The Partnership Project

Paul Trunnell
Harborside Community Center, East Boston

The Mentoring Project has its roots in a statewide project on assessment standards initiated in the summer of 1992 by the Massachusetts Department of Education’s (DOE) Bureau of Adult Education. This project, dubbed Greater Opportunities for Adult learner Success, or GOALS, included participants made up of practitioners from adult education, teachers, counselors, administrators, and even students. Each component focused on a different aspect of assessment and examined its viability as part of a statewide assessment system. While different components studied computer tracking, standardized examinations, and student evaluations of the programs, Component Three focused on alternative assessment.

Comprised of practitioners from all over Massachusetts, Component Three was certainly not the statewide initiative of alternative assessment. Many of the participants had already been developing and sharing different methods in their programs for years. Yet it was the first occasion that alternative assessment was finally recognized by the DOE as a potential alternative to more traditionally accepted methods (e.g. standardized testing or competency-based curricula). It was also the first time that alternative assessment practitioners had assembled on a regular basis for the purpose of discussing their work.

While the other components were developing their projects with predetermined products, Component Three participants were given a blank canvas. Our sole requirement was to investigate how alternative assessment could be used as part of a statewide assessment system. In our discussions, it became obvious that we all had different approaches and that these differences were products of our different learners classrooms, programs, and communities, as well as our different strengths at teachers. As such, there was clearly no one form or approach that was better than another.

We knew that our “product” as Component Three wouldn’t be a standardized tool or activity that could be used by all programs. Instead, we wanted something that would communicate the importance of differences among learners, teachers, classes, and programs. What better way than to combine all of our different methods and materials and make those available to other practitioners? Thus, the idea of the Alternative Assessment Toolkit was born.

The Toolkit, in its final form, includes assessment materials from nearly one dozen participating programs. The tools, along with instructions on their use, are divided into the three basic categories of assessment. Initial, Ongoing, and Looking Back. Within these sections the tools are separated by program to stress that all of these tools have evolved in a particular context.

In the fall of 1993, as the Toolkit and Component Three neared completion, we discussed ways to continue our work. Certainly the Toolkit would be of value for the field, but we still had several questions: Could the value that was based on collaboration be maintained and broadened to more programs? Were there other ways our work could support and strengthen the way of alternative assessment in the field of adult education? In what ways was our work replicable in other programs?

Gradually the idea of a mentoring project evolved. Such a project would allow us to continue our own development from a new perspective. It would broaden the network of adult educators using alternative assessment. Most importantly, it would allow us to observe and evaluate firsthand how our materials would be adapted by other programs.

The idea excited us, and it interested the DOE. Throughout Fall, 1993, a core group of the original Component Three now facilitated by teacher/administrator Caroline Gear of the International Language Institute of MA., Inc., continued to meet and work out the details.

The Partnership Project, as we named it, would pair together a member of Component Three with a practitioner who wanted to use and develop alternative assessment in their class and/or program. We preferred using “partner” rather than “mentor”, because we see ourselves as always in development with our practice and we knew we were likely to learn as much through the project as the new participants. Partnerships would be designed around similar contexts – beginning ESL, for example and similar interests – goal setting, self-evaluation, portfolio, etc. Our specific objectives as stated in our formal invitation to participants were to “disseminate the Toolkit to a broader audience, to document the process of development and adaptation at the participating sites, and to create a broader network for alternative assessment within the state.”

From the very beginning, the Partnership Project was designed to correspond with the demanding schedule of adult education practitioners. The length of the project would be brief, from January to June of 1994. The technical assistance time of the partners was kept to a minimum (20 hours) and the form of assistance – telephone calls, class observation, etc. – was left to the discretion of the partners. Emphasis was placed on the geographical proximity of the partners so that distance of travel would not be an obstacle. Central meetings were necessary, but would only be held at the beginning, middle, and end of the process - a reflection of the Initial, Ongoing, and Looking Back steps of the alternative assessment process (see Overview). Caroline Gear and I volunteered to coordinate the project.
We publicized the project during the fall of 1993 - first at Network 93 (a statewide Adult Education conference sponsored by the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education), and then at an alternative assessment class provided by SABES’ Western Region office. Though initially we received a lot of positive attention, these efforts yielded only a few formal responses. In the end, word-of-mouth publicity was our best resource, and yielded a surprisingly diverse membership.

