In fact, we have even started trying our hand at using , or curriculum-embedded performance assessments, that we have borrowed and modified from the (MCUs) for Culinary Arts on Food Safety and Sanitation, provided by ESE. During future professional development days, we hope to guide educators toward refining instruments that will share common protocols for administering, scoring, interpreting, and reporting across the district for all Chapter 74 programs. But for our maiden voyage with DDMs, we have chosen two measures that address previously identified achievement gaps across our student body in the domains of career readiness, specifically employability skills, and literacy, more generally. DDM #1: A Measure of Communications Skills DDM #1 is a holistic evaluation that makes use of a writing rubric developed by to evaluate growth in writing and argumentation abilities among all of Tri-County’s grade 10 students (approximately 210 students). Ms. George’s preferred approach to moving DDM efforts forward is to engage faculty in deep thinking during professional learning opportunities and to leverage the meetings that she currently has with CVTE administrators and educators across the Commonwealth as opportunities to discuss DDM development and implementation options. Her recent efforts have been focused on research-based strategies for teaching and assessing writing, with the goal of preparing educators for DDMs that measure students’ growth in literacy. The approach has been a boon to shop educators who are strong technical educators but often lack the educational background to feel fully comfortable and confident in teaching embedded writing skills as part of technical skills attainment. The standardized approach to writing instruction and evaluation provided by the Collins Writing Program, Ms. George discovered, has offered CVTE educators the scaffolding, tools, and supports that they need to foster greater communication fluency among their students. Educators in the academic content areas initially expressed reservations about the prescriptive, “process-focused” techniques that Collins recommends, but after working with the new rubric, they have come to appreciate the shared vocabulary and holistic approach to evaluating writing. In addition, now that dialogue among academic and CVTE educators is more focused and directed toward improving literacy skills as a shared responsibility, these educators have moved toward exploring a collaboration in the rating and scoring process. Now, in many instances, both an academic educator and a CVTE educator rate writing assignments using a set of common holistic rubrics that establish performance levels at every grade and competency level.
In fact, we have even started trying our hand at using , or curriculum-embedded performance assessments, that we have borrowed and modified from the (MCUs) for Culinary Arts on Food Safety and Sanitation, provided by ESE. During future professional development days, we hope to guide educators toward refining instruments that will share common protocols for administering, scoring, interpreting, and reporting across the district for all Chapter 74 programs. But for our maiden voyage with DDMs, we have chosen two measures that address previously identified achievement gaps across our student body in the domains of career readiness, specifically employability skills, and literacy, more generally. DDM #1: A Measure of Communications Skills DDM #1 is a holistic evaluation that makes use of a writing rubric developed by to evaluate growth in writing and argumentation abilities among all of Tri-County’s grade 10 students (approximately 210 students). Ms. George’s preferred approach to moving DDM efforts forward is to engage faculty in deep thinking during professional learning opportunities and to leverage the meetings that she currently has with CVTE administrators and educators across the Commonwealth as opportunities to discuss DDM development and implementation options. Her recent efforts have been focused on research-based strategies for teaching and assessing writing, with the goal of preparing educators for DDMs that measure students’ growth in literacy. The approach has been a boon to shop educators who are strong technical educators but often lack the educational background to feel fully comfortable and confident in teaching embedded writing skills as part of technical skills attainment. The standardized approach to writing instruction and evaluation provided by the Collins Writing Program, Ms. George discovered, has offered CVTE educators the scaffolding, tools, and supports that they need to foster greater communication fluency among their students. Educators in the academic content areas initially expressed reservations about the prescriptive, “process-focused” techniques that Collins recommends, but after working with the new rubric, they have come to appreciate the shared vocabulary and holistic approach to evaluating writing. In addition, now that dialogue among academic and CVTE educators is more focused and directed toward improving literacy skills as a shared responsibility, these educators have moved toward exploring a collaboration in the rating and scoring process. Now, in many instances, both an academic educator and a CVTE educator rate writing assignments using a set of common holistic rubrics that establish performance levels at every grade and competency level.
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