Episode 17 | The Problem With Success Criteria | The Edu20/20 Podcast

Welcome back to the Edu20/20 Podcast. This episode is all about success criteria and why it’s become one of the most misunderstood (and overcomplicated) things happening in classrooms right now.

After hundreds of classroom observations, we’ve seen it all:
• Success criteria turned into an agenda
• Success criteria that literally gives away the answer
• Success criteria used as a compliance checkbox
• And about five different definitions in the same building

So…what is it actually supposed to be?

We break down what works, what doesn’t, and how to use success criteria in a way that actually helps students instead of overwhelming teachers.

Chapters:
0:00 Why this topic is making us a little spicy
2:18 The biggest problem: no clear definition
5:08 Why success criteria can’t be one-size-fits-all
7:12 When it turns into compliance instead of support
10:02 What success criteria should actually be tied to
11:45 Using student work to build real clarity
14:20 What it looks like when it’s done well
15:44 The takeaway: don’t throw it out… fix it

https://www.edutwentytwenty.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey, and welcome back to the Edu2020 podcast. My name is Courtney. And I'm Shannon. And we are Edu 2020. Few members, few founders, you know, living the dream. Um, we actually are a group of educators that specialize in simplifying education for other educators. So because it's way too complicated out in these education streams. Absolutely. So today's topic is a good one. It's a hot topic. You're gonna want to fasten your seatbelts and prepare for takeoff because this thing, we did a blog on this topic and it took off.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

