Early entry into GCSE

Early entry into GCSE

Education Secretary Michael Gove has written to the chief inspector at Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, to ask him to examine how the practice of early entry to GCSE can be “discouraged”. He says that taking a GCSE early “can be beneficial where it is undertaken as part of a planned programme of accelerated progression through to A level and beyond” but warns it has become a “damaging trend that is harming the interests of many pupils”.

In 2007 2% entered English early and 5% entered Maths early. By 2010 this had risen to 24% for English and 27% for Maths.

“Lower attaining schools are more likely to have early entrants”  and half of the schools below their floor targets “had at least 50% of pupils entering mathematics early”. Selective schools and independent schools tend not to enter pupils early.

In 2010 in Maths 29% of early entrants got A*-B compared with 37% of all entrants. In English the figures were 30% compared to 41%. The DfE interprets this to mean that “in both English and mathematics, early entrants overall perform worse than pupils who do not enter early.”

However if you consider the more common benchmark of A*-C percentage pass rates early entrants achieved 64% pass in Maths compared to 65% for all pupils; in English these figures were 68% and 69%.

These figures include candidates who subsequently retook. 98% of those who got a D retook; 78% of those who got a C retook; 63% who got a B retook.

The DfE research interprets these figures as meaning that “In both English and mathematics, early entrants overall perform worse than pupils who do not enter early.”

Mr Gove infers from these statistics that candidates are being entered before they are ready, and ‘banking’ a C grade rather than continuing to the end or year 11 and achieving a top grade. He sees this as a narrowed curriculum, focused not on sound subject teaching as a basis for successful progression, but on preparation to pass exams.

An alternative view might be that schools are attempting to personalize the curriculum and escape from the viewpoint that “most important thing that children have in common is their date of manufacture” (Sir Ken Robinson, 2011 Out of our Minds).

The most likely explanation is that some schools have a deliberate strategy of entering borderline pupils early in an attempt to boost more pupils over the critical threshold of 5A*-C grades including English and Maths. This measure was introduced in 2006, just before the surge started.

The grade information with the significant improvement in grade Cs at the expense of other grades suggests that this strategy works.

If this is the explanation it would suggest that we may expect an increase in the number of early entries in the EBac subjects. In 2010 only 1% of entrants entered sciences, history and geography early.

If the government wishes to "discourage" the number of early entries there would seem to be three possibilities:

• They could forbid early entries. This would be counter to the avowed philosophy of removing restrictions and would mean that a genius might graduate from university before being allowed to take a GCSE.
• They could upgrade the A*-C measure to A*-B. This is likely to reduce the opportunity for lower achieving schools to play the game but it might encourage early entry in selective and independent schools.
• They could scrap the A*-C threshold measure in favour of an average point score measure which would give a more appropriate weighting to each grade.

The full report is attached to the bottom of this page.

"Unleashing the Potential of Academies"

Plan A+ is a report[1] sponsored jointly by The Schools Network (which used to be the SSAT) and a think-tank called Reform.

It can be divided into two parts. One part is a survey of 478 Academies asking about how they are using their new freedoms. The other part is a theoretical argument as to how the power of Academy status can be “unleashed”.

Will the academy programme improve UK education? The authors accept that "simply giving schools more autonomy does not ensure that they will innovate and improve." (p7) It suggests that three further essential factors are collaboration, accountability and competition.

Autonomy

It is important for this report to establish that giving school leaders autonomy will have a positive influence on educational outcomes. It suggests that there is a "body of evidence that clearly demonstrates" (p22) this and they cite:

• The OECD 2009 PISA Study which they quote as saying "Many of the world's best-performing education systems have moved from bureaucratic ‘command and control’ environments towards school systems in which the people at the frontline have much more control of the way resources are used, people are deployed, the work is organised and the way in which the work gets done. They provide considerable discretion to school heads and school faculties in determining content and the curriculum, a factor which the report shows to be closely related to school performance when combined with effective accountability systems." (p22)
• Woessmann (2007) whose comparison of international evidence found that "“students perform better … in schools that have freedom to make autonomous process and personnel decisions, where teachers have both freedom and incentives to select appropriate teaching methods, where parents take interest in teaching matters, and where school autonomy is combined with external exams that provide an information basis allowing for well-informed choices and holding schools accountable for their autonomous decisions.” (p22)
• Hanushek and Woessmann (2010): “Across countries, students tend to perform better in schools that have autonomy in personnel and day-to-day decisions, in particular when there is accountability.” (p22)
• "Angrist et al. (2011) showed that in Massachusetts, the autonomy of Charter schools has had a significant positive effect on outcomes, particularly in poor urban areas." (p23)
• "Machin and Vernoit (2011) showed that the autonomy of the first generation of English academies drove improvements in their performance in comparison to similar, less autonomous schools" (p23)

