Dr. David Hopson
I thank the many individuals who took the time to take our online survey to help prioritize and set student-learning goals for the Gateway District. The survey was developed from ideas discussed over the summer by Gateway’s leadership team. These ideas ranged from traditional classroom grading, the use of MCAS and other standardized testing, to the main objectives of the 21st Century skills movement (which includes ideas such as collaboration, communication, problem solving, and the use of technology). Many of these items are currently used to measure student performance, and several are used to evaluate our school and the district in terms of student growth (MCAS) and accreditation (21st Century Skills as part of NEASC).
The largest question that arose was related to the time, effort, and use of rubrics to measure success in making progress in these areas – did our staff, students, parents and community members think these items were useful in creating well-rounded students who are prepared for their futures after high school? It appears that we have the beginnings of the answer with the results of the survey. The next steps are to present this information to the school committee, move forward with adopting the major aspects of these ideas, and develop specific ways to measure whether the district is making progress in preparing students in these areas; in short, there is still much work to be done.
What did the survey show? We can extrapolate a few broad items from the survey data, which include: (1) we did not see major differences in the results from different groups of respondents (i.e., students, parents, staff members, alumni, or community members); (2) the skills generally identified as 21st Century skills received the highest rating in importance while MCAS testing was identified as the least important; and (3) community members rated the MCAS tests as even less important than any other group in the survey. As we follow-up this survey with additional work, it will be interesting to try and parse out why so many individuals gave much more credence to the 21st Century skills rather than the standardized test results from MCAS assessments.
In summary, respondents ranked the following items the top five in importance: students listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes, and intentions; students respect cultural differences and work effectively with people from a range of social and cultural backgrounds; students develop solutions that require thinking “outside of the box”; students respond open-mindedly to different ideas and values; and Gateway provides opportunities for students to learn through experiential learning that is connected to the real world.
For more details on the survey results, please visit the district’s website (www.grsd.org) where information will be posted after it’s been shared with the school committee (>school committee>presentations). As we move forward in this process, I hope we’ll continue to get input and guidance from Gateway’s various constituencies.
