How the NJ DOE turned Student-Centered SGOs into a Teacher-Centered Nightmare

What School Districts Can Do To Fix The Problem?

What is a Student Growth Objective (SGO) and what does it tell us? 

If you are not familiar with SGOs, quite simply it’s an evaluation technique for school districts to determine Teacher effectiveness. An SGO is created by the Teacher at the beginning of the year by looking at their class and each student’s past achievement and determining what a reasonable instructional goal to attain by the end of the school year. 

The concept is sound. The implementation is where the Department got it wrong. And this article will explain how it got it wrong.

Let’s start with why SGOs can be a good thing for students, teachers and education. If SGOs are used properly they promote a student-centered approach, they also promote an individualized academic mindset, and lastly it provides a measurable method to hold Teachers accountable for student learning.

Where’s the problem? This sounds amazing. SGOs create a school environment that supports the individual student, right? The answer is that they can, but not if they aren’t used properly and the way the Department has implemented SGOs it has created some negative outcomes--they are not ready to admit exist.

Here’s how the Department made a student-centered strategy and turned it into a Teacher-centered strategy.

The SGO is supposed to focus on the student’s growth, but which growth are Teachers supposed to measure? By limiting SGOs to one school year and limiting the development of them by the individual Teacher, the SGO ceases to be about the student and more tied to the Teacher's opinion about how much a student can learn. The SGO is therefore more a reflection on the Teacher's confidence in their own teaching ability. A novice teacher therefore will have lower SGOs then a veteran teacher.

That's the opposite of student-centered.

If the SGO is supposed to support an individualized academic mindset, then why are SGOs limited to the annual grade level common core standards? The reality is that SGOs are not very discretionary at all by the Teacher. There isn't any actual growth being achieved or measured. The Teacher looks at previous years State Testing data and current assessments they have conducted and determine if the student can meet "ALL" of the common core standards, or just 70% of the standards by the end of the school year.

The only way the SGO is holding the Teacher accountable is if students do not meet 70% of the standards, but the SGO does not accurately measure student growth.

Here are the negative impacts of SGOs in the classroom. For the top 10% of students, their academic learning is capped at the annual common core standards as outlined in the district curriculum map. Unless students are enrolled in a gifted and talented program, their academic growth is limited.

For the bottom 25% of students, they are faced with an unrelenting feeling of "catching up" every single day of school. These students never get a break, they are never recognized for incredible academic growth and they are made to feel defeated, stupid and inadequate everyday.

For the rest of the students in the middle, they are never challenged to expand knowledge or go outside of their comfort zone. These students feel "safe" and comfortable. They begin to fall into a sense of complacency and boredom soon disengages them from the learning in class.

Funny thing is that I observed all of this for 20 years inside my program, but parents and educators are just now seeing this play out because students are forced to learn online or in hybrid models where student engagement is the biggest obstacle to standards acquisition.

How can we make SGOs more relevant and helpful for student growth?

Before I outline those ideas, it's important to explain that it's too late to fix 2020. But if school districts begin right now looking ahead to next year in the development of sound, standards-based SGOs for next year--then those districts have a chance to see dramatic gains in academic progress.

First, let me provide a list of multiple sources of evidence that Teachers can use this year to develop SGOs:

• Grades
• Diagnostic Assessment
• Student Interviews
• Student Work Product
• Parent Surveys
• Teacher Observation Notes

Now let's address next year's SGOs.

The first thing all districts need to stop doing is assuming students “should” know or learn standards and concepts by a certain grade level. The benchmark determinations of by grade 4, by grade 8 and by grade 12, were only necessary to support the Standardized Testing industry. The only true measure of students should know is by Grade 12 or requirements for receiving a high school diploma.

Districts can and should use standardized testing to determine how close students are to this ultimate benchmark, but trying to determine if a 4th Grader knows everything a 4th Grader should know is irrelevant. Are we asking 4th Graders to go earn a living? Pay taxes? Apply to college?

In the grand scheme of things, it's important that 4th Graders are on track to meet the 12th Grade graduation requirements, but honestly who cares what a 4th Grader does and does not know or understand--they are 4th Graders.

This over-reliance on grade level determinations has lowered the quality of education drastically over the last two decades. We seem to take two steps forward and one step back. The development of common core standards and standardized testing is an innovative revolution for education, but creating SGOs and worrying about what 4th Graders know is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Speaking with 20 years of experience, working with the most severely behaviorally and academically challenged students in New Jersey, I can say with certainty that the literacy and math level of a 4th Grader is not a determinant in the longer range success of that student.

I offer one case study as a point of information. I had one student who enrolled in my program in the 4th Grade. He was reading on a Kindergarten level. That is effectively 3 to 4 Grade levels behind grade level peers. Based on SGOs and standardized test scores, he would be labeled a "failing" student and "not meeting expectations."

But who does those "labels" serve? Certainly not the student. And the reason that school districts contacted me was not to get advice, they called me to see if I would agree to work with a student who was beyond "out of the box" when it came to the public or charter school educational model.

School districts were not asking for my help, they called me because they were out of ideas and desperate. I literally was a last resort.

If this 4th Grader had stayed in the public school, he probably would have reached the 12th Grade reading maybe on a 4th grade literacy level at best. If all things fell into place. Conversely, that student graduated from my high school program with a diploma and his literacy level was assessed at 9th Grade.

Mathematically speaking, the student did not make any gains against the achievement gap, but he made impressive gains overall in literacy growth. If you ask the same parent in 4th Grade and then in 12th Grade "your child is 3 grade levels behind their peers, are you worried?" the 3 grade levels "seem" more important in 4th Grade than they do in 12th.

And that's the problem with the SGOs. By looking only at one school year as a measure of growth, it negates the students overall ability to grow as a learner and an individual. This is how SGOs can become Teacher-centered and not student-centered.

If we look at the whole child on an educational continuum from grades K-12, then we should not stop measuring growth each year, but develop a SGO that is based on the whole K-12 scale. Then all Teachers are doing annually is benchmarking how close students are to reaching that 12th Grade SGO.

By looking at SGOs from this standpoint, the achievement gap becomes a measurable issue that can be both explained and also provide intervention supports to overcome.

What Can Districts Do to Develop K-12 SGOs for Next Year?

This K-12 SGO development process will take this entire year to do accurately and appropriately. But districts that embark on this SGO project will be making a clear statement, they wish to close the achievement gap in their district.

Here is an Overview of the Steps to Take:

1. Create Academic Teams (Include One Teacher from Elementary, Middle and High School on each Team)
2. Divide up Students among the Teams
3. Analyze Curriculum Maps and Common Core Standards
4. Determine the minimum learning goals to attain by 12th Grade
5. Accurately determine rate or pace of learning by individual students
6. Conduct interviews with parents, students and teachers related to pace of learning for individual students
7. Develop individual SGOs for each student relative to the student’s annual pace of learning, while benchmarking against the minimum learning expectations by 12 Grade
8. Create individual student reports based on SGO and provide to each parent

About the Author: D.Scott Schwartz is a former Principal and Superintendent in New Jersey. He spent a total of 20 years inside schools. In 2013, he began the Education Development Institute (EDI) to disrupt the Professional Development field. With EDI Teachers and Administrators receive a full year of professional development (approx 20 hours) and also receive a mentor/coach to help take their careers to the Next Level. Since 2013, EDI has influenced close to 5000 educators in New Jersey. EDI also launched a new Private Teacher Membership Website, which sold out of spots within a week.  

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