Assessment Notes, Volume 2, Issue 2

The Past, Present and Future of the Grade Cluster Expectations (GCEs) in Health and Physical Education

By Ellen V. Harris
Assessment Specialist in Personal Development

PAST:

As we developed the Grade Cluster Expectations (GCEs) in Health and Physical Education, two committees composed of educators across the state have met monthly analyzing the national standards, a dozen or more state standards, and the present research in the field to align the GCEs with the Vermont State Standards. Now a year later and after a dozen or more drafts, the Grade Cluster Expectations in Health and Physical Education are in the process of official field review from the educators in Vermont.

This past year over a hundred health and physical educators at the fall and spring state conferences assisted in the preliminary review of the GCEs. Discussions focused on the purpose of clustering the standards, addressing developmental changes in the students, and adding rigor and relevance to the curriculum. The Grade Cluster Expectation document is to be used for aligning local assessments in health and physical education that are needed for compliance for Act 68.

PRESENT:

During the month of November three field review meetings were held throughout the state for health and physical educators. Invitational letters and emails were sent to all superintendents, curriculum directors and principals notifying them of these review sessions. The response was overwhelming! Over 130 educators registered for one of these three sessions. The participants included health educators, physical educators, curriculum directors, consumer science educators, and administrators.

The data collected from the field review sessions will be compiled and analyzed by the committees during the month of December. A revision of the document will be conducted depending on the input from the reviews.

FUTURE:

As we move into a new year, the committees will turn their focus onto developing assessments aligned with the GCEs. We will look to local and national efforts that are already in place to find assessments that are of high technical quality and align with our GCEs. One example of national input is the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. NASPE is presently designing assessments to align with their national standards and they are very interested in the work we are doing at The Vermont Institutes in the areas of Health and Physical Education assessment development.

