By Anthony Cody.

We have been seeing the fallout from heavy handed monitoring and enforcement that is coming to us with the new Common Core tests. As I pointed out Sunday, this sort of security is made necessary when you have created a system where heavy consequences are attached to success on these tests. Everyone involved – from top administrator down to kindergartener, is affected by these consequences, so the high stakes systems must be designed to include the capacity to monitor everyone involved. And since the corporations that publish the tests are distant, they seek to deputize administrators and teachers in their surveillance and enforcement system.

But there are ways to design an educational system that is resistant to cheating. It will require some major shifts in our thinking, but we can do that. All it takes is a bit of imagination, and some investment of trust in our teachers and students.

Just as high stakes testing makes surveillance and enforcement necessary, its replacement with a different approach to accountability will allow us to escape such onerous systems.

As a sort of model, I would like to describe one of the most effective classroom interventions I have ever seen. It was carried out by two teachers, Gabe Jenkins and Fay Pisciotta, who taught science at Edna Brewer Middle School in Oakland, California, about eight years ago.

Jenkins and Pisciotta were struggling with a problem at their school. They had some students who were very well prepared and motivated, and others who were not as prepared academically. Their instruction tended to target the middle, with the result being that the more capable students were not challenged, and the less prepared students were not really inspired either. The two of them happened to attend a workshop led by Dr. Kathie Nunley, focused on a teaching strategy called Layered Curriculum (see here for more information.)

The basic idea of Layered Curriculum is that you give all students a set of “bronze level” assignments to choose from. There might be five or six options, and the students must choose to do three of them. These might include taking notes from the chapter in the text, or from a lecture. They might choose to create a poster, or write a little play acting out the important concepts. As a result of completing these three assignments, they are expected to master core concepts related to the topic under study. Before they move on, they are required to have an oral quiz with the teacher, who interrogates them to make sure they really understand the concept.

Once they have passed that oral quiz, they can move on to the “silver level” assignment. This was usually some sort of lab activity or investigation the teacher would have set up in the room. They would complete the experiment and write up their results in order to get credit. Once that is done, they can complete the “gold level” assignment, which would usually be some sort of research paper grappling with big ideas related to the subject.

The students are working autonomously or in small groups most of the time. The teacher is available to support them, and to give them oral quizzes, but they are not leading them through every step of their activity.

Jenkins and Pisciotta both used this method, and taught the same group of students from one year to the next, following them from 7^th to 8^th grade — so between them they taught all the science classes at their grade level. They were involved in a teacher research project which I helped design, called Project POSIT, and they wrote up an analysis of their work (which you can download here:  BrewerLayeredwriteup2). It took a while for the students to learn the system, and it took the teachers a while to develop the curriculum and instructions so the students could succeed at this autonomous work style. But they had amazing results. When they compared the number of assignments completed, they saw a significant increase after shifting to the layered approach.

Here is what they reported:

…it is our belief that the most influential factor underlying this increase is increased student motivation arising from student choice. We believe that, following an initial adjustment period for the students, they began to view the layered curriculum as a very positive structure, one that clearly and predictably rewarded them for doing more work, and they bought in. One student noted, “There are different things you can do…and it’s your choice of what assignments you want to do.” Another noted, “What I liked about layered curriculum is that I am able to do many types of work which makes the class more interesting which helps me to learn.”

They also reported that they were far better informed about what their students actually knew, and this is the key insight related to cheating. They explain:

…the switch to layered curriculum allowed us as teachers to know with greater clarity individual students’ degrees of understanding of the content, as well as where their misconceptions still remained. This enhanced insight into student understanding arose primarily from the way in which we structured students’ independent time (when they worked on layered curriculum assignments). During independent work time, students were required to speak with the teacher after completing an assignment. In this quick conversation, we asked the students a few questions to assess whether or not they learned what they were supposed to learn by completing the assignment. Often these little formative assessments took the form of 1) asking students to explain some key concept in their own words (e.g., “Talk to me about ‘equilibrium’”; 2) asking students to solve a problem based on information/formulae/etc. found in the assignment (e.g., a density/mass/volume problem); or 3) asking students to create a drawing or diagram which explained a key idea (e.g., “Draw a diagram that shows the structure of an atom with 11 electrons, making sure to show the different energy levels and how the electrons fit within those energy levels.”). If students correctly did what we asked them to do, they received credit and were told to move on to the next assignment. If students gave incorrect answers, they were instructed to review the assignment, go over it with a friend (if they wanted), and try again after a little time had passed. While these little mini-assessments were quick, they provided an enormous amount of information regarding student misconceptions, so that we could address these misconceptions in a whole-class format.

