Yesterday I stopped in the hallway to talk to the head of our middle school. He said, “that Doug Lemov book is the best book about assessment and classroom practice I have ever read. It’s so good I can’t wait to pick it up again.”
I told him he’ll really like the new book I’m reading, Driven By Data. It’s about designing and giving assessments that result in good data collection, that allow you to check whether the material you’re teaching is really being learned. But he wasn’t as interested, really. Mostly he wanted to give teachers a set of teaching skills that they could rely on and use constantly.
But Lemov himself says that having a curriculum and the techniques isn’t enough. You need daily plans of what to teach in order to use the techniques, it’s true. But you also need data about what to teach, what to reteach and what to review only lightly.
I’m finding right away that I want that data. Because the techniques are working, but I’m still searching for rigor.
