The Early Grades Are Different: A Look at SLOs

With recent work highlighting the
critical role that teachers play in student achievement, and with a nudge—or
push—from education reformers and the Obama Administration, student growth
measures have become a key part of teacher evaluation systems throughout the U.S.
The most common way to measure student growth achievement is with standardized
test scores. Since state standardized testing usually does not begin until
third grade, states and districts have developed other methods to assess how
much the “untested” younger students learn. According to the National Council
on Teacher Quality’s 2015 State of the States report, 39 of the 43
states that require a student growth component in teacher evaluations weight
student growth measures the same in untested grades/subjects as in tested
grades.

But what is the best way to use the
gains made during the school year by pre-K through second grade students to
evaluate a teacher, where growth is not as straightforward as the difference
between scores on tests? Student Learning Objectives (SLO) have emerged
as a tool to evaluate an individual teacher’s impact on his or her students.

In 2013, New America released An Ocean of Unknowns: Risks and Opportunities in Using
Student Achievement Data to Evaluate PreK–3^rd Grade Teachers,
a close look at how five states (Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Rhode Island, and
Tennessee) and three school districts (Austin, TX; Hillsborough County, FL; and
Washington, DC) were using SLOs and other measures of student growth in the
early grades. In this post, we revisit Delaware and Washington, DC to see how
they have adapted their system of SLOs to better serve early grades. We also
take a look at the changing use of SLOs in Georgia.

The SLO process varies, but it
generally involves teachers collecting baseline student data, setting measurable
goals for students evaluated by an assessment, usually with the approval of
their school leader, and working towards these goals throughout a school year.
As of 2014, SLOs were part of teacher evaluation systems in at least 25 states.

This method of evaluating teachers
has advantages. In addition to allowing schools to measure teacher impact in
untested grades and subjects, educators using SLOs have reported that they promote data-driven
instruction, increase collaboration between teachers and administrators, encourage
closer tracking of student progress, and make use of higher-quality
assessments. In multiple studies, teachers have reported spending more
time analyzing student data and reflecting on their practice.

SLOs are not without limitations,
however. The limited research on the link between SLO attainment and other
measures of student achievement has yielded mixed results. Some studies have found some positive relationship between SLOs and student
achievement, but others have found inconsistent correlations across subjects and
grades. This inconsistency may partially be due to the fact that the use of
SLOs varies widely between districts, schools, and even classrooms. Additional,
rigorous research is needed to evaluate the consistency and accuracy of SLOs
across subjects and grade levels, especially for PreK–2^nd.

Additionally, questions remain about
how effective the use of SLOs is, relative to other teacher evaluation
measures, in differentiating teacher performance. Traditional evaluation, most
commonly classroom observations, has been shown
to fail in capturing a nuanced picture of professional performance, since the
vast majority of teachers are rated highly. An Institute of Education Sciences study looking at eight early-adopting school
districts found that the inclusion of alternate student growth measures, such
as SLOs, yielded greater differentiation in teacher performance than ratings
based on classroom observation. An evaluation in New Jersey also found that
including student growth measures increased differentiation in teacher ratings,
even though the vast majority of teachers remained in the higher ratings
categories.

Setting goals for students requires
walking a fine line between the ambitious (high goals) and the attainable
(realistic ones). There are concerns that evaluating teachers on goals
that they set for themselves creates an incentive for them to lean towards the
attainable rather than the ambitious. Principals can counteract this by
creating systems and rules that hold staff to high expectations. It takes
significant time, resources, and expertise, however, for school
leaders to implement these systems and create a culture that encourages
teachers to aim for a balance of ambitious and attainable. To do this well,
principals need sufficient professional development and support from the school
district. Another challenge is that teachers might be essentially “grading themselves,” because they are highly
involved in the SLO process—often writing, administering, and grading the
assessments. There is a high potential for manipulation, especially when
results are tied to high-stakes consequences such as merit pay, dismissal, or
tenure.

Of the less-discussed challenges
are those surrounding the implementation of SLOs in the early grades. Because of the
significant variation in children’s development from pre-K through second grade,
it can be difficult to create or select developmentally-appropriate assessments that
reliably measure a teacher’s impact on students. As New America’s Laura Bornfreund
and Clare McCann have explained, “the developmental growth of children in the early grades
is directly linked to their academic growth….measures of literacy and numeracy
alone do not account for a full picture of a young child’s learning or his
teacher’s impact in laying the foundation for…long-term success in school.”
Despite these challenges, many states and districts have gone ahead with SLOs
in the early grades.

