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Regents Diploma serves as a motivator for our students while providing an objective (though imperfect) measure of accomplishment.

If they do not pass a test the first time, it is not awful if they take it again—we use it as a diagnostic, help them fill the learning gaps, and only the passing score goes on the transcript

in Mary’s case, to ask her to take that test yet once again would have been tantamount to child abuse.

Mary’s story, therefore, points to a key reason why evaluating teachers and principals by test scores is wrong.

It illustrates how the problems with value-added measures of performance go well beyond the technicalities of validity and reliability.

The basic rule is this: No measure of performance used for high-stakes purposes should put the best interests of students in conflict with the best interests of the adults who serve them.

I will just point out that under that system I may be penalized if future students like Mary do not achieve a 65 on the Regents exam.

Mary and I can still make the choice to say “enough”, but it may cost me a “point”, if a majority of students who had the same middle school scores on math and English tests that she did years before, pass the test.

But I can also be less concerned about the VAM-based evaluation system because it’s very likely to be biased in favor of those like me who lead schools that have only one or two students like Mary every year.

When we have an ELL (English language learner) student with interrupted education arrive at our school, we often consider a plan that includes an extra year of high school.

last few years “four year graduation rates” are of high importance

four-year graduation rate as a high-stakes measure has resulted in the proliferation of “credit recovery” programs of dubious quality, along with teacher complaints of being pressured to pass students with poor attendance and grades, especially in schools under threat of closure.

On the one hand, they had a clear incentive to “test prep” for the recent Common Core exams, but they also knew that test prep was not the instruction that their students needed and deserved.

in New York and in many other Race to the Top states, continue to favor “form over substance” and allow the unintended consequences of a rushed models to be put in place.

Creating bell curves of relative educator performance may look like progress and science, but these are measures without meaning, and they do not help schools improve.

We can raise every bar and continue to add high-stakes measures. Or we can acknowledge and respond to the reality that school improvement takes time, capacity building, professional development, and financial support at the district, state and national levels.

Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively.

It's an extreme example of what economists call "opportunity hoarding."

It's not quite a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game where rich kids get better educations, yet still get ahead even if they don't—but it's close enough.

Learning is much deeper if the student is thinking, 'I am doing this because it will help me learn this.'

actively judging their work and progress toward a goal, and determining what steps to take to reach it.

"The expectation is that not only are teachers using data, students are owning data,"

Padilla said it takes time to teach students how to read rubrics or use systems to track their progress. But, she said, the shift is worth it. "I think students tracking their own data is key to getting students invested in their education," she said. "If they don't see the direct results in that moment, it's hard for them to know where to go."

2. Vote

3. Set Goals

4. Form Groups

5. Quick Writes

6. Focus on the ABCs: Acceptance, Belonging and Community

7. Continually change the “state” of the classroom

8. Empathize

9.  Do a BRAIN checklist

10. Simplify

11. Chunk Information

12. Props

13. Breaks

14. Post-Its

15. Make Snowballs

16. Guessing Games

17. Balanced Inquiry

18. Mind-streaming

19. Be Interactive

20. HOPE

They initiated their study in 1979, and have been assessing the participants based on a wide range of variables (e.g., school performance, IQ, leadership, happiness) across multiple contexts (laboratory and home) since.

Cognitive giftedness matters.

While intellectually gifted children were not different than the comparison group with respect to their temperament, behavioral, social, or emotional functioning, they did differ in regards to their advanced sensory and motor functioning starting at age 1.5, their ability to understand the meaning of words starting at age 1, and their ability to both understand and communicate information thereafter.

Parents of intellectually gifted children reported similar observations and were more likely than those of average children to say that their kids actively elicited stimulation by, for example, requesting intellectual extracurricular activities.

The researchers also measured what they described as academic intrinsic motivation and identified the top 19 percent of the 111 adolescent participants as “motivationally gifted,” displaying extreme enjoyment of school and of learning of challenging, difficult, and novel tasks and an orientation toward mastery, curiosity, and persistence.

Interestingly, they found very little correspondence between intellectual giftedness and motivational giftedness.

Students with gifted curiosity outperformed their peers on a wide range of educational outcomes, including math and reading, SAT scores, and college attainment. According to ratings from teachers, the motivationally gifted students worked harder and learned more.

suggest that gifted curiosity is a distinct characteristic that contributes uniquely to academic success.

“Motivation should not be considered simply a catalyst for the development of other forms of giftedness, but should be nurtured in its own right,”

All in all, the Fullerton study is proof that giftedness is not something an individual is either born with or without—giftedness is clearly a developmental process.

“giftedness is not a chance event … giftedness will blossom when children’s cognitive ability, motivation and enriched environments coexist and meld together to foster its growth.”