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Testing Compact May Affect Education Standards By Nina Keck Vermont Public Radio (October 22, 2003 )
Vermont will join a compact with New Hampshire and Rhode Island to develop new tests to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. New math and reading tests must be in place by 2005 and federally approved science tests by 2007. State officials say the regional collaboration will save time and money. Bud Meyers is Deputy Commissioner for Standards and Assessment for the Vermont Department of Education. He says each state will receive $3 million from the federal government to help pay for new tests. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are only a handful of reputable testing companies that can handle such a large project. Small states, like Vermont will have a hard time negotiating for new tests when up against states like Texas and California. To even the playing field, Meyers says Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island are joining forces to form an unusual tri-state, testing compact. Bud Meyers stated: "Vermont, when all the assessments for grades 3-8 are in place, will test around 42,000 to 48,000 students, depending on the year. With the compact, we'll be testing around a quarter of a million students. And when you're dealing with test companies and production schedules that have to do with printing and scoring of tests, you get a lot more leverage with your contract with a larger number of students." Currently, under Vermont state law, standardized math and reading tests are given in the 4th, 8th and 10th grades. A science test was recently added for kids in 5th, 9th and 11th grades. As states go, that's a fair amount of testing. But under the federal No Child Left Behind law, additional math and reading tests must be given every year from 3rd through 8th grade and once during high school. Three science tests will be required before a student graduates. But states can't just go to a "test store" and buy these new exams off the rack because tests have to be tailored to each state. Doug Harris stated: "In Vermont, we have standards, but the standards aren't specific to each grade level. They're in clusters, like there are standards for kindergarten through 4th grade, 5th through 8th, and 9th through 12th. You can't really develop tests like that." Doug Harris is Executive Director of The Vermont Institutes, a nonprofit organization in Montpelier that provides teacher training, curriculum workshops and test development. He says to make new tests the state had to first specify what students in each grade need to know. They studied curriculums from every supervisory union in Vermont. They looked at national and international studies and they held workshops all over the state with educators, professional consultants and members of the public. The process, says Harris, has taken months. "You have to realize that this is the foundation - it's like building a house. If the expectations aren't right, there's no way you can build a good test. So you've got to get that right to start with." By joining the tri-state compact, Vermont will combine its educational requirements with those of New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Then one set of tests will be designed for all three states. Bill Mathis, head of the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, says the financial savings of the compact are obvious. But he worries that by joining with Rhode Island and New Hampshire, Vermont's grade level equivalents - the ones the state worked so hard to define - will be diluted. Bill Mathis stated: "And of course the bad side of going in with other states is that you don't get them to the Vermont standards either; you get them into the tri-state compromise. And that's a problem." Educators from all three states have been meeting over the past several months to create a common set of standards. Pat Halloran, Director of the Vermont Reads Institute, has been part of that process. She says working with the other states has actually been a plus. "It helped us look at some of the work they've done and then reflect on the work that we've done and say, 'Oh gee, we missed this piece, we need this here or I like how they did it with their grade level expectations,' and mesh the two documents to where they're much stronger, much clearer, very explicit. And I think extremely helpful for teachers." State education officials say joining the compact will save the state up to $2 million. © Copyright 2003, VPR
Reflections on GLE Participation by Linda Keating, Curriculum Coordinator, CCSU
Let's say we didn't live in educational times that demanded comparable grade level testing of math and reading or language arts in grades 3-8 and once in high school…no such thing as No Child Left Behind. And let’s say we didn't live in educational times that demanded a plan for local assessment that would be fully implemented by September 1, 2005…no such thing as Act 68 (nee Act 60). What would we have done to make the best use of our educational time in such times? Because as educators we had all agreed to live, and pretty much voluntarily, in educational times focused on the Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities, I would hope that we would have been investing our time and effort in supporting schools and districts in Vermont in the implementation of that Framework by developing Vermont's Grade Level Expectations. So I do feel fortunate as an educator that since January of 2003 I have had the opportunity to participate in this process. This process has provided me with valuable professional development that continues to resonate in the daily opportunities I have as a curriculum coordinator. Because I was able to work at various levels on both the reading and writing committees and participate in three sessions of field reviews, I have used my working knowledge of the drafts to facilitate and reflect on the local implementation and the assessment of focal learning standards in the critical areas of reading, writing, and math. More than that, I have also been able to carry with me the richness of the professional dialogue with GLE committee colleagues around what all children should know and be able to do at various grade levels to demonstrate both understanding and acceptable levels of performance. The depth of the knowledge I have now concerning things like "grain size" and "balance of representation" has helped immensely in using the draft to do a preliminary audit of our curriculum for gaps and alignment. As a set of outcome measures for assessment, the GLE's will serve as an important tool to strengthen local curriculum. I feel fortunate to have been included in this process. I look forward to the finalizing of this product and to the benefits it will yield Vermont's students and their teachers.
Grade Level Expectations/Grade Cluster Expectations November and December 2003
Discipline	Activity and Timeline
Math, Reading and Writing including the Tri-State GLEs	Field Review comments for K-2 and High School integrated into GLEs Review by Development Committees of Tri-State New England GLEs Integration of Tri-State and Local Vermont GLEs completed by Development Committees and Assessment Team Staff. Tri-State Review of suggested changes from all the states to be completed by December 2.
Physical Education and Health	Field Reviews scheduled for November 6, 18 and 25. Integration of comments in December.
Arts	Field Reviews scheduled for Dec 2, 3, 4.
Science	Oversight Review of 7.12 December 12
Social Studies	History GCEs developed Oversight review of other H & SS strands
Non-Native Language	Complete first draft of GCEs and schedule Field Review for January
Science Team Assessment Update November 19, 2003
“This was an…informative process. I feel that I understand the concept of GCEs much better after this meeting.” “I think that the work that comes out of this will be very helpful to teachers.” These are comments offered by participants in evaluation of the November 6, 2003, Science Grade Cluster Expectations (GCEs) Development/Review session. At this full-day work session K-16 Vermont educators took a first look at the Life Science GCEs drafted by groups of teachers from around the state. Science Development Coordinators Pam Quinn (VI), Dave White (DOE) and Gail Hall (VI), have been meeting regularly with science teachers representing grade level groups (grades PreK-4, 5-8 and 9-12) to develop GCEs, utilizing evidences from the Vermont Framework of Standards and national science resources (National Science Education Standards, AAAS Benchmarks, AAAS Atlas, Science for All Americans and Making Sense of Secondary Science, Driver et. al.) The task of the most recent gathering was to develop and review the GCEs within a portion of the Life Science content domain (Vt. Standards 7.13a-aaa). This is but one step in the spiral process of development/review/revision/field testing that the Science Team is using to articulate GCEs as required by the NCLB Act. During July 2003 the first Science Summer Institute involving 22 educators and members of the business community aided in the clarification of GCE content and in evaluation of content coherence across grade levels for the Physical Science GCEs. In January 2003 an Oversight Committee (OSC) evening meeting provided a final evaluation for the Inquiry GCEs. The OSC meeting for the Physical Science GCEs is scheduled for December 12, 2003. A second Summer Science Institute is planned for summer 2004. Since beginning this process, Science GCEs have been completed for the areas of Science Inquiry (Vt. Standards 7.1 and 7.2) and Physical Science (Vt. Standards 7.12), along with the Life Science GCEs now in progress. Science GCEs are now being used by teachers in their classrooms and schools to inform development of curriculum, assessments and local programs. As we move toward a Science GCEs completion date of fall 2005, resources and programs will be developed to help schools make the transition from the printed document to improved student learning in science. Another evaluation comment from a participant at the November 6 meeting reflects the enthusiasm we all feel: “Can’t wait to see the end result!”
Tri-State New England Partnership
We mentioned in the last Assessment Notes that Vermont was working with other New England states to develop common GLEs for state assessment. And we still are, but with only a segment of the states that make up the New England Compact. Hence, the new name--- ~Tri-State New England Partnership~
Enhanced Assessment?
The Departments of Education for Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine received a federal grant to develop professional development support for the states’ efforts at ensuring that ALL students participate in comprehensive assessment systems in each state. A team of eight Vermont educators* has been participating in intensive training and development sessions sponsored by EDC, an educational consulting group in Massachusetts, with the goal of designing materials and workshops to help all Vermont educators (including classroom teachers, special educators, ESL teachers and administrators) implement the GLEs and GCEs into their instructional practices. More about this work will be in the next Assessment Notes. *Cindy Moran, DOE Carl Lager, DOE Jude Newman, DOE Marty Gephart, VI Pat Buttolph, VI Aldo Bianchi, VI Lyn Haas, VI Michael Hock, WestEd and DoE
Updating Administrators
Lyn Haas met with administrators in five regional groups around the state, including the NE Kingdom, Champlain Valley, Addison County, Rutland County and the SE Vermont Community Learning Collaborative. The focus of the meetings was to discuss the assessment work as it progresses, to share some ways of using the Assessment Literacy manual, and to consider ways to support each other in the design of Local Comprehensive Assessment Plans. A suggestion that she will follow up on is to have a statewide work day with curriculum coordinators to write LCAPs using a draft template that will be modified as the work moves forward. More on this in a few weeks, but please contact Lyn Haas at 802-828-1306 or by e-mail at lhaas@vermontinstitutes.org if you have thoughts about this.
GCE Committee Participants

The Past, Present and Future of the Grade Cluster Expectations (GCEs) in Health and Physical Education

The Past, Present and Future of the Grade Cluster Expectations (GCEs) in Health and Physical Education

Testing Compact May Affect Education Standards