And so are you ready to tell the people? Are you ready to give the people what they want, Shannon?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Well, we're gonna talk about and some of you be prepared. You might have a few eye twitches. We're gonna talk about success criteria. Um, and I'm feeling particularly spicy about this topic right now because um, like this is gonna be published in a little while, but um, we have done almost 400 classroom observations this year. In one year. In one school year. Seen some things with some phenomenal educators, absolutely amazing educators at surviving schools, right? The clipboard mafia. We are the clipboard.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Right, we are the clipboard mafia. Yeah, we are. We just look like it when we first come in there, but people know us, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, yeah. Um, and we have seen some things in these streets, and sometimes I feel like it's things that are done to educators. Um, yeah, I told you I'm feeling a little spicy today. That's what she said. Um, here's what I've noticed about success criteria, and I can't wait to get your take on it. Okay, let me hear it. Um, I feel like there are different definitions for it in all of the different regions and areas we go. You're getting snaps, clacks, claps, and pops from me right now. Okay, clack pops and clacks. Okay. Um, so I really want to get your hot take on success criteria because I have feelings, and sometimes I am the epitome of that unicorn meme that said, I'll get over it. I just gotta be dramatic first. Oh, I know. That's me. I am aware.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Dead panda the camera. Um, so let's talk. You want me to talk, tell you about like the pitfalls we see with success criteria? I want you to say some of the things. So if you were to ask, let's say one out of every five teachers, if you were to ask a group of five teachers what success criteria is or what their definition of it is, you would get five different definitions. Um, and these are some of the things that we've seen in classrooms because of that differentiator. Um where somebody made them write it on the board. Absolutely. So this is the evidence that we're collecting. One, it became an act of compliance, okay? Uh-huh. Um, but we've seen six six I don't want to say that wrong. We've seen success criteria turn into an agenda. We've seen success criteria Wait, can I pause you there? What do you mean like an agenda? Like step one, you will know you got this if, you know, you finish this workbook page. You will know you got this after we did this part of the lesson. So they're naming an activity, like an agenda activity. I gotcha. Um I've seen success criteria be based on structure of an answer. So I'm gonna need an example of that. Success like race. Make sure you'll know you were successful if you restated your um question, if you answered your question, if you cited evidence and if you give gave an explanation that connected the evidence to the answer. I've seen success criteria in that. I've seen um I've even been told this before, uh, to make content criteria in social studies, where if you give content criteria, you're just giving them the answer. So that's what do you mean? Like I might need an example of um so causes of the American Revolution. You will know you were successful if you named the Boston Tea Party. Like Oh, so basically giving the answer away in the success criteria. Okay. I was I was very perplexed by that, but that that was one piece of feedback I got one time. And I think all of these roads lead to if it's not clearly defined, like, and we don't have a collective definition that is the same at my school level, whether that be a teacher or an administrator or someone giving feedback, anybody giving feedback, that's gonna be your first hurdle to get over, is that you're speaking a different language and expecting that everyone's translating and understanding it. And that's that is that is the first problem, I think, with success criteria. Okay. Can I get a tiny bit controversial? Oh snap. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Here comes the clickbait, guys. Go for it. I'm not trying for but I have feelings about it. As an educator with an evaluation rubric, I felt like there were multiple interpretations of that rubric. And so when I was being trained or being coached, um, Courtney's hair just got caught in the plant and it's hilarious. Um but I I feel like with people's different interpretations of it, if there's not a clear understanding of what it can look like, that we that's why we have so many different like executions of this going on in practice. But also, I think that while one definition sounds good, sometimes it doesn't work the same in every content area or every single classroom.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So that's my controversial type. What I what I'm hearing you say is that if you are going to ask a teacher to do that, there needs to be a clear clear models, clear examples, even in every subject matter. And I'm gonna get I'm gonna get controversial. You wanna be spicy? I'm gonna be spicy. I see your Louisiana hot sauce, and I am going to raise you a Tabasco. Um, for those of you who don't come from Louisiana, that's just two hot sauces. You can Google them. Anyway, I'm gonna raise you a spicy. Um I beg to differ that I think your success criteria changes based on your lesson goal and how you're gonna change understanding. Preach. So it's not a blanket thing that you can, it's not gonna look the same every day. Thank you. It's and you can't put that in a box, and uh, districts might be getting mad at me right now. I'm sorry, guys, it is what it is because I've done this, I've lived this. Right. And I've had to have some days where my kids needed to strengthen their explanation in ELA. So our focus was the success criteria that was the the structure. Today we're gonna focus on strengthening our explanation. You know, let's step out the criteria for that, like that in and of itself. So it's very hard unless you know one, what the kids need teacher knowledge of students. Like, let's talk about that. Do you know your kids? What do they need? What is their student work telling them? Like telling the teacher that they need that could change your kind of. I'm rolling up my britches because it's getting real deep in here right now. We have this deep thoughts from the shallow end. No, it's deep thoughts from the deep end. But this is why it's such a hot topic, because everyone just hears it and it's like the it's a buzzword right now. Oh, it is the buzz is buzzing. I wish it was a buzz. No. Oh, just give it's giving people a buzz in the bad way. Um, but I I really believe that it changes based on the content and based on how you're gonna check for understanding, based on what your kids need. There's so many different variables. So the biggest thing here is that one, it can't be an act of compliance. And two, you've gotta be able to show teachers, you know, what it looks and sounds like in different scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