At the time, the state of California had only one low stakes test for science at the middle school level, and it was given in the 8^th grade. From the test given in the spring of 2007, to the one given the following year, the students at Edna Brewer Middle School went from 38% proficient or advanced, to 72% proficient and advanced. And the students designated as lower socioeconomic status actually outperformed those not designated as disadvantaged.

So what can we learn from this regarding test security and the need for surveillance? First of all, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about Edna Brewer Middle School in the year 2007 – except for the dedication and imagination of these teachers and students. I visited the school, and watched the process in action. Class sizes were typically in the mid thirties, and the school was not any sort of a magnet or small school. But Jenkins and Pisciotta made sure they knew what their students were learning. They did frequent small scale formative assessments. They gave the students autonomy, which we know from Daniel Pink’s work is essential to motivation. They allowed students to learn things the way they wanted to, rather than dragging them lockstep through some scripted curriculum. The teachers did give traditional quizzes and tests to check on student understanding, but they also worked one on one with students, and this allowed them to get a clear picture of what their students knew and did not know.

This sort of classroom-based formative assessment is what extensive research confirms is essential to student learning. This is done all the time by skilled teachers, and it allows us to guide students to improve, and also, as noted by Jenkins and Pisciotta, to adjust our instruction to address misconceptions we encounter.

One thing that is perhaps understated in the report by Jenkins and Pisciotta is the relationships that they succeeded in building with their students. They showed the students respect by giving them the autonomy to guide their own learning, make choices and work in a loosely structured environment. Each one on one conversation they led about the subject matter was a chance to relate to the student, to hear and respond to their conception of the subject at hand. This sort of exchange defies cheating on multiple levels. First of all, there is that relationship. You are looking eye to eye. You are using your own words to explain something. No copying is possible. Trust is being built in to the process.

What does it take to make this sort of teaching more widespread? While Jenkins and Pisciotta managed to do this with normal-sized classes, it would be easier if classes were a bit smaller. They were given the autonomy as teachers to choose to implement a different strategy. They took on the challenge of doing something ambitious and new, and they really could not tell ahead of time how this might affect their test scores.

Conversely, teachers under great pressure to increase test scores may hesitate to experiment this way, and likewise, administrators under similar pressure may insist on more traditional instruction. When high stakes accountability is built around external standardized tests, autonomy is lost for everyone in the system, from administrators to teachers, and down to students as well. The wellspring of motivation is poisoned by the lack of trust, as we become more and more ensnared by the need to comply with externally imposed expectations. Students become alienated from teachers, and teachers from administrators. Guidance and inspiration is replaced by supervision and enforcement. Eye to eye teacher-student conversations about subjects under study are replaced by high stakes tests and palm scans to make sure there is no cheating. That is what we are seeing unfold, as a result of our high stakes testing system.

The systems that are resistant to cheating are those built on human relationships and trust. This is the essential currency of the classroom. Good teachers do not get students to learn by threatening them with consequences, immediate or distant. We do not seek to learn because that knowledge will be on the test, and failing the test will yield disaster. We seek to learn to satisfy our innate curiosity, so we can use what we have learned to explore and understand the world around us, so we can build and create, so we can teach others, so we can be powerful actors on the stage of life that is all around us.

If our success depends on merely passing a test, then cheating is just as good a way to go as learning. And we must have intensive surveillance and security to ensure that cheating is not possible. But if the tests are an artificial construct, designed to replicate and justify privilege, and are not a genuine reflection of our abilities to perform in the real world, then they do not deserve the determinative power they have been given.

Teachers and parents and students working together are the best guides for student growth. We need systems of accountability that hold the state and school district accountable for providing a suitable learning environment, with the resources and class sizes students need to learn well. Society must take responsibility for providing our students with a roof over their head, medical care, and a source of food and nutrition so their bodies and minds can grow, and focus on their studies. And teachers should be accountable for creating nurturing environments that challenge their students to take responsibility for their learning, and provide avenues for them to develop as human beings. Authentic student learning can be made visible in many ways, as has been demonstrated by the Performance Standards Consortium schools in New York, or Mission Hill school in Boston.

Decentralization and autonomy are key and trust can then be built at every level – and that is the best form of security we can achieve. Only when this trust in our students and teachers is restored can we escape the trap of a high stakes testing regime enforced by state and corporate surveillance.

What do you think about this model? Does this offer a better way to assess student learning and eliminate the need for state or corporate surveillance?

(Thanks to Gabe Jenkins and Fay Pisciotta for their permission to share their fine work here.)