Quantitative Evidence of Academic Growth

Overview of Quantitative DAG Section

Quantifiable data is essential to enabling an accurate estimation of one's effectiveness as a teacher. In this section, I provide documentation and analysis of the data demonstrating the dramatic academic growth that my students exhibited over an 8-month interval of rigorous instruction. The central assessment that I administered, from which these data are derived encompassed fundamental areas of life science, including the chemistry of biomolecules, cell stucture and function, organ structure and function, genetics, reproduction, evolution and ecology.

Having been granted considerable autonomy in formulating a new science curriculum, I spent several months spanning the late-Spring and Summer engaged in the process of procuring materials, structuring lessons, and conferring with colleagues and supervisors in completing this formidable task. Foremost among my criteria were comprehensiveness of content and clarity and coherence between instructional and assessment materials. I found that the suite of materials and the breadth and depth of summative assessments made Science Fusion most ideal for teaching and testing alike.

This text, though an important part of my instruction was merely one element in a corpus of texts, articles, artifacts, videos and other diverse teaching implements of which I availed myself to deliver the highest standard of teaching of which I was capable. The simplistic, yet foundational feature of Science Fusion’s content I conceived as an instructional assets, as it enabled me to more easily differentiate, providing a broad knowledge-base for the majority of my learners while permitting me to modulate the rigor and depth of my instruction by incorporating content of greater complexity based on observations and analyses of student aptitude, interest and performance on formative and summative assessments.

Standards & Assessment

As can be seen, the summative assessment (chosen from the bank of comprehensive tests included in the teacher’s edition of the Science Fusion text) covers a broad range of topics consistent with the core of concepts that my curriculum was conceived to encompass and accords with Middle School learning goals as specified in the widely adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), developed collaboratively by states and variably and independently adhered to by individual school districts throughout the nation. The aforesaid concepts included the biochemical foundations of biology, cellular organization, organ systems, cell replication/reproduction, the rudiments of nutrition, and principles of evolution and ecology. The assessment period spanned a single school year. I administered the same assessment, covering the same content, spaced several months apart (i.e. in early Fall and Spring). Lessons delivered and assessments administered within this interval were designed and selected to reinforce and expand upon topics covered in the initial or diagnostic assessment.

SLO Assessment (Amen-Ra).pdf

Assessment

Assessment selected to demonstrate quantitative student growth.

MS LS DCI combinedf.pdf

Standards

Delineation and explanation of NGSS Middle School Life Science standards.

SLO Assessment Answer Key.pdf

Assessment Answer Key

Above are answers to the questions comprising the assessment, with explanations accompanying each.

Assessment Key

As is evident from the answer key accompanying the Science Fusion text, correct answers are wedded with explanations as to why alternative answers are incorrect. I employed this answer key as a guide in my structured and informal reviews with students. Each major unit also featured formative assessments accompanied by explanatory answer keys that featured prominently in my post-test reviews and assuredly contributed to the appreciable improvement in scores observed between administering the first and second summative assessments.

Mastery Tracker Excerpt from SLO.pdf

Student Data Tracker Excerpted from SLO

Above is an excerpt of the data delineating my students' performance on the temporally separated assessments, I and II.

Data & Analysis

Summary of Results:

Assessment I Average: 43%

Assessment II Average: 78%

35% point difference

Assessment I Administration: October

Assessment II Administration: May

~7-month period of instruction

I elected to employ the data derived from my students on this test in my district-mandated, teacher evaluation-contingent Student Learning Objective (SLO). My targeted performance objective was to effect a minimum fifteen percentage point increase in the score of each individual student from the initial to final assessments. [This is the score indicated as Column F on the excerpted data sheet.] I was greatly gratified that every single student (save several who withdrew from the school by the time of the second test) met my/our objective of a fifteen-point improvement. Yet more momentous and gratifying was the dramatic thirty-five percentage point increase in the average score, from ~43% on Assessment I to ~78% on Assessment II. This is a clear demonstration of dramatic academic growth that is measurable and rigorous.

I met individually and regularly with each student and we collaboratively strategized flexible approaches to improve their scores. All of my students received the benefit of structured review sessions prior to each major unit assessment comprising the topics covered on Assessments I & II. Many students availed themselves of small after-school study sessions wherein I was able to give them more individualized attention. Many more students availed themselves of opportunites to re-do lessons linked to content covered on the Assessment; I incentivized this option by offering extra credit or grade replacement/augmentation to students who exhibited marked improvement in performance. These collective measures combined to catalyze the quantitative growth discernible in the data. As importantly, my students clearly perceived that positive consequences accrue from disciplined intellectual output; they envisaged a goal of academic growth, worked to master the mateiral with my aid and reaped the rewards of this work in their perfomance. This very experience can serve as an academic door opener, reinforcing habits that will serve my students well throughout their academic careers. These are the types of results that typify the transformational teacher.

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