It's it has to actually be useful and practical. And so if we're just, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about that compliance part, if we're just making teachers write your objective on the board now, and I can with that could be a whole episode itself, because I have thoughts and feelings on that. If I don't even know what my lesson objective is, then I'm probably not writing it on the board anyway, but also that's an act of compliance. Let's add that to our list. Yeah, we'll add that to our list. But it then if you're going to make them write additional success criteria with this convoluted formula every single day, it is physically impossible. Like I would invite a leader to try to plan out a week's worth of lessons in every single lesson. You write both of those out and clock how much time it takes you. I'm sorry, I got really spicy there.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I was lucky enough if I remembered to change the date on my board sometimes. And and again, this all goes back to your understanding of the evaluation rubric and your interpretation, too, because a lot of this evaluation rubric says like you clearly stated the objective or the learning target or you clearly communicated. And I do think that's powerful. But what does that look and sound like? If you think clearly communicating is slapping it on the board, that's a whole different ballgame than your kids actually understanding what they're supposed to do. Exactly. I know we are getting so scared. I told you I was feeling really passionate about this topic.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Well, I I feel like we have to speak the truth of our experience and then the experience that we currently have because we are in classrooms and we are co-planning with teachers and giving feedback to teachers, and we want the whole goal is to improve student learning. Absolutely. So, what is the point of the success criteria? Now, don't get me wrong, I need success criteria. I, anytime I did an assignment, and and I'm even thinking about coursework that I did myself, I need a clear model and a target of what is this supposed to look and sound like. So I will say that one thing we encourage teachers to do to develop good success criteria or know what student responses should look like is to do the activity yourself. Now, it sounds like I'm contradicting myself on time.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Can you unpack that a little further? What activity are you referring to? Because you know the bots be botten. Oh, the bots will be botten.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Um by bots I mean spicy comments. Spicy comments that come in our different sometimes they're bots and sometimes they're real people, but people have feelings. Bots have feelings. Well, and it's true. I'm think I'm saying the most important activity, like the thing, the learning experience. That was a direct shot at one of the bots. Yeah. Um, the learning experience that you're giving to students.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Okay, so this is getting deep. I'm telling you. Okay, go ahead. So when you say the most important, how do I determine the most important to be able to say, okay, I've got to think through this and use it to create my criteria?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Where I'm gonna check for understanding. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Wherever I'm gonna check for understanding in the lesson, where you're gonna measure if students learned what you wanted them to learn through that day.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Then I know that they're successful. And that can be a range, but I'm talking like at baseline, how do I know that kids are picking up what I'm putting down? Where I'm gonna check for understanding.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And so we talked a little bit about this when it came to setting goals in our last episode. So if you haven't checked that out, go check out our goal setting. Well, our goals episode. Conversation, yeah. Yeah. Um, we talked about breaking it down between knowledge and skills. So if you are doing that activity, you've got to think through what knowledge did I need to be able to complete and and master this activity and what skills did I have to use. Like that's part of it. And that's not the criteria, but you have to think through, you have to slow down your thinking as an adult, especially, to think through what do my kids need to do and know to be able to be successful on this.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Right. Um, I also think this is why it it can't always, it cannot, I'm gonna say that clearly, it cannot always be a formula. Now, as a teacher, a formula is easy for me, and I've even trained some people in success. Like it does help me to have a framework. But some days, and you uh are are really skilled at this, some days a lesson ends on a check for understanding, and maybe I didn't give them the success criteria because what are you gonna do with that say exit ticket or something in the next class?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Are you asking what I would use? Uh-huh, right? So a lot of times if you set the criteria ahead of time, the kids don't really know why you're doing it. A lot of times when I would success set my success criteria, I would take an exit ticket from the last time we did that particular skill or had to build that knowledge, and I would have them look at a strong answer versus a weak answer and say, which one's stronger and why? And this automatically, this made them do a few things. It trained their brain to first look at things critically because a lot of times they just think, oh, I did it, it's complete, so it's good. Um, or we give them an exemplar and they're like, Oh, that's really good. I know it's good, but they won't tell you why it's good. So putting strong and weak work up against each other and saying, you know, which one made this stronger and why, that why piece becomes a criteria. So let me give you an example. Um, because we had to build students' understanding of, like, say in third grade, a theme. Um, that was really hard to do or central message. Okay. Right. And my kids always messed up theme. They would do, um they would give me like very story-specific themes, or they would pull something out of left field, like just summarizing, you know, when in doubt. Summarize it out. Uh so I had to do a sort where they sorted between strong and weak themes, and I purposely gave them a lot of the themes that they would normally say, like, um, the theme is the tortoise should not take a nap, or the hare should not take a nap because the tortoise will win. That's not a theme, that's just summarizing the story. Right. So they had to sort them out. And then I said, okay, what these are you said these are strong. What makes them strong? And they were like, Well, these are strong themes because they're a complete sentence. These are strong themes because they can be applied to a new situation. And so, like, they built their own criteria for theme based on that.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