Collaboration

"School-to-school collaboration is a vitally important mechanism for improving the quality of teaching. ... The highest quality continuous professional development (CPD) is essentially collaborative, involving lesson observation, mentoring and sharing of best practice. CPD of this nature is at its most effective across schools, .... . The most effective collaboration goes further than simply sharing best practice and involves richer joint development of practice." (p7)

Accountability

It is commonly presumed that accountability must be externally imposed; eg by Ofsted and Performance Tables. However this report argues that a network of schools collaborating in a system of 'peer-accountability' "has huge benefits over the traditional centralised model." (p7) because:

• Schools take ownership of their own performance rather than leaving problems to be sorted by someone else;
• Peer schools will know one another much more deeply than Ofsted can;
• Peer schools can respond much more quickly when things go wrong. 

Competition

“In a review of international evidence, Woessmann (2007) shows that ‘students perform better in countries with more competition from privately managed schools [and] in countries where public funding ensures that all families can make choices’. Böhlmark and Lindahl (2007) show that in Sweden, districts with higher proportions of pupils at free schools have better average achievement across the whole district. Bradley and Taylor (2007) show that English schools in urban areas improve their exam results in response to improvements in neighbouring schools’ exam results. Machin and Vernoit (2011) show that the competition effect arising from the (relatively) high performance of the first generation of academies in England also served to raise performance in neighbouring schools.”

Tensions

The problem is that these four factors often seem to be pulling in contrary directions. It is difficult to understand how autonomous, competing schools will develop collaborative systems of peer-accountability. The authors have to show how accountability and autonomy can work together and how competition can facilitate collaboration.

Accountability and Autonomy

There is a substantial body of evidence from Management Studies that performance is enhanced if decisions are made nearer to the shop floor. However, these do have to be the right decisions (this is the argument for management itself). So the level of decision making will always be a compromise between keeping it local and ensuring that the people making the decisions have sufficient experience or understanding.

This report rejects the traditional accountability methods of both governing bodies and central government. "Governors can lack the professional or relevant knowledge" (p47) to hold headteachers to account; they are criticized when they do attempt to impose restrictions on heads. Ofsted, on the other hand, is too slow and too remote. The report’s ideal solution seems to be ‘self-accountable’ networks of schools. Traditionally one is held accountable to pupils and parents, local communities, and to funding providers. Self accountability seems at first sight to be an oxymoron. They don’t explain how this would work and they offer no safeguards if these networks were to behave irresponsibly.

Competition and collaboration

This report sees collaboration at the very essence of driving system-wide school improvement. “The most effective way of improving the quality of teaching is for schools to engage their teachers in high-quality continuous professional development (CPD) that is essentially collaborative, involving lesson observation, mentoring and sharing of best practice. CPD of this nature can be undertaken within a school but it is at its most effective across schools. To get the best possible critique of teaching performance and to be exposed to a wide range of best practice, teachers need to look outside the walls of their particular school – however good a teacher or school is, it can still be difficult to avoid lapsing into “their way” of doing things." (p42)

This report claims that "competition can drive collaboration very effectively: if every school needs to improve then every school has an incentive to collaborate. Competition between schools is not a zero-sum game, since the whole system can get better; one school improving does not mean that another must get worse. Collaboration can also take place beyond the local area if there are specific issues inhibiting collaboration between local schools. Competition and collaboration are not, then, mutually exclusive, but rather can be mutually reinforcing. Even the best schools have an incentive to support other schools, since the evidence demonstrates that collaboration improves the performance of every school, even the high-performing school doing the supporting." (p8)

However, in one essential aspect competition between schools is a zero-sum game. There are a limited number of customers. If school A admits more pupils then school B will have fewer. The report explicitly calls for removal of barriers to competition by allowing "existing schools to expand and, where possible ...  new schools to open." (p8)

It seems unlikely that the trust needed to support collaboration will exist if some schools are actively seeking to expand at the expense of others.

