for the state test but also for the broader requirements students will encounter in the years ahead.
Reconsidering Feedback
In her landmark work comparing high- and low-performing nations and high- and low-performing state education systems, Linda Darling-Hammond (2010) comes to an astonishing and counterintuitive conclusion. Since the 1980s, the three exemplars she considers—Singapore, South Korea, and Finland—made significant progress according to international education comparisons over the next three decades. More than 90 percent of the students in these countries graduate from high school, and large majorities go to college—“far more than in the much wealthier United States” (p. 192), Darling-Hammond concludes. Detailed field observations reveal the rich, nuanced feedback that students and teachers receive daily and can apply immediately.
“Wait,” you may say. “Don’t Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore also have a test-focused environment? Aren’t those the examples that we tried to emulate to improve our academic performance in mathematics and science?” In fact, this does not comport with Darling-Hammond’s (2010) evidence. These successful nations:
eliminated examination systems that had previously tracked students for middle schools and restricted access to high school. Finland and Korea now have no external examinations before the voluntary matriculation exams for college. In addition to the “O” level matriculation examinations, students in Singapore take examinations at the end of primary school (grade 6), which are used to calculate value-added contributions to their learning that are part of the information system about secondary schools. These examinations require extensive written responses and problem solving, and include curriculum-embedded projects and papers that are graded by teachers. (p. 192, emphasis in original)
Effective education systems certainly use some system-level examinations, but notice the important distinctions. In these examples, even national examinations include deep teacher involvement and, therefore, offer the opportunity for feedback that is far more nuanced than a simple score. Most importantly, the vast majority of feedback is in the daily interactions between students and teachers, not from test scores administered at multiyear intervals. Perhaps the most important consideration is how teachers and students evaluate their own success. While annual high-stakes testing leaves students and teachers wondering about their success (“We’ll know how we’re doing when we see the scores at the end of the year”), a system characterized by effective feedback offers a dramatically different view.
Darling-Hammond (2010) observes the dramatic difference between the feedback as testing model and the feedback as breathing model, with the latter characterized by feedback integral to the minute-to-minute reality of the classroom. The following words are not from a veteran teacher, nor are they from the graduate of a top-tier teacher-preparation program with several years of intensive mentoring. They are the words of a prospective teacher who was fortunate enough to see Darling-Hammond’s (2010) fieldwork but had not yet spent a day in the classroom. This teacher says:
For me the most valuable thing was the sequencing of the lessons, teaching the lesson, and evaluating what the kids were getting, what the kids weren’t getting, and having that be reflected in my next lesson … the “teach-assess-teach-assess-teach-assess” process. (as cited in Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 223)
Bridget Hamre of the University of Virginia Curry School of Education notes that “high-quality feedback is where there is a back-and-forth exchange to get a deeper understanding” (as cited in Gladwell, 2009, p. 326). Bob Pianta, dean of the Curry School, reports on what a team he led observed in a class with high levels of interactive feedback:
“So let’s see,” [the teacher] began, standing up at the blackboard. “Special right triangles. We’re going to do practice with this, just throwing out ideas.” He drew two triangles. “Label the length of the side, if you can. If you can’t, we’ll all do it.” He was talking and moving quickly, which Pianta said might be interpreted as a bad thing, because this was trigonometry. It wasn’t easy material. But his energy seemed to infect the class. And all the time he offered the promise of help. If you can’t, we’ll all do it.
In a corner of the room was a student named Ben, who’d evidently missed a few classes. “See what you can remember, Ben,” the teacher said. Ben was lost. The teacher quickly went to his side: “I’m going to give you a way to get to it.” He made a quick suggestion. “How about that?” Ben went back to work. The teacher slipped over to the student next to Ben and glanced at her work. “That’s all right!” He went to a third student, then a fourth. Two and a half minutes into the lesson—the length of time it took [a] subpar teacher to turn on the computer—he had already laid out the problem, checked in with nearly every student in the class, and was back at the blackboard to take the lesson a step further.
“In a group like this, the standard MO would be: he’s at the board, broadcasting to the kids, and has no idea who knows what he’s doing and who doesn’t know,” Pianta said. “But he’s giving individualized feedback. He’s off the charts on feedback.” Pianta and his team watched in awe. (as cited in Gladwell, 2009, p. 329)
The danger in observing an exemplary teacher is that we can relegate these experiences to the realm of mystery. Why is he such a great teacher? Some people might conclude that it must be a combination of talent, intuition, mystical insight, and a knack—he just “has it” (it being those amazing qualities that all exceptional teachers share). However, we might not say that about a great physician, scientist, attorney, race car driver, violinist, or basketball star. Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that talent is not a mystery but something developed with deliberate practice (Colvin, 2008; Ericsson, Charness, Hoffman, & Feltovich, 2006). Can we apply that generalization to teaching? Here, too, the evidence demonstrates convincingly that feedback, along with other effective teaching techniques, is a skill that can be observed, applied, practiced, and improved (Lemov, 2010).
The Four Elements of Effective Feedback
As we have seen, the clear preponderance of evidence is not only that feedback is important in influencing student achievement but also is relatively more important than almost any other student-based, school-based, or teacher-based variable. It should be noted that evidence on the power of feedback is hardly restricted to the world of education. Dianne Stober and Anthony Grant (2006) and Alan Deutschman (2007) provide evidence from a wide range of environments that depend on feedback, including health care, prisoner rehabilitation, recovery from addiction, and education. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler (2008) add to the body of evidence, using cross-cultural examples in which people are engaged in significant and profound change, even though they cannot read or write.
In brief, it is not the provision of a data-driven, decision-making seminar that helps individuals, organizations, or communities change. Instead, it is the ability to use feedback in clear and consistent ways. However, even the most clear and vivid feedback is useless if not applied with the FAST elements. Each of these is a necessary but insufficient condition for improvement. If information is accurate but not timely, it is unlikely to lead to any improvements. An autopsy, for example, is a marvelously accurate piece of diagnostic work, but it never restores the patient to health.
Almost every teacher I know labors to be fair, excluding any bias regarding gender or ethnicity, in their evaluations of student work, but the pursuit of fairness can impair accuracy. This is particularly true when teachers conflate a student’s attitude and behavior with the quality of his or her work. Many computer programs can provide rapid feedback, but if that feedback only informs students whether their performance is correct or incorrect, they will gain little information about how to improve the thinking process that led to an incorrect response or how to sustain the analyses that led to a correct one. Specificity is a component of effective feedback, but reams of data delivered months after students leave school are as ineffective as the detailed criticisms written on the high school