New participant Pauline O’Leary, a teacher at ABCD’s Even Start Program in Dorchester, had partnered with Barbara Krol-Sinclair from Chelsea’s Intergenera-tional Reading Project.

ESL teacher and administrator Lesly Desiree, of Dorchester’s Log School, would work with counselor Henry Joseph of the Haitian Multi-Service Center, also of Dorchester. Dan Wilson of Boston’s North End Union would focus on Beginning ESL with Rudee Atlas of the East Boston Harborside Community Center. Estelle Williams, also of the North End Union, would meet with Loretta Pardi of Harborside regarding her mixed level GED students. Widi Sumaryano, an ESL teacher at Lutheran Services in Springfield, would be partnered with Caroline Gear of the International Language Institute in Northampton. Deirdre McLaughlin of Barnstable County House of Correction (ABE/ESL) program paired with Marty Tass-Richardson of Haverhill’s Community Action Inc.

Though all of these agencies had been involved in the Component Three GOALS Project, many of their participants were new to our collaborative. Henry Joseph of HMSC, Loretta Pardi at the Harborside, and Marty Tassi-Richardson of Community Action had developed and/or used the materials at the agencies, but none had participated directly in the meeting of Component Three. This was because the original lead people at their agencies, after a year and a half of direct involvement in the GOALS Project, were only to pass the baton to the others at their programs. Also noteworthy, Deirdre and Lesly had participated in Component Three, but were both new to alternative assessment and did not feel prepared to contribute materials to the Toolkit. They wanted to participate as mentees. Of the partners, five had never formally used alternative assessment in their classrooms.

Our Initial Meeting was held at the end of January at the DOE’s new space in Malden. (Though our scope was statewide, all but two of our partners were from Eastern Mass.) Prior to this meeting, participants were already assigned partners and had been given the task of touching base at least once, to discuss their interests and ensure that the partnership was not wrong from the start. The purpose of the first central meeting was for the different pairs to meet each other, share their expectations, and to discuss together the goals and expectations of the project.

January’s rough weather, however, prevented almost half of the participants from attending – some of these that did attend didn’t arrive until late in the meeting. We used the time as best we could. After our introductions and preliminary discussion, we were joined by Bob Bickerton, Director of the newly reorganized DOE Bureau of Adult and Community Learning Services (formally the Bureau of Adult Education). He spoke of the DOE’s continued interest in investigating alternative assessment’s role in a statewide plan. Because of this, he said the DOE was interested in funding our project. Though this was good news, the partners stressed that they were in favor of the straightforward objectives and minimized time commitment of the Partnership Project, and so were in favor of DOE support as long as it didn’t increase the work load. By the time of our second meeting, DOE had agreed to fund the project by supporting the coordination and providing stipends for all the partners.

Our second meeting at the beginning of April was a thrill. Almost everyone was there. In three tight hours we packed individual sharing, updates, payment info, and goals setting. This last activity was vital, since we had only two months before our scheduled final meeting and the end of the project.

Deirdre and Marty had only met once briefly before the second meeting (they had only been paired three weeks prior, after Marty’s original partner had dropped out). Though geographically far apart (Marty was on the North Shore and Deirdre was on Cape Cod) and working in different contexts (a community based agency and a county house of correction), they had already identified a common area of interest: the ongoing assessment of their students.

Estelle and Loretta had met several times and had discussed at length the motivational difficulties which they face. They had agreed to focus on ongoing tools that would encourage learners to take responsibility for their learning and increase their self esteem.

Lesly and Henry had been pleasantly surprised to learn that their programs were only a few blocks from each other and that they serve similar populations. Lesly had already been using the HMSC’s initial and ongoing assessment tools and he and Henry would choose one tool or area as a focus. Widi and Caroline had visited each other’s programs and observed each other’s classes. They had already been focusing on oral feedback and the use and adaptation of ILI’s Learner Log.