But the report suggests that the “traditional view” that “collaboration for school improvement needs to be facilitated by a ‘middle tier’ or ‘mediating layer’” such as a local authority is wrong because “it reinforces a hierarchy and the idea that school improvement is something that is ‘done’ to schools. This is the wrong approach, since school improvement work will be most effective if schools ‘own’ it themselves.” Again a network of schools is seen as the best outcome.

In summary, the report calls for the removal of restrictions to create autonomous, competing schools who will spontaneously come together in ‘self-accountable’ collaborating networks. It doesn’t seem to happen like that for supermarkets.

The survey

The second part of the report is a survey into the decisions that Academies have made or plan to make. The theoretical standpoint of the report authors does come through in the questions. For example, the survey asked about lengthening but not shortening the school day; they asked about increases but not decreases in admissions.

Most decisions made so far have been very conservative. The report authors clearly think that headteachers have not gone nearly far enough. For example:

·        Most Academies have decided not to change the school year.

·        76% of Academies have decided against lengthening the school day mostly because of "concerns about union activism" (p27)

·        Academies can change the curriculum and are split almost evenly between those who won't, those who will and those who have already. But most point out that "Ofsted or other DfE policies, particularly the EBacc performance measure, constrain freedom to innovate in curriculum." (p28)

·        64.9% of Academies have no plans to alter the terms and conditions of staff. Many "are concerned at the prospect of union hostility if they did." (p29) The most likely changes are to the terms and conditions of support staff.

·        Inevitably the relationship between Academies and their Local Authority will change. 68.2% of Academies believe that this relationship is more or less the same; 17.1% believe it has improved or greatly improved; 14.7% believe it has worsened or greatly worsened. Very few (5.6%) believe their relationships with other local schools has got worse but perhaps they should ask the other schools!

·        A quarter of Academies had experienced or anticipated an increase in admissions and nearly one third of Academies have changed or plan to change their admissions policies; such changes include giving preference to feeder schools, expanding catchment areas and selecting 10% of pupils on aptitude.

·        Over a third of Academies are expanding or planning to expand sixth form provision. Factors constraining this expansion are the lack of buildings or site to accommodate expansion and the downwards direction of funding for school sixth forms. 

·        The money obviously helps. 76.3% said their financial situation had improved or greatly improved; 4.2% said it had worsened or greatly worsened although some Academies believe that the extra cash has not lived up to their expectations. This is being spent "to absorb cuts elsewhere in their budgets which would otherwise have led to staff redundancies" (p35) and to address the issue that "local authorities had allowed school capital to fall into disrepair" (p35). "The greatest single concern raised by academies was the costs that they are being expected to meet through the Local Government Pension Scheme [which deals with pension arrangements for support staff] which are considerably higher than those being faced by comparable maintained schools." (p35)

·        There are significant frustrations with the legal complexities of becoming an Academy. "The most pernicious legal requirements for many academies are their status as being subject to Freedom of Information requests, the prescription associated with TUPE, the powers of teaching unions supported and financed by local authorities, and the need to continue submitting to their local authorities on a wide range of issues including admissions." In addition "the uncertainty surrounding the Local Government Pension Scheme is the greatest single source of concern for academy leaders." 

In summary, this report welcomes the Academy reforms but thinks they should go much further. It attacks local authorities, governing bodies and unions. It would like a systematic removal of restrictions because these inhibit innovation. It does not seem to envisage the need for any safeguards.

---

[1] “Plan A+ Unleashing the Potential of Academies" by Dale Bassett, Gareth Lyon, Will Tanner and Bill Watkin; March 2012. Published by The Schools Network and Reform.

Flipped Learning

Flipped learning

The latest hot educational trend from the USA is Flipped Learning. (It  isn’t exactly new; Lage, Platt and Treglia wrote a paper about Inverting the Classroom in 2000.) To oversimplify the concept: pupils watch online videos for homework before the lesson. They then apply what they have learned with the teacher during the lesson. The teacher’s role mutates from the ‘sage on the stage’ to the ‘guide by the side’.