You know what I'm saying? So a lot of times using that work from the day before set me up for success the next time I did it. And it just made it clearer for them because if I'm setting it up front, they might not understand what they don't, they don't know what they don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And sometimes I found that giving them a lot of success criteria up front frightened them, like scared them into, oh my gosh, I cannot do all that. Or it really boxed them in and I didn't get really authentic answers. That's good. And I wish I had saved this one video. It was in my nightly TikTok research time.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

AKA Doom Scrolling.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

But I saw a phenomenal teacher. Um, I think she she was somewhere in the first, second grade range, but she had what she called level up examples. So let's say that they had to do a writing and she would um show them an example, she would let them do it first, and then she would show them, okay, this is a level one. What's it missing? And it would have a picture or a sentence under it. And then she would have a level up, okay, now I included my punctuation and my capital letters, and it has a complete thought. And then another level up, she would do a level three and it would add on, and then a level four had the complete picture, it was two sentences long, it was whatever. So students could level up, like the success criteria increased with their skill. So I think we also have to have room for teachers to have the flexibility to here's what you do to level up. And this is just not the bare minimum we want to get you to. And then if you think about using student work in that way, like here is and don't get me wrong, I have seen, I know a phenomenal instructional coach that for all of their tasks, the teachers would say this is a level one, two, and three. Oh gosh, that exhausted my brain right from the beginning. Like I can't think through that a level one, two, three, and four for every single assignment, maybe on the critical assignments, but just even thinking about leveling up. Um, what could take this? I use transition words, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Um the whole point of this is so that students can understand the expectations. Yeah. And get very clear. And that's why it has to be guided by student work and and what they know and can already do, because that sets the why for the next time that they they see it or have to do it. A lot of times they don't know what they don't know when they're when they're completing the task. So just making it very clear for them what you want to see them, you know, what does proficien look like, what does above proficiency look like? And it's not going to look the same. And that's why putting the success criteria in a box is very hard because it is a flexible thing that morphs depending on what your kids need.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Oh, I think you just said something critical that we can summarize with. Um, the point is we don't need to eliminate success criteria. Can I say my Samuel Townsend quote? Oh, here we go. Yes, she drops this all the time during our PD. But this is so powerful to me. Samuel Townsend once said, and I may not quote this exactly verbatim, but it's pretty close. Every reform, no matter how necessary, will by weak minds be taken to an extent that in itself needs reforming.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

It's that pendulum, it goes from one way to the other.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

And and weak minds just maybe not knowing or not having a clear vision. Yeah, it's not like you're not sure. It's not just because you're stupid, right? You just don't know. So, success criteria, we're not saying we shouldn't have it. We're saying we absolutely need it. Absolutely. But it's going to depend on the lesson, the student needs, the content, and we do need to have a clear understanding of why we're using it and what it's there for.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

It's not another act of compliance. Right. And I know we're preaching to the choir for some of you teachers out there, right? But I think everyone needs to hear it. And if you know somebody that needs to hear this podcast and what we had to say about success criteria, please feel free to share it with them. Because I feel like there's a lot of dialogue around it right now. And again, people like, and I know you can't think outside the box until you have a box to begin with, but I think that people have tried to put success criteria in such a small box that we're losing sight of what it's supposed to be used for.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Mic drop. Mic drop. Thank you for coming to our hashing out, right? And coming like hashing that out because we want to keep growing.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

We want to keep getting better at what we do. And as we learn, like we're gonna always share with you guys. And if you've got a hot take on success criteria, we know your our bot friends will put stuff in the comments, but definitely you real people out there that um have a hot take on success criteria, please. Share your knowledge. Yes, let us know what you think, and you never know when we're gonna drop some of your nugs on future episodes because we love hearing from you and and knowing what your hot takes on things are. But uh in the meantime, it's time for us to go. So we thank you for joining us this episode, and we will see you next time. Please make sure you like, follow, subscribe, whatever other word you have for being a part of this little family we got going on here. But we appreciate you tuning in, and we will see you next time.