Pub. 3 2013-2014 Issue 2

25 immediate formative feedback. Teachers will be able to immediately assess student progress and change instruction at the classroom level by viewing assignment summary, benchmark proficiency, and item analysis reports. In addi- tion, teachers can use the system to search for resources, including student activities and sample lesson plans for English language arts, mathematics, and science. These resources are categorized by content area, grade level, li- brary, material type, and learning modality. They can even use the system to track students’ progress on assignments. Better yet, these formative assessments directly align with the summative portion allowing a one-to-one correlation. Long-term planning will be more effective after the transition to SAGE is complete. While this may be frustrat- ing in the short term, it is better to be patiently conserva- tive than to make drastic decisions based on comparing apples (i.e. SAGE results) to oranges (i.e. CRT results). For more information it would be helpful for charter admin- istrators, boards and interested parents to visit the Family Resources site as part of the SAGE portal at http://sage- portal.org/resources/?section=2. This site includes, among other things: writing scoring samples, various information- al brochures, SAGE formative tutorials, rubrics, reference sheets, proficiency level descriptors, and training materials. Because of legislative mandate, the Utah State Office of Education will also calculate Student-Growth Percentile’s or SGPs as part of the U-PASS accountability report and school grading legislation. Charter boards and administra- tors would do well to be wary of this year’s SGP measure as we are comparing CRT data to SAGE data during this transition year. While this measure is not completely unre- liable, it will nonetheless be more accurate in future years as we compare SAGE data to SAGE data. Again, the take away is for boards, administrators, faculty, and parents to be patient and wary when interpreting this transitional data. As a final note, when testing results become publically available in the fall of 2014, media outlets will be quick to print headlines designed to sell newspapers. It will be im- portant to critically consume these reports. Knowing how different the standards and assessments are from previous testing years, I suggest charter boards, administrators, faculty, and parents reserve judgment until the end of the 2014-15 testing cycle. I anticipate educators and parents will find much to praise in this new SAGE system. There will be many new tools that will make strategic planning much easier for teachers, and thus administrators and boards. Keep the course. It will be worth our patience. W hen I was in the eighth grade a fashion craze swept through Utah: Girbaud jeans. Prior to the arrival of this jeans craze, I remember buying Gap jeans for around $25 a pair. For all intents and purposes there was no difference between my Gap jeans and Girbaud jeans. The jeans were essentially the same, except for the price tag and the label being on the front of the jeans. However, one was definite- ly “cooler” than the other. The price tag for that coolness: $75. For just $50 more per pair, I too could ditch my Gap jeans and be on the cutting edge of coolness. What I experienced as a teenager is not an uncommon story. We are impacted by brands every day. They impact the clothes we buy; the places we eat; and the cell phone we “have to have.” But brand impacts are not limited to just our consumer purchases. From an education perspec- tive, parents make three key brand choices each year when it comes to “purchasing” schooling for their children. In this article, I’d like to share with you some of the tools I’ve used to help individuals and organizations understand and build a more powerful brand at a personal, team and organizational level. What is a Brand? Marketing expert, Seth Godin, defines a brand as, “a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” Godin’s defi- nition provides three key components that should guide us as educators in creating a brand where more parents and students will choose our school or our classroom. First, every brand is built around expectations. In edu- cation those expectations include curriculum, test scores, Helping People Choose You by Building a Powerful Personal Brand of Leadership CONTINUED ON PAGE 29 BY LYALL J. SWIM, JUNTO STRATEGY