Steve Wheeler points out that “just watching a video cannot be seen as a viable substitute for good learning”; he prefers face to face lecturing. Branzburg suggests, video lecturing such as that offered by the Khan Academy is a subset of education. But although excellent teachers can lecture better than most videos, a carefully chosen video may present material far better than the average teacher. Furthermore, videos enable a type of self-differentiation: a pupil can watch the video again and again using pause and rewind until they understand the content. Students comment that you can “work at your own pace”.

The critical part of the ‘Flipped’ pedagogy is that it frees up class time for ‘real’ learning. After all, as Robert Talbot points out, the problem with the traditional way of doing education: there is more structure, support and guidance available within a classroom but normally that is when ‘transmission’ takes place.  Since the transmissive phase of learning can only access the lower levels of Bloom’s educational taxonomy, potentially deep learning only happens in the traditional classroom when least guidance is available.

Distressingly, some of the You Tube videos extolling Flipped learning seem to suggest that what the pupil does in class is to answer tests. Assessment is also a subset of education. Eric Mazur puts the assessment before the lesson as well. Once the students have watched the video they reflect on their learning, organize their ideas and come up with their own questions about the material. They post these questions onto an online class discussion forum. The teacher then reviews these questions to prepare for the lesson (this is a technique known as Just-In-Time teaching or JITT). During the lesson the teacher uses Constructive Peer Interaction, focusing on those questions that cause most problems and misconceptions and facilitating a Socratic style dialogue between pupils in the hope that they will argue one another out of misconceptions and into enlightenment.

Flipping enables work to be set at the appropriate level of challenge beloved by Ofsted. Jonathan Bergman uses a ‘flipped mastery’ system in a US High School because he can differentiate and challenge both his rocket scientists and his strugglers rather than “shooting for the middle”.

A potential problem with Flipped Learning is that a pupil who fails to do their homework will be unable to participate fully if at all in the lesson. Much of the work done in the US relates to college students. Katie Gimbar, an eighth grade (y9) teacher, suggests that students who have not prepared are sent to a computer to watch the video at the start of the lesson but she claims that the problem is small. Because her lessons are interactive the students are much more motivated to prepare by watching the videos before.

Paul Wright at Biddenham has been experimenting with Flipped Learning as he explains in this blog post.

So do we go back to the good old days when homework was ‘prep’ and I had to spend Sunday  learning a chapter of Kings I and preparing a Latin ‘construe’ to be tested on Monday morning?

Free iPad app for ASD pupils

ReacTickles Magic

Wendy Keay-Bright has developed this free suite of iPad apps to help children on the autistic spectrum to communicate. Users can communicate using touch, gesture and sound to create a “dynamic array of animated shapes and patterns” on the screen or projected onto a wall according to producers Cariad Interactive. “For children with poor or nonexistent verbal communication, this can be a route to the outside world,” claim Wired magazine. 

An alternative Maths curriculum

Alternative staffing models for Maths

Dave Appleby

24th February 2012.

Dotheboys Hall School faces an impending crisis. Of the 5 Maths teachers, two are leaving and no-one can be replaced. They will only have Glenda Gauss, Nicy Newton and Rajendra Ramanujan.

Fortunately thay have three excellent LSAs called Candice Carnelian, Jade Jet and Peter Pearl.

In each half year group there are 120 pupils in 5 setted classes.

Each class has 5 periods per fortnight.

There is one computer room with 25 machines.


Another little problem facing Dotheboys is that sets split. When the pupils arrive at Dotheboys in year 9 they are tested to see how good they are at Maths and this measure is used to group them. Thus pupil 24 is in set 1 and pupil 25 is in set 2. They then experience mostly whole class teaching aimed at more or less the centre of the class. Thus pupil 24 struggles to keep up with pupil 13 whilst pupil 25 coasts along compared to pupil 38. In general this means that pupil 24 progresses faster in Maths than pupil 25; when they are retested the difference between them is greater than it had been. Generally the setting is confirmed.


The pupils who come from Salem House (whose Maths teacher, Mr Creakle, is less than brilliant) tend to be assigned the lower sets. It soon becomes impossible for them to catch up with the pupils who have been taught Maths better at Dr Blimber's Academy.