Delaware

In Delaware, the use of SLOs in the
early grades remains a factor in the state’s teacher evaluation system, but the
state’s use of SLOs has adapted over time to address concerns raised by
teachers and administrators. In collaboration with their principal, teachers in
all grades, including pre-K, set growth goals for students at the beginning of
the year and can choose from a list of more than 200 approved assessments (both
internal and external) to evaluate student progress.
Teachers can also work with principals to select measures not included in the
assessment bank. The state’s online database allows teachers to reference
student growth data from previous years to help them set reasonable and
appropriate goals.

The assessment bank was developed
quickly and, at first, some assessments faced quality issues, prompting
pushback from some teachers. But, according to Laura Schneider, Director of
Educator Effectiveness at the Delaware Department of Education, the state has
listened to concerns and improved assessments over time, thanks to an ongoing
review process that includes regular reliability and validity tests of the assessments.
In response to teacher and administrator feedback, Delaware has recently
reduced the number of SLOs required from four to two because of time and
resources involved with their administration. Delaware’s requirements
surrounding SLOs do not differ by grade level.

Buy-in from teachers and
administrators around the use of student growth measures in general has been
challenging, but open communication and professional development have helped
those at the school-level see the benefits of SLOs. While results are tied to
formal teacher evaluations, “it’s about measuring student growth and not adult
behavior,” Schneider said; “implementation has been improving over time as
people realized that.”

District of Columbia Public Schools

In Washington, DC, a district that
has aggressively pursued reforms in teacher evaluation, SLOs (referred to as
Teacher Assessed Student Achievement Data, or TAS) are used to measure student
growth in all grades and account for 15 percent of a teacher’s overall
evaluation. District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) provides guidance around
which assessments are appropriate for use in each grade. DCPS suggests that
pre-K teachers use the observation-based assessment, Teaching Strategies GOLD,
that evaluates students across seven domains: social-emotional, language, physical-gross
motor, physical-fine motor, cognition, literacy, and math. While TS GOLD is
recommended for all pre-K teachers, the decision of what assessment to use and
how heavily to weight GOLD as a TAS assessment is ultimately left to
principals.

DCPS may serve as an example of how
schools and districts can overcome one of the key challenges of SLOs: the
inability to compare teachers. While the implementation and assessment of SLOs
often varies between classrooms and schools, the common use of TS GOLD across
pre-K classes creates a standardized system in which teachers can be compared
and trends at the classroom, school, and district level can be identified.

There is more variation in selected
assessments in grades K–2. DCPS recommends a few appropriate assessments for
these grades, but teachers have the flexibility to select other assessments or
create their own with approval from their principal. According to the TAS
guidance, “school leaders decide what assessments, weights, goals, tracking
systems, and data collection methods are appropriate for their school.” While
principals approve their teachers’ SLOs, DCPS reviews every single one, all
10,000 of them. According to Michelle Hudacsko, Deputy Chief of
IMPACT, principals review their teachers’ TAS goals for appropriate rigor and
then the district does a final review of all goals each year for workability,
to ensure the goal can be scored appropriately at the end of the year.

Georgia

While Delaware and DCPS have
adapted and continued to use SLOs over the years, Georgia has recently reversed course on the use of SLOs. Legislative action in 2016 determined that
districts are no longer required to use SLOs as part of their teacher
evaluation systems. Student growth now accounts for only 30 percent of a
teacher’s evaluation score, reduced from 50 percent. Cindy Saxon, Associate
Superintendent of Teacher and Leader Effectiveness for the Georgia Department
of Education says, “this decision was an effort to reduce the testing
burden on students and teachers.” Districts now have considerable discretion in
selecting which type of student growth measures to use, be it SLOs or some
other measurement such as an off-the-shelf assessment.

While the state is moving away from
SLOs as a required student growth measure, Georgia’s innovative “resource
library” may be an example for other states looking to support the use of SLOs.
Containing more than 2,000 assessment items across courses and content, the
resource library allows districts from across the state to access and share
assessments for SLOs. The library also includes about 220 state exemplars for
districts to use in their entirety, which were designed by Georgia educators to
provide support for districts. It’s too soon to tell yet if districts will
continue to use SLOs now that they are not required by the state.

Pulling back on SLOs may become a
more widespread trend as states implement the new Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA). The law allows for much greater flexibility around teacher evaluations.
In an EdWeek article shortly after the law was
passed, Molly Spearman, the state superintendent for South Carolina, was quick
to say that she’ll be delaying the state’s requirement for all districts to use
SLOs by two years and “would like to make those measures an artifact examined
by evaluators, not a specific, weighted component of each teacher’s review.”

States and districts that continue
to use SLOs must ensure that teachers and principals have the time, resources,
and support to learn how to use them effectively and in a way that maintains
high expectations for students and mitigates the possibility of manipulation.
In the early grades, teachers and districts must be mindful about using
appropriate assessments to measure student growth and should take advantage of
the opportunities SLOs offer to gauge a student’s growth outside of the
oftentimes limited domains of math and literacy.