Dan and Rudee had met and discussed their needs for assessment. Rudee’s work emphasized student self-assessment and Dan had chosen this as his focus.

Pauline and Barbara had their plan from the very beginning. They wanted to create a new tool that would focus on parent-child interaction. They wanted to measure the academic growth of the parents through structured parent-child learning activities.

It was already clear that with eight weeks left in the project, the most we could expect would be the development and limited implementation of tools and activities in the partners’ chosen areas.

Participants were pumped up by the end of the meeting: “a good use of time”, said one; “great to hear from one another”, said another. “The best part was the sharing”, said a third. Practitioners were invigorated by the opportunity to discuss their goals and processes with others working on some of the same questions.

Our third meeting at the beginning of June came all too soon. All of our programs were in their final weeks. All of us seemed equally frazzled by the normally full-to-bursting spring schedule of our programs. For some, the burden was greater than usual: Caroline had to teach extra classes because of funding cuts; Lesly was in the same boat. Marty had discovered that funding had been cut for her program and it was closing by the end of the month. The stories were all too familiar, and as adult educators, we had heard them too many times.

We sat down with our sandwiches and sodas to share our work, look at our goals, and see how we’d done. The video camera in the corner of the room was a little distracting at first, but we soon were caught up in the flow of the meeting. Dan passed around his student self-evaluation forms. We all enjoyed the little people figures used for the scale. Deirdre and Marty passed out their new intake package which they had faxed to one another for final revisions, and each program had adapted theirs slightly differently. Pauline discussed the effectiveness of her new parent evaluation tool and responded to comments and suggestions. Lesly and Henry succeeded in reviewing and considering the tools already in use at the Log School and in the Toolkit. Loretta had developed a Record of Participation that would enable both learners and teachers to evaluate progress. Widi had many examples of student work and insights on the effectiveness of his tools and methods.

After our sharing, Bob Bickerton visited us briefly and congratulated us on our work. He also asked us to consider the next steps: What role, if any, might alternative assessment play in a state assessment system? What roles, if any, did we intend to play? We considered these questions as we considered our own next steps: participating in Network 94, meeting after publishing our articles in the fall, organizing a broader workshop for the fall, perhaps continuing our partnerships informally in the future.

At the end of the day, the feedback (as in a participatory classroom, we hoped to elicit partner feedback throughout the process) was mostly positive: coming together is wonderful, the variety of our work is impressive, we go away with so many ideas. The recurrent lament was lack of time, but we all knew that, with our schedules so busy, even this three hour meeting was luxurious.

How had we done on our objectives? We had broadened the network of adult educators using alternative means of assessment, and six more practitioners at five separate agencies in Massachusetts had developed materials and practices. The collaboration that was started in Component Three had been expanded to include a county house of corrections and an Even Start Family Literacy Program. New programs joined from Springfield and Barnstable, as well as the Boston area.

How had our material been adapted? Lesly borrowed directly from the Toolkit and, without much adaptation, was able to use the tools with his students. Estelle’s GED class borrowed and adapted materials from Loretta. Dan’s ESL class had taken guidance from Rudee’s work to develop something new. Widi worked closely with Caroline borrowing and developing to suit the needs of his students and also got feedback on how he was practicing assessment. Pauline and Barbara drew on their common experience to create something new and necessary for Pauline’s class.

What was apparent for everybody was that a lot of talking and thinking and observing had taken place. This meeting was an important piece of it, a chance to articulate the process and reflect. What also seemed true was that we had just gotten started. This was true in that, on one hand, most of the partners had just developed their tools, or had had the opportunity to try it out only a few times. Six months to start a partnership and begin a whole process of assessment was only just enough time to get going. Clearly for partners who had worked together before, such as Pauline and Barbara, or for those who had previous experience in assessment, such as Widi and Deirdre, the project was more manageable. Those who were freshest had more ground to cover in maybe too short of a time. On the other hand, as one participant said, “This is only the beginning.” A six-month project was enough to draw in the partners to a place of greater knowledge and commitment to alternative assessment. Many of them will, I hope, continue their investigation of alternative assessment and how it works in their classroom.

This article was published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 7 (December 1994), SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1994.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.