October's guest post for "Heads Speak for Themselves" is from Brad Rathgeber, Director of the Online School for Girls.
We
know innately in independent schools that relationships are central to
the learning process. That is something that we have done well for
decades and centuries -- and, not incidentally, something that we should
not lose sight of as independent schools move into work with online
learning (as Michael Nachbar and I noted last year: click here).
And yet, do we really listen to our students voices about the
relationships forged in classrooms? We hear teachers describe it. We
can sometime witness it (in classrooms, on our playing fields, and in
our lunchrooms). But, what do the students actually think about their
relationships? Certainly, our students have something to say-- the
proliferation of websites like ratemyteachers.com attests to that.
The Atlantic wrote about just this topic in their October 2012 edition in "Why Kids Should Grade Teachers."
The article focused on new research funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation on the importance of student voice in the evaluation of
successful schools:
"[Student] responses
did indeed help predict which classes would have the most test-score
improvement at the end of the year. In math, for example, the teachers
rated most highly by students delivered the equivalent of about six more
months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. (By
comparison, teachers who get a master’s degree—one of the few ways to
earn a pay raise in most schools —delivered about one more month of
learning per year than teachers without one.)
"Students
were better than trained adult observers at evaluating teachers. This
wasn’t because they were smarter but because they had months to form an
opinion, as opposed to 30 minutes. And there were dozens of them, as
opposed to a single principal. Even if one kid had a grudge against a
teacher or just blew off the survey, his response alone couldn’t sway
the average."
Last
week, I was speaking to a Board of a school in Connecticut about online
learning. Before my presentation, there was a presentation on a recent
parent satisfaction survey done for the school. After the presentation
was complete, one Board member asked the researcher whether it was
worth having a student satisfaction survey and whether other schools
were doing such a survey. The researcher (one of the absolute best out
there) replied that it was certainly worth thinking about, but that he
did not know of a school that was collecting regular feedback of this
type.
After
the researcher was complete and before I took over the microphone, I
pulled him aside and told him that in the future when he answers that
question, he can say that he knows of a school that monthly asks for
student feedback and uses that feedback as part of our faculty
evaluation process and the school's commitment to maintaining a "growth
mindset": the Online School for Girls.
Now
I admit, maybe because we run an online school we figured from the
start that student surveys would be as essential for us as it is for the
Head of School to walk the halls in the middle of the day or greet
students when they arrive on campus in the morning. However, early on,
we decided not just to use student polling data for the purpose of
gathering a sense of student engagement, but also as part of ongoing
professional conversations with our faculty. And you know what
surprised us, the teachers wanted that data too! They never really
heard from students on the topics that we were polling on: how their
classes met the pedagogical approach of the school; how their courses
were organized; how much time students were spending on their course;
and how easy it was to communicate with their teachers and how
approachable they were.
This corresponds well to the reporting in the Atlantic:
"Patricia
Wilkins… received her survey results about two months later. She’d been
teaching at the school for more than a decade, and had seen a lot of
reforms come and go…But she was curious about the survey results… As she
looked at the data in a small conference room during a planning period,
she was quiet. Then she smiled. 'I’m highest on Care. That’s what I
felt, but I didn’t know that they felt it.' Nine out of 10 of her
students said they liked the way their teacher treated them when they
needed help; that was high compared with the average response from
kindergartners nationwide. Her students seemed to think she challenged
them, too, which was reassuring. Still, only half said their classmates
stayed busy and didn’t waste time. 'This is very helpful,' she said,
nodding."
What
we have found is that a combination of student feedback, administrator
feedback, self-reflection, and close attention to adult contacts in our
consortium's schools has allowed us a fairly complete picture of our
classrooms, student performance, and student success. When I was a
division director at a great independent school in Maryland, I always
felt like I was missing an important element in determining success of
our teachers. I met with parents often, had good long conversations
with faculty members themselves, made myself a presence in classrooms
and in grade-level events, and talked to students all the time. The
funny thing now is that I can't do half of those things in the online
environment and yet my Academic Dean and I feel like we have a pulse of
our classrooms better than we ever did when we were present in the
schoolhouse.
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