This has led to some anomalies. Pupil 60, in set 3, has never been much good at Maths but towards the middle of year 10 something clicks and she suddenly makes progress. By the start of year 11 she has clearly demonstrated her potential for Higher Level Maths. Unfortunately she has been taught Foundation Maths until now. There is no mechanism for her to catch up on the Higher Maths she has missed. Despite having the potential to achieve an A she is entered for a paper where the maximum possible is a grade C.

The headteacher, Wackford Squeers, has a cunning plan.

He has heard of the School Of One in New York City. This school personalises the maths curriculum. It aims to maximise differentiation in ‘Math’ by offering a variety of learning opportunities including:

• A Math computer lab

• A Math investigative and collaborative learning lab
• A Math seminar class of no more than 12 pupils
• One to one online Math tuition
• Proper ‘Math’ lessons taught by a real ‘Math’ teacher
• Individual learning Math sessions in which supervised pupils complete worksheets

The clever bit is that School Of One assesses each pupil daily and then assigns them to the appropriate learning opportunity in next day’s timetable. Wackford doubts that Dotheboys Hall is yet quite ready for such Yankee technology. Nevertheless, he is a fan of giving pupils at different levels of Maths different experiences.

He proposes four types of Maths experience:

• A Maths computer lesson which will offer individualised instruction using a variety of computer systems such as MyMaths, Mangahigh, and Successmaker (for the lowest achievers). This will be supervised by an LSA (Candice)
• A Maths collaborative investigation in which 6 teams of 4 pupils will try to solve a Maths challenge. These sessions will by pedagogically founded on the work by Sugatha Mitra. They will be led by an experienced Maths teacher, Glenda.
• Individualised Maths workshops in which pupils will work through problems hand-picked for them supervised and supported by a pair of LSAs (Jade and Peter).
• There will also be ‘trad Maths’ lessons taught by his other experienced Maths teachers, either Nicky or Rajendra.

Mr Squeers has devised possible schemes based on these experiences. He has one scheme for 5 ppf and one for 6ppf.

5ppf model

	Lesson 1	Lesson 2	Lesson 3	Lesson 4	Lesson 5
Set 1	Computer Maths with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN	Maths with NN	Maths with RR
Set 2	Maths with RR	Computer Maths with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with RR	Individual Maths with JJ & PP
Set 3	Maths with NN	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Computer Maths with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN
Set 4	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Maths with RR	Maths with RR	Computer Maths with CC	Investigation Lab with GG
Set 5	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Computer Maths with CC

• Every set sees a qualified Maths teacher at least twice per fortnight.
• Every set has a computer session which means the IT resources are fully used.
• Every set has an Investigation lab.
• Set 1 has 3 trad Maths sessions; sets 2, 3 and 4 have 2 trad maths sessions; set 5 has a single trad Maths session.
• Sets 2, 3 and 4 have a single individualised maths workshop; set 5 has two such sessions.
• Both RR and NN see 80% of the students; GG sees them all.

6ppf model

	Lesson 1	Lesson 2	Lesson 3	Lesson 4	Lesson 5	Lesson 6
Set 1	Computer Math with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN	Maths with NN	Maths with RR	Investigation Lab with GG
Set 2	Maths with RR	Computer Math with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with RR	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Maths with RR
Set 3	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Maths with NN	Computer Math with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN	Computer Math with CC
Set 4	Maths with NN	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Computer Math with CC	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with NN
Set 5	Investigation Lab with GG	Maths with RR	Maths with RR	Individual Maths with JJ & PP	Computer Math with CC	Individual Maths with JJ & PP

• Every set sees a qualified Maths teacher at least three times per fortnight.
• Every set has a computer session (set 3 has 2) which means the IT resources are fully used.
• Every set has an Investigation lab (set 1 has 2)
• Set 1 has 3 trad Maths sessions; sets 2, 3 and 4 have 2 trad maths sessions; set 5 has a single trad Maths session.
• Sets 2, 3 and 4 have a single individualised maths workshop; set 5 has two such sessions.
• Both RR and NN see 60% of the students; GG sees them all.

