statement so if we're ready to jump into it our first uh public comment will be from jason lanier jason i have enabled your microphones you're ready to
080begin please state your name and municipality and you can begin your comments please uh jason lanier lansdale um first i want to say if i like the idea of some of this authentic uh assessment if it if that's what it's called i mean uh i don't i mean i don't know i don't want to be butchering up what the new acronym is going to be uh like applied understanding makes sense to me not all kids are are i don't can apply uh book knowledge immediately but understand concepts in a bigger picture sounds perfectly reasonable not a problem with that i guess my concern comes is whether or not authentic assessment is going to start to then override traditional assessment because there's still a lot of value in traditional assessment a kid that can understand something
081uh very well and is prepared sometimes does well on tests because they're prepared kids that aren't prepared sometimes think they know what they want to do and uh or think they understand a concept but they really don't when it comes to application so gaming gaming that uh tool i think is you're going to find a lot of that in in high school and it's just or any school because it's the you know traditional sort of bell curve and you have really strong students you have really big students and most are in the middle and you some are going to be better at gaining uh that assessment at pool um dr g said something about there is a lot of research showing this equity uh application is positive i'd really like to see that if you
082could send me that out i'd love to take a look at it because i can't seem to find anything on that and i'm looking for this because i want to know how this is supposed to work uh i i said back in may of 21 or something i mentioned that this equity seems to be critical race theory and a lot of you guys poopooed me and said no that's not what it is it's not an application the the professional development guys you've brought in uh primarily tywin tyrone howard has written articles regarding implementation of critical race theory and education and it sounds a lot like what you're talking about right now you can read them all he writes in the the uh it's called the handbook of critical race theory in education so he's written
083a number of articles for them and uh he's written a number of papers on this and it sounds like this is what is being applied now if this if it turns out all of this is really good i'm on board but where i'm concerned this is going just as i was concerned with this last year is this means lowering of standards and kids ending up not being as proficient because they have to there's lower hurdles for them to meet and you end up with kids less prepared to go to college and if you guys know college professors because i know a bunch of them that's what they're telling me is they say kids come in and they're not prepared to go into class and there's a lot of remedial stuff that has to happen every
084single year and whether or not the some of the ivs and the notable schools are are dropping some of their requirements i'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense it certainly isn't there's nobody else you can give me a little longer uh that certainly seems to make uh sense for them maybe but it also seems to be a little bit of a political motivation um as we this is the last eci meeting before the beginning of school um just an opportunity to wish our teachers well and um you know we are grateful as a committee to be able to support you i think the conversation about assessment of of course even when we were pushing back we as educators and tim is always great at like reminding us of this is like you
085know we want to support teachers and speaking to the point of our last public comment um i have great faith um because i've had three children go through this district in the teachers in our district and the agency that we need to give them they are not lowering the standards for for our students these are professionals who deserve every bit of respect they are you know they have master's degrees they have some of them have doctorates they know their content and they know how to teach and so i do not i absolutely believe north penn standards are right where they you know should be as it relates to our teachers and i want to wish all of our teachers um a great a a good start to the school year um the only thing i
086will say about in terms of equity is i continue to define equity um for everyone equity is giving every student in this district what they need not just culturally but every student what they need so there are students in our district who need an iep who need an individualized education plan and we are going to give them that along with every goal in their plan and make sure that we're meeting their needs that is what equity is it's meeting every student in our district treating them as a student and giving them what they need and then with that dr bauer i believe you have something to say and then we will return yes dr g thank you and uh as i always try to do and i do believe the committee format is more appropriate
087for us to have the discourse and the conversation not necessarily back and forth with the audience of citizens but to comment i and mr lanier i will give it to you you are committed and uh you do deserve a response in in committee meetings if time allows um i do think there's a difference between talking about systems that are in place that don't necessarily give an equal playing field and and teaching something to students so for example just because you're taking a look at your discipline data or your attendance data or your course placement data and trying to determine why there might be inequities there that doesn't mean that that is a concept that you are teaching to students right you are looking at your systems that exist to try to make sure you're meeting
088the needs of everyone um so there's just a i we've had several meetings with dr howard he has presented i think to the faculty twice and he asks good questions he asks us to look at our data he asks us to take a look at where our students are placed what their test scores are and how we are meeting all of our students needs that's different than the curriculum and what you are teaching in a math classroom or a social studies classroom i just think there's a very clear delineation between taking a look at theory and data and providing support for kids and curriculum and i i think that delineation has been lost on some so again happy to talk about it i always am i pride myself on being fairly accessible to folks so
089uh miss earlier let me know um maybe we can chat tomorrow evening before after the meeting thank you dr g thank you dr bauer okay so with that we need a motion oh we have summary of items i believe we only have student travel again good luck to the cheerleaders um and we will move forward with a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved second and all in favor aye and meeting is adjourned everyone have a wonderful evening thank you good night everyone thank you