AJ Rathmann-Noonan shares consortium lessons for scaling performance assessment

Hi, Chair Dinnowitz, and thank you for the support you've shown us already today.

My name is AJ Rathbuninen.

I'm Executive Director of the New York Performance Standards Consortium.

As you've heard, we're a homegrown model built by NYC educators for NYC students, a performance assessment that holds students to high standards.

My written testimony also includes information about our assessment system and its alignment to the New York State portrait.

The consortium began almost 30 years ago when New York City Superintendent Steve Phillips and Deborah Meyer sought state approval for a group of schools to use performance assessment instead of regents exams.

It was a founder and the DOE has effectively supported the consortium ever since.

As the rest of the system continued to use Regents exams, first through the alternative high school district, then the CFN structure, and now the affinity schools.

report without which we couldn't have built and sustained this system or welcome 10 new schools in 2013.

We've learned many lessons.

I'll share three today.

First, changing assessment is just the start.

It requires reorienting school culture towards inquiry, all of which takes extensive professional development.

and collaboration led by teachers, not outside vendors and consultants.

So the system is truly owned by the educators.

Second, this work cannot be dictated from the top.

The school system must instead provide what Commissioner Tom Sobel called top-down support for bottom-up school reform, like funding and structures that provide for collaboration, exactly what Affinity's partnership model enables, and school-based decision-making through programs like

PROS.

Third, high standards require accountability, but not the top-down test-based accountability we've relied on for 20 years.

It requires lateral accountability within and across schools and to the communities that schools serve.

The DOE can help by building more networks like Affinity and aligning incentives, including city dashboards, away from test scores and towards more robust measures of school quality.

Finally, I invite you and the council staff to see our work firsthand.

In October, our teachers hold half-day moderation studies to calibrate scoring of student work, the heart of our PD.

And in November and December, our network hosts intervisitation days.

Dates and RSVP information are at the bottom of my written testimony.

Wow, that's a very, very fast last sentence.

I love it.

Now, my favorite thing you said was that we have the expertise here in our city, that we don't need to hire outside vendors to do this work at great cost and probably lesser quality.

Can I ask you this other letter?