In our conversation, when Lorrie Shepard said that point systems are the death of formative assessment and that grading systems are turning teachers into point recorders, whoa… that blew me away. These felt like true statements to me. A key thing I learned in this conversation was that when we try to gather evidence of student learning, it is important that we attempt to learn something meaningful from it, not just create a score. And that we ask students themselves to make meaning out of evidence of learning. This is part of Lorrie’s bigger idea of ambitious teaching which she describes in more detail during our talk. The word I keep mulling over from that notion is “substantive”. Lorrie shares ideas about the importance of designing learning experiences that generate substantive evidence of learning that teachers and students can use on a daily basis to move learning forward. This feels like a paradigm shift to me.

– Barbara Jones

With Lorrie Shepard, Gerzon and Jones discussed the following topics:

• The relationship among ambitious teaching, formative assessment, identity, agency, and equity
• What we are learning about the relationship between accountability, learning, and equity
• Creating equitable assessment approaches to measure student online learning
• Moving formative assessment out of the “balanced assessment system” and into a framework for teaching and learning

Curated segments of this conversation can be played in the Padlet below. Please click on the play button in the upper left corner to play the video directly in Padlet. An audio recording of the entire conversation and session materials can also be found on this page.

Steve Holmes offers us a compelling and urgent message where he shares both the rationale for change and the assessment for learning strategies his district has adopted to move from compliance-oriented learning to systems that focus on identity, agency and purpose. Steve raised many ideas related to the ways in which formative assessment is a lever for students and teachers to shift their roles and engage as true partners in the learning process, but the single idea that I have been thinking about is what it means to change a system from the ground up – as he says, to “develop common language, common structures, common systems and a culture of learning that brings honor back to the profession of teaching in ways I think we had lost.” Not nearly enough is said about this, and yet it is so necessary to support agency and equity.

– Nancy Gerzon

With Steve Holmes, Gerzon and Jones discussed the following topics:

• Why student agency is critical in high poverty districts
• The role of formative assessment practice in promoting equity
• How online learning experiences can promote student ownership over learning

Curated segments of this conversation can be played in the Padlet below. Please click on the play button in the upper left corner to play the video directly in Padlet. An audio recording of the entire conversation and session materials can also be found on this page.

One of my biggest takeaways from our conversation with Bronwen Cowie was the idea of a learning ecology. A learning ecology is a network of connected resources available to a learner to support their progress. These are resources that exist in a supportive structure, both inside and outside of the classroom. Bronwen uses the metaphor of a pond to describe her own personal learning ecology, with each element of the pond sustaining her learning at different levels – from small to large. In our conversation, she describes how this relates to the classroom, with teachers’ roles shifting from delivering content to curating students’ learning ecologies to enable them to access what they need, when they need it – from artifacts, to texts, peer support, and teacher feedback. This represents a key shift in student agency and advancing positive learner identities.

– Barbara Jones

With Bronwen Cowie, Gerzon and Jones discussed the following topics:

• Framing teacher noticing in a formative way to support equity
• Interrupting current formative practices to prepare to respond differently
• The role of learner identity in learning and student agency

Curated segments of this conversation can be played in the Padlet below. Please click on the play button in the upper left corner to play the video directly in Padlet. An audio recording of the entire conversation and session materials can also be found on this page.

There are many frameworks that lay out leadership competencies and provide detailed descriptions of the knowledge, skills and dispositions that are essential school leader practices. In our conversation, Gene Wilhoit added another critical dimension that I had not thought about, which is that these competencies must always be understood through context. As Gene identified new competencies for transformational leadership, he was careful throughout the conversation to remind us of the contextual questions that we all need to pay attention to. These include the impact of the community’s historical relationships with schools, understanding cultural norms, and how issues such as trust and reciprocity are valued and need to be continuously attended to, to meet ambitious goals.

– Nancy Gerzon

With Gene Wilhoit, Gerzon and Jones discussed the following topics:

• Transformational leadership that support schools and districts to address equity and inclusion
• Examples of partnerships that help to engage students, families, teachers, and district and state leaders and that build on the strengths of local communities
• Re-imagining assessment to improve student autonomy and agency, and advance equity

Curated segments of this conversation can be played in the Padlet below. Please click on the play button in the upper left corner to play the video directly in Padlet. An audio recording of the entire conversation and session materials can also be found on this page.