Measurable Growth

Yesterday, I had an "off day" in my indoor cycling class.  It happens occasionally.  I just can't get my legs to go as fast as the instructor is cuing or push through a level that it could do earlier in the week.  Last Wednesday, I had a similar problem in my weightlifting class.  A weight that I have been putting on my back for several months using a clean and press simply refused to be lifted.  Even when I dropped down a bit, I tapped my forehead with the bar on my first attempt to pull it up and had to sit out a few reps during the set.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Sometimes, I haven't eaten enough before going to class.  Other times I've been getting a cold that hasn't yet exhibited symptoms.  There have been times where I just haven't recovered from the previous day's class, and my legs, arms, shoulders, or core don't have more to give.  It can be discouraging if you are only comparing today to yesterday or this week to last week.  But, yesterday when I looked at my "off day" performance, I realized that a year ago, this would have been a very good day.  I was averaging just over a mile in four minutes.  That's lower than my current level of normal, but a year ago, it was my goal time for a mile, and four months before that, I hadn't even started cycling yet.  That weight I couldn't lift over my head last Wednesday was over 20 pounds heavier than what I was doing the same moves with a year ago.  In other words, I have made progress; and I know that because I have measurements.  

Recently, Adam Boxer posted this question on Twitter.  There were fifty replies directly to him and dozens more in conversations with the repliers, and it led to some interesting discussions.  My answer was that there wasn't enough information to tell, but that was largely because I don't understand the British system and how the curriculum is tested.  I would imagine a student or parent would look at this list and say they have regressed, but that is also a misrepresentation of the question.  After a few days of discussion, Adam gave his answer.  Each score showed that they had learned some of the content on that exam, almost none of which they had known before.  Therefore, the student had, in fact made progress.  I would also pose that (again, I don't know their system, so I could be wrong) the material probably increases in complexity and difficulty level as the year goes on, so having achieved competency on 40% of that content may be equal to or even better than knowing 80% of the material presented earlier in the year (more comparable to my "off day"after having progressed to a higher level).  

My point is this.  Growth is measurable.  Whether it is how much weight I can lift on an average day or the height of a plant, reading fluency, or how much a student has learned about math, there are ways to track it and observe progress.  It is not, however, always easy to measure.  In a different thread discussion on Twitter, a number of people replied to Greg Ashman's assertion about explicit and instruction and things that are measurable with some version of "really important parts of education are not measurable." I understand their point. Teachers teach a lot more than academic content, things like kindness, respect, teamwork, etc.  I would posit that a researcher running an experiment would be able to find a way to measure those things (How many times did a child smile at a classmate?  How often were kind words spoken?), and they would have people posted who jobs were to count those things.  But, the average teacher obviously cannot do that.  We have to base it more on general observations and "vibe," but that doesn't make growth in those areas immeasurable.  Growth can always be seen.

Grades are a piece of data, and I am not one of the people who think they should be abolished (I'm all for modifications to the way they are assigned, but one of the things pandemic lockdowns taught us was that students would not keep learning for intrinsic reasons if we got rid of them, as had been previously asserted).  I do think it is valuable to keep them in perspective.  Grades are A PIECE of data, but they are just one piece.  There are many formative assessments, checks for understanding, discussions with students about their learning, written work, and projects/labs which we put together in our understanding of student growth.  Teachers don't have time to consolidate those in a formal way, but over time, we grow our professional judgment to the point where we are able to develop a reasonable idea of growth from all of those inputs.  Grades matter; they just aren't the only things that matter.

It's summer, so none of this is helpful yet.  But when the school year begins next year, take in where your kids are.  You are taking in a constant stream of input.  You might be in a class where formal pretests are given, or you might just do some informal surveying of your class's knowledge.  You might even make it into a game that gives you actual information rather than icebreakers that 0.0% of people enjoy playing.  As the year goes on, you might repeat those questions (perhaps on one of those days that has a lot of interruptions where you have a hard time making forward progress).  This will give you a measurable way to track progress in your students.  Be sure to celebrate that growth with them, so when they have "an off day," they can recognize that they have grown to the point where what used to be out of their reach is now their norm.