Envision Learning Partners // Performance Assessment Study

PROJECT/

Envision Learning Partners (ELP) are consultants who help schools and districts implement Performance Assessment Systems.  Performance Assessment is a cutting edge pedagogy that shifts the emphasis from ranking kids with tests, to understanding why they think what they think.  Kids lead their own learning through multidimensional projects, while the teachers ask questions that guide them.  Performance Assessment Systems also improves equity, by raising expectations for all kids.

Envision wanted to understand why more school districts were not migrating to a Performance Assessment System.  What are schools looking for?  How do they think about the alphabet soup of educational initiatives?  How do those initiatives fit, or not, within their ecosystem of school improvement?

Our research project started with interviews of ELP coaches to understand what they do, and what they are seeing in the field.  From there we started to engage teachers, principals, superintendents and teaching coaches.  Some were performance assessment converts, others were skeptics.  All in all, we did 38 hours of interviews, including nine, two hour, in person interviews in Indianapolis Indiana, Ferguson Missouri and San Jose California.

Based on those findings, we targeted some specific areas where we thought we could meet our audience where they are, explain ELP’s offering and repair misconceptions about Performance Assessment.  Through a series of workshops with ELP coaches, we developed prototype videos and other materials that tried to hit those targets.  Then we took those prototypes back to our interviewees to understand what we got right, what missed the mark, and gain new insights.

RESULT/

Working with Thing Tank has helped ELP focus their communication goals, and kick started an internal process for achieving them. That’s going to help them reach a wider audience of curious educators and administrators. And it gives Performance Assessment advocates tools for explaining Performance Assessment to other teachers, administrators, parents and students.

ELP has started a producing a video series where coaches talk about Performance Assessment topics. The first video, based on one of our prototypes, is at the top of this page.  And a podcast is in the works.  But most importantly, they are building a cadence around sharing their knowledge with the educators of the world, whether they end up working with ELP or not.