Though student achievement results will not be released until later in the summer, a close inspection of the student H.E.A.T. and LoTi data at the end of the year will tell us how well we prepared students to showcase what they know and are able to do. Since the underlying thread to both the LoTi and H.E.A.T. frameworks are a set of evidence-based practices referred to as Digital Age Best Practices, we possess great confidence that the resulting achievement data will correlate to the amount of growth that occurred during the school year in both the level of teaching innovation (LoTi) as well as the amount of student H.E.A.T.
Our action research has shown that the best way to prepare students for intensive, multi-dimensional state assessments (e.g., PARCC, Smarter Balanced, PSSA, STAAR) is providing challenging and thoughtful instruction on a daily basis that mirrors the rigor found on many state assessments. As an ex-college football jock, let me offer a fundamental football cliché as a question… Does the physicality of our daily operational curriculum mirror the physicality of the state assessment in terms of cognitive complexity and real-world connections?
If yes, we can exude the same confidence of “…the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.” In other words, we did our best to address the pertinent content standards that students will need as they matriculate to the next grade level. If not, then perhaps, we need to brainstorm additional strategies that can help promote increased daily student engagement in the classroom. As we all know, providing high caliber instruction on a daily basis is difficult, challenging, and time-consuming. The key is incrementally improving our own level of performance as teachers and leaders which frequently leads to significant student achievement gains.
