In 2012, all grade-level teams at Mildred M. Hawk Elementary School (affectionately known as Hawk Elementary), a K–5 building in Texas’s Denton Independent School District, set about raising student achievement in mathematics through the use of collaborative common assessments. While Hawk Elementary didn’t have terrible aggregate scores compared with the state, they weren’t at 100 percent success, and they clearly had groups of learners who were struggling. The staff wanted to make certain that they did not simply focus on the results of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test but instead prepared their learners to be career and college ready. They developed a schoolwide goal to increase the learners’ proficiency levels in the areas of problem solving and critical thinking, as they firmly believed that if their learners could do that level of rigorous work, they would perform well on any state test they encountered. That year, the third-grade team received its 2012 STAAR test results for mathematics, which table 2.1 shows.
Based on these state data, each team from kindergarten to grade 5 established improvement goals, commonly identified as SMART goals, that aligned to the building-level goal to improve mathematics scores (see chapter 3, page 41, for an in-depth explanation of SMART goals). All the teams then monitored learners’ growth, using their ongoing and grade level–appropriate classroom mathematics assessments. The entire building used common formative and summative mathematics assessments. Together, the teams created rubrics for three mathematical areas—(1) computational accuracy, (2) mathematical language, and (3) problem solving—that they would consistently use across all the grade levels.
Table 2.1: Hawk Elementary School’s Third-Grade STAAR Mathematics Results, 2012
| Students | Total Number of Students | Percentage of Students Passing |
| All | 122 | 73 |
| Economically Disadvantaged | 7 | 29 |
| Asian | 8 | 100 |
| Black or African American | 7 | 57 |
| Hispanic | 22 | 68 |
| Biracial or Multiracial | 3 | 67 |
| White | 82 | 73 |
| Female | 57 | 74 |
| Male | 65 | 72 |
| Students Receiving Special Education | 14 | 36 |
Source: © 2016 by Susannah O’Bara. Used with permission.
As vertical K–5 teams, teachers practiced scoring student work together to monitor student learning, calibrate scoring for common data, align their expectations across all the grade levels, and ultimately improve their targeted instructional decision making. Each teacher was randomly assigned a learner, whose work he or she always brought to the monthly staffwide data team meetings for vertical scoring (for example, kindergarten teacher A always brought student 3’s work to the team meetings). Simultaneously, all teachers monitored learners in all classrooms (not just the student whose work they brought to every team meeting) and engaged all their learners in the various common assessments, using the exact same measurement tools for all their learners in their grade levels. Vertical teams reviewed work samples during monthly meetings, and they posted the results as evidence to monitor progress toward their overall student achievement goal.
Gradually, teams increased the rigor of their expectations. For instance, once the kindergarten teachers realized the caliber of work their learners would face in third grade, they were able to better align their expectations for their kindergarten learners. Over time, teams noticed a significant improvement in the quality of all their learners’ work in mathematics. All the teams posted significant gains (S. O’Bara, personal communication, July 2016). As an example, table 2.2 (page 24) features the third-grade team’s results.
Table 2.2: Hawk Elementary School’s Third-Grade State STAAR Mathematics Results, 2012–2014
Source: © 2016 by Susannah O’Bara. Used with permission.
The qualitative data were equally rewarding. In Hawk Elementary, teachers commonly voice appreciation for their peers’ work. For example, in the spring of 2014, fifth-grade mathematics teachers noted their surprise and delight at the deep problem solving and rigorous work the kindergarten students generated in mathematics (S. O’Bara, personal communication, July 2016). Moreover, the principal was able to stop in any classroom and have conversations with random students that revealed rigorous thinking in their mathematics work. Even though the teachers had experienced great results, they knew their work was not yet done. All the teams had similar SMART goals, and all teams continued their energies in mathematics while adding in other focused areas (such as reading) with equal commitment and diligence.
Another school, Rutland High School in Rutland, Vermont, established itself as a PLC and started using collaborative common assessments after it learned the school needed improvement (B. Olsen, personal communication, July 2016). The staff could have found it challenging to develop collaborative common assessments when the teams were so small (just one or two people per course), but the staff members worked together to develop a consistent set of rubrics that they could use schoolwide, while still assessing their individual departments’ content standard expectations. Rutland High found innovative ways to organize small teams at the secondary level, such as the following.
• Ninth-grade mathematics and earth science teachers meet as an interdisciplinary team that focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
• English 1 and World History 1 teachers meet as an interdisciplinary team that focuses on global studies.
• English 2 and World History 2 teachers meet as an interdisciplinary team that focuses on global studies.
• Special educators and paraeducators are integrated into the core-subject teams.
• Singletons who don’t have colleagues to collaborate with on-site instead collaborate off-site with colleagues in other schools.
The teams also found innovative ways to use common assessments with interdisciplinary subjects. They began with rubrics in technical reading and writing and, over time, added rubrics in cross-cutting skills and processes, like public speaking, analytical thinking, creative thinking, and researching. Teams meet for an hour every Wednesday, and they regularly use the schoolwide rubrics to monitor student achievement through the common assessment process within their individual curricula. New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) data indicate that their hard work has improved their students’ learning in all tested areas. In addition, they continue to make significant gains in learning for all students, including the economically disadvantaged students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL). Students have demonstrated