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The Attributes of High-Quality Student Work detail the criteria used to evaluate complexity, craftsmanship, and authenticity in student work.
Quality Work
Quality Work
The third dimension of student achievement—High-Quality Student Work—examines students' ability to create work that embodies complexity, craftsmanship, and authenticity.
Since our initial EL Education credentialing five years ago, Polaris has bolstered EL Education's Core Practice 12: Planning for and Supporting High-Quality Student Work, specifically, "Creating real work for real audiences motivates students to meet standards and engage in revision. In the process, they develop perseverance and realize that they can do more than they thought possible."
During professional development, Polaris has focused on using the Quality Work Protocol to collaboratively plan for projects, ensuring rigor and relevance.
Below, our portfolio will evidence the following:
Polaris students are active citizens; their authentic, personal voices are heard in high-quality work that connects academics to real-world issues.
Polaris students are active citizens; their authentic, personal voices are heard in high-quality work that connects academics to real-world issues.
Active Citizens
Active Citizens
The Points of Polaris—Integrity, Compassion, Explorer, Critical Thinker, Active Citizen—are sequenced in an intentional order; to become an Active Citizen, one has to draw upon all prior Points. When students graduate from Polaris, our goal is for them to meet the following Active Citizen learning targets:
- I attend school with the purpose of gaining knowledge to better serve myself and my community.
- I demonstrate my commitment to improving myself, my community and the world.
- I advocate for the needs of others as an upstander.
The media links above evidence how students are becoming Active Citizens by creating quality work that addresses real-world issues. Amari Miller, a 6th grade student at Polaris, shared the following reflection after her Civil Rights fieldwork in Alabama:
"The fieldwork to Birmingham taught me to stand up for what I believe in and try to change the injustices in our community. I wish all schools could learn the way we learn and talk about the difficult topics we discuss. I know that it is sometimes hard for our teachers. Like this year we are studying slavery and I know it is sometimes hard for Ms. I to teach us this topic because she is white but she doesn’t avoid the difficult conversations. I appreciate her for that. If we don’t learn about the hard parts of our past we might end up repeating it. And if we don’t have strong character then we might miss out on being the change we want in the world.”
By connecting academics to real-world issues, Polaris students are empowered to become Active Citizens, realizing they can do more than they thought possible.
In 2013, Polaris students created Our Day in May, an annual neighborhood rally for peace, which started the national movement Better World Day where hundreds of student-led events impact communities across the country.
Student Work
Student Work
7th & 8th Grade
7th Grade
7th Grade
5th & 6th Grade
5th Grade
4th Grade
3rd Grade
Kindergarten
Over the past five years, Polaris has focused on deepening the authenticity of student work. The Quality Work Protocol (q.v., QWP Summary Lineage and Archives) allowed us to track our growth based on the following criteria:
- Authentic work demonstrates the original, creative thinking of students—authentic personal voice and ideas—rather than simply showing that students can follow directions or fill in the blanks.
- Authentic work often uses formats and standards from the professional world, rather than artificial school formats (e.g., students create a book review for a local newspaper instead of a book report for the teacher).
- Authentic work often connects academic standards with real-world issues, controversies, and local people and places.
- Authenticity gives purpose to work; the work matters to students and ideally contributes to a larger community as well. When possible, it is created for and shared with an audience beyond the classroom.
Data from the Quality Work Protocol evidenced trends across our student products; the work samples linked above are representational of these trends in authenticity.
As a school, our greatest strength is connecting academic standards to real-world issues. For example, students applied speaking and listening skills to highlight community change-makers in Voices for Change while A New Immigrant's Guide to Chicago asked students to use their informational writing abilities to help immigrant students navigate their new home. In The Secret Lives of Chickens - a staple expedition at Polaris - third grade students raised chickens from eggs in their classrooms, documenting the process in an informational book about urban farming. Teachers recently improved the authenticity of this product by tackling the real-world issues of modern farming practices and ethics thereof. In addition to bringing standards to life, a second authenticity criterion illuminated in our student work is that of original ideas and personal voice, epitomized in our fifth grade students' collaboration with the Black Ensemble in writing and performing A Slave's Story as well as seventh grade's My American Dream poetry and portraits featured at the 345 Art Gallery.
Data trends also elucidated authenticity criteria that will be a continued focus at Polaris for the next several years. The first criterion for improvement is using formats from the professional world. While our student work comes in a variety of formats - from plays performed at professional theaters to artwork adorning the walls of Chicago galleries - our goal is to transition the practice of creating student-published books to focus more on gathering original community data to be used in reports that connect to environmental or social sciences. This shift is directly tied to the second area for growth; despite having authentic audiences for student work, data shows that Polaris could connect more deeply with our community and experts to determine products that address explicitly named external needs.
To add to our body of student work showcased on the Models of Excellence, we are currently in the process of submitting several of the products highlighted above.
"Most of all, the quality work Polaris creates are the students themselves."
"Most of all, the quality work Polaris creates are the students themselves."
-Ron Berger, Chief Academic Officer at EL Education
Polaris students continuously show remarkable mathematical growth through problem solving and discourse.
Polaris students become more ethical people through ongoing reflection.
Quality Work
Polaris students are active citizens; their authentic, personal voices are heard in high-quality work that connects academics to real-world issues.Quality Work
At Polaris, we have dramatically improved our strategic planning process and shared leadership practices that have allowed for focused, sustainable school growth.
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