Phi Delta Kappan 

About: Phi Delta Kappan is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Curriculum & Higher education. It has an ISSN identifier of 0031-7217. Over the lifetime, 7087 publications have been published receiving 140137 citations. The journal is also known as: Kappan & Phi Delta Kappan magazine.

"Kappan Classic": Inside the Black Box--Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment.

Abstract: Formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and can raise student achievement.

School/Family/Community Partnerships: Caring for the Children We Share:

Abstract: When schools form partnerships with families and the community, the children benefit These guidelines for building partnerships can make it happen

Policies That Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform; Policies Must Keep Pace with New Ideas about What, When, and How Teachers Learn and Must Focus on Developing Schools' and Teachers' Capacities to Be Responsible for Student Learning

Abstract: The vision of practice that underlies the nation's reform agenda requires most teachers to rethink their own practice, to construct new classroom roles and expectations about student outcomes, and to teach in ways they have never taught before--and probably never experienced as students (Nelson and Hammerman 1996). The success of this agenda ultimately turns on teachers' success in accomplishing the serious and difficult tasks of learning the skills and perspectives assumed by new visions of practice and unlearning the practices and beliefs about students and instruction that have dominated their professional lives to date. Yet few occasions and little support for such professional development exist in teachers' environments. Because teaching for understanding relies on teachers' abilities to see complex subject matter from the perspectives of diverse students, the know-how necessary to make this vision of practice a reality cannot be prepackaged or conveyed by means of traditional top-down "teacher training" strategies. The policy problem for professional development in this era of reform extends beyond mere support for teachers' acquisition of new skills or knowledge. Professional development today also means providing occasions for teachers to reflect critically on their practice and to fashion new knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy, and learners (Nelson and Hammerman 1996; Prawat 1992). Beginning with preservice education and continuing throughout a teacher's career, teacher development must focus on deepening teachers' understanding of the processes of teaching and learning and of the students they teach. Effective professional development involves teachers both as learners and as teachers and allows them to struggle with the uncertainties that accompany each role. It has a number of characteristics. * It must engage teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, observation, and reflection that illuminate the processes of learning and development. * It must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, and experimentation that are participant-driven. * It must be collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among educators and a focus on teachers' communities of practice rather than on individual teachers. * It must be connected to and derived from teachers' work with their students. * It must be sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling, coaching, and the collective solving of specific problems of practice. * It must be connected to other aspects of school change. Professional development of this kind signals a departure from old norms and models of "preservice" or "inservice" training. It creates new images of what, when, and how teachers learn, and these new images require a corresponding shift from policies that seek to control or direct the work of teachers to strategies intended to develop schools' and teachers' capacity to be responsible for student learning. Capacity- building policies view knowledge as constructed by and with practitioners for use in their own contexts, rather than as something conveyed by policy makers as a single solution for top-down implementation. Though the outlines of a new paradigm for professional development policy are emerging (Cohn, McLaughlin, and Talbert 1993; Darling-Hammond 1993), the hard work of developing concrete exemplars of the policies and practices that model "top-down support for bottom-up reform" has only just begun. The changed curriculum and pedagogy of professional development will require new policies that foster new structures and institutional arrangements for teachers' learning. At the same time, we will need to undertake a strategic assessment of existing policies to determine to what degree they are compatible with the vision of learning as constructed by teachers and students and with a vision of professional development as a lifelong, inquiry-based, and collegial activity (Lieberman 1995). …

Policies That Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform

Abstract: Policies must keep pace with new ideas about what, when, and how teachers learn and must focus on developing schools' and teachers' capacities to be responsible for student learning.

Assessment Crisis: The Absence Of Assessment FOR Learning

Abstract: A real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but of seeing through new eyes. - Marcel Proust IF WE ARE finally to connect assessment to school improvement in meaningful ways, we must come to see assessment through new eyes. Our failure to find a potent connection has resulted in a deep and intensifying crisis in assessment in American education. Few elected officials are aware of this crisis, and almost no school officials know how to address it. Our current assessment systems are harming huge numbers of students for reasons that few understand. And that harm arises directly from our failure to balance our use of standardized tests and classroom assessments in the service of school improvement. When it comes to assessment, we have been trying to find answers to the wrong questions. Politicians routinely ask, How can we use assessment as the basis for doling out rewards and punishments to increase teacher and student effort? They want to know how we can intensify the intimidation associated with annual testing so as to force greater achievement. How we answer these questions will certainly affect schools. But that impact will not always be positive. Moreover, politicians who ask such questions typically look past a far more important pair of prior questions: How can we use assessment to help all our students want to learn? How can we help them feel able to learn? Without answers to these questions, there will be no school improvement. I explain why below. School administrators in federal, state, and local education agencies contribute to our increasingly damaging assessment crisis when they merely bow to politicians' beliefs and focus unwaveringly on the question of how to make our test scores go up. To be sure, accountability for student learning is important. I am not opposed to high-stakes testing to verify school quality -- as long as the tests are of sound quality.1 However, our concern for test scores must be preceded by a consideration of more fundamental questions: Are our current approaches to assessment improving student learning? Might other approaches to assessment have a greater impact? Can we design state and district assessment systems that have the effect of helping our students want to learn and feel able to learn? Furthermore, the measurement community, of which I am a member, also has missed an essential point. For decades, our priorities have manifested the belief that our job is to discover ever more sophisticated and efficient ways of generating valid and reliable test scores. Again, to be sure, accurate scores are essential. But there remains an unasked prior question: How can we maximize the positive impact of our scores on learners? Put another way, How can we be sure that our assessment instruments, procedures, and scores serve to help learners want to learn and feel able to learn? We are a nation obsessed with the belief that the path to school improvement is paved with better, more frequent, and more intense standardized testing. The problem is that such tests, ostensibly developed to "leave no student behind," are in fact causing major segments of our student population to be left behind because the tests cause many to give up in hopelessness -- just the opposite effect from that which politicians intended. Student achievement suffers because these once-a-year tests are incapable of providing teachers with the moment-to-moment and day-to- day information about student achievement that they need to make crucial instructional decisions. Teachers must rely on classroom assessment to do this. The problem is that teachers are unable to gather or effectively use dependable information on student achievement each day because of the drain of resources for excessive standardized testing. There are no resources left to train teachers to create and conduct appropriate classroom assessments. …