Key GCR2 SLO Decisions
Student Population
Number of Students
- Will there be a required minimum number of students for an SLO?
- Will both Class and Targeted Group SLOs be permitted?
- Should an SLO’s student population include students seen during one instructional period, or should multiple sections be included?
- What percentage of a teachers course load should be included in an SLO?
- What aspects of students should teachers describe in their SLOs?
- Will rosters or some other mechanism be used to clarify which students are in an SLO?
- To what degree of specificity will special student populations be denoted on rosters?
- What types of data points should be included on the student rosters?
Learning Content
Whole or Part
- Should the learning content be the whole set of course standards or part?
- What is considered the most important learning for each content area?
- How should teachers blend the ideas of essential standards and those students have not learned?
- Should there be a minimum number of standards suggested for courses?
- Will certain clusters of standards be suggested to teachers?
- What source(s) of standards will be used for the course/content area(s)?
- Will standards be cited by reference, using verbatim wording of the standards, paraphrased, or written in another form?
- To what extent should/must Missouri’s College and Career Ready Standards be included in an SLO?
- To what extent should industry/national/international standards be included?
- What are the district’s learning content priorities/needs and must/should they be included?
- Which data source(s) and level of review are required or recommended for SLOs?
- What is the level of vertical alignment required to be articulated to ensure future course preparedness for each SLO?
- What format for indicating standards will be expected for an SLO?
- What constitutes a proper amount of student need for the content?
Interval of Instruction
Course Length
- What options will be presented for interval (year, semester, quarter, varied)?
- To what extent should pacing and key learning experiences be referenced?
Assessments
Deciding on Approved Assessments
- Can a pre-assessment be administered identically as a post-assessment?
- For which courses is no pre- or post- assessment available?
- Will a committee review assessments at the school or district level before usage?
- Must pre- and post-assessments be approved before teachers administer them in the classroom with students? Should this be a separate workflow from the overall SLO submission?
- For which courses will post-assessments be developed, and by whom?
- Should assessments be standardized at the district, school, or department/grade level?
- To what extent will teacher-developed assessments be used for SLOs?
- For what courses should State or district assessments be used?
- Will there be a quality assurance process for assessments in terms of their alignment, administration, usage, and approval processes?
- What documentation of administration accommodations is expected?
- For real-time assessments (e.g., push-ups, singing, dancing, one-on-one responses), will proctors, random visits, video-recordings or other mechanisms be established to ensure administration integrity?
- How many additional administrations (re-tests) will be permitted?
- If re-tests are allowed, under what conditions (just “low” performers, must re-test with different administrator, must use already approved alternate version of the assessment?
- How will consistency in administration across a common assessment be upheld/facilitated?
- Should SLO-related instruction take place before administration? If so, to what extent?
- Which staff members will be permitted to score the pre- and post-assessments? To what extent will scores be verified?
- Where will scoring calculations be made explicit?
- To what level of quality should the pre- and post- assessments be aligned with the learning content?
- How strongly must the pre-assessment reflect the content of the post-assessment?
- Will the assessment(s) provide the needed scoring specificity, or are additional reports needed?
- If additional reports are needed, can and/or how will they be produced?
- Which department or staff position is responsible to disseminate needed assessment report(s)?
- When will the needed report(s) be made available to teachers, schools, etc.?
- Will multiple measures be required and/or recommended for pre- and post-assessments?
- If multiple pre-assessment measures are used, what guidance on weighting should be provided?
Student Growth Targets
Baseline Data
- How many data sets are needed to establish a baseline?
- What role will data sets beyond the pre-assessment play in an SLO?
- Must individual student baselines be recorded, average performance on the baseline, or both?
- What types of student growth should be factored (average growth, % of students achieving targets, etc.)
- Will we define a year’s worth of growth for each course? If so, how?
- How might expectations be different for students behind grade level?
- How will we blend the idea of growth with proficiency?
- What impact will dosage (amount of time a staff member has with each student) have on target-setting?
- What process will be used to decide how to set targets for special student populations?
- What types of approaches will be permitted/encouraged for target-setting? (common growth, growth to mastery, banded, etc.) Individual or Collective Targets
- Will there targets be set for individuals, collective groups, or some other method?
- Is there a minimum threshold for the percentage of students that must meet targets?
- Is there a minimum threshold for individual student targets?
- What data sources could/must be used to set targets?
Global Processes
Approval Processes
- How will the approval process for SLOs be structured?
- What will the timeline for SLO submission look like and when will it be set each year?
- Will there be a single submission date or multiple submission dates?
- What will be the timeframe between teacher SLO submittals and feedback?
- How will approvals be documented?
- What site-based discussions should be expected, such as the frequency and nature of SLO conferences, identifying and determining baseline data, and utilizing support and resources?
- What due dates need to be established (training, development, approvals, revisions, post-assessing, reporting results)?
- How will due dates be communicated?
- What will the process look like to monitor for compliance with due dates?
- What will happen if a due date is missed?
- Is there a need for data providers to adjust procedures in order to comprehensively support schools in a timely manner?
- Will there be a quality monitoring process?
- How will the quality of SLOs be monitored?
- What will be the outcome if the quality is rated too low?
- For what aspects of SLO implementation should a rubric be developed (SLO quality, leadership quality, degree of attainment)?
- What content should be reviewed in assessing various aspects of SLO processes? (Break out bands by phase perhaps?)
- When during the year will quality be assessed?
- How will SLO results translate to teacher outcomes? (e.g., Will each SLO comprise a percentage of an evaluation score? A certain amount of points?)
- When multiple SLOs are used, how will they be weighted?
- What aspects of the SLO results will be a factor? (e.g., SLO quality, % of students meeting targets, average growth, proximity to targets)
- What training will be provided to district staff and schools?
- To what extent is it required? How will make-up trainings and late-hires be handed during the year?
- What will the content and timeframe be for the training?
- Who should conduct the training?
- What is the timeline for training? When will training take place? What will be the format (face-to-face versus virtual, content and activities of each session)? How much training will be required/offered (frequency and number of sessions)?
- Will participants be assessed before and/or after training?
- Will there be individual, group, or district training after initial training for teachers needing help in developing or improving SLOs?
- How can initiatives be integrated, such as SIPs, Missouri’s College and Career Ready Standards, etc.?
- What changes need to occur throughout central office to fully support schools?
- What departments will be most affected and require additional support?
- How will disputes within the SLO approval process be handled?
- Will there be a help line available for questions or guidance?
- Who will be the central point person(s) to ensure the success of the initiative?
- Should standards be cited by number, verbatim, or paraphrased for learning content?
- Must assessments be attached as part of the SLO?
- Must assessments be described, such as by indicating types of items in the SLO?
- Will rosters be used to connect teachers with the students included in the SLO?
- How will the SLO workflow be managed (electronic platform, hard copies, electronic documents via email)?
- Will differences in class sizes, school levels, instructional time (dosage), special needs etc. warrant separate or additional consideration to ensure fairness and equity?