This new system means:

• Every pupil learns Maths using a collaborative investigative method.
• Every pupil uses ICT to aid their learning at least once per fortnight.
• Every pupil experiences a mix of learning styles.
• Every pupil has a qualified Maths teacher at least twice per fortnight.
• The balance of learning styles can be better tailored to the pupil’s prior achievement.
• Where pupils are being given extra one-to-one tuition they can be taken from the individualised workshops without disrupting their learning of content (presuming that pupils in set 1 do not need to come out of lessons).
• GG develops special skills in teaching in this investigative style; CC develops special skills in running computer lessons.
• Given that we normally staff 5 sets with 5 qualified teachers and an LSA and given that qualified teachers earn more than LSAs, we will save on staffing costs. Mr Squeers likes that! But more importantly it solves his problem of the shortage of specialist maths teachers.
• This system builds differentiation in. The Investigation Lab, the Computer lesson and the Individual Workshops are all highly differentiated. Set 1 in the 5ppf model experiences 40% of these types of lessons; every other set experiences more. The average pupil will experience 60% highly differentiated lessons.
• This will reduce the tendency of sets to split. The pupil perceived as the best in set 2 might well be assigned more challenging work than the pupil perceived as the worst in set 1.
• Pupils in the lower sets will experience higher amounts of personalised work. It should be possible for pupil 60 to catch up with a significant amount of Higher Level work; certainly sufficient for her to be entered at this Level.

A Framework for Literacy

A Framework for Literacy

A US framework for literacy (OK, Math, color, sulfur) bases itself on two predicates:

Ø      “Literacy skills are most effectively acquired in contexts that make reading and writing meaningful” (p3)

Ø      “Reading, writing, and critical thinking differ in purpose and emphasis yet draw on a common pool of literacy skills.” (p3)

The report believes that literacy involves three processes: interpretation, expression and deliberation. At a first approximation these appear to correspond to reading, writing and critical thinking but “matters are more complex. Skilled readers write in support of their reading (by taking notes) and employ reflective reading strategies. Skilled writers use reflective strategies to improve writing quality and read every time they revise or in response to material from other texts.” (p4)

There are five discourses which explain literacy skills.

Ø      The social model focuses on “inferences about communicative intent” (p5)

Ø      The conceptual model is most concerned with comprehension and making meaning from text.

Ø      The discourse model looks at how the author works within a genre.

Ø      The verbal model is based upon vocabulary and grammar.

Ø      The “print model represents skills in processing text in formal, phonological, or orthographic terms.” (p6)

It is clearly complicated to propose any coherent model of skill development which (a) takes into account the complexity of interrelation between the three processes of interpretation, expression and deliberation and (b) looks the same when viewed from each of the five perspectives above.

The authors also hypothesise a developmental sequence for the development of the critical thinking inextricably linked to literacy.

Ø      “The minimum prerequisite for rational argument is the recognition of incompatible and conflicting viewpoints.” (p9)

Ø      “Begin to anticipate challenges and accumulate justification strategies that have worked in the past.” (p10)

Ø      “Begin to strategically select justifications and elaborate on arguments where supporting evidence will help to bolster the case.” (p10)

Ø      Learn from the experience of having one’s own arguments refuted and “recognize fallacies, develop rebuttals and reason more generally about the validity of arguments.” (p10)

Ø      Use the knowledge of what arguments should be “as an intellectual tool that helps determine which ideas should be accepted.” (p10)

This then leads to a ladder of literacy skills.

LEVEL	INTERPRETATION	DELIBERATION	EXPRESSION
Preliminary (oral to sentence)	Can orally restate or identify the reasons someone else has given to support an opinion.	Can distinguish reasons from non-reasons and infer whether reasons would be used to support or oppose a position.	Can give plausible reasons to support an opinion when asked or spontaneously in conversation.
Foundational (sentence to paragraph)	Can restate (list in one’s own words) the supporting reasons provided in a paragraph-length text.	Can self-generate multiple reasons to support an opinion.	Can express lists of reasons in declarative sentence form and embed them in a paragraph-length position statement.
Basic (paragraph to text)	Can recognize and explain the relationship between main and supporting points and keep track of which evidence supports which point.	Can rank and select reasons by how convincing they seem. Can distinguish between reasoning that seems convincing because one agrees with it and reasoning that seems convincing because of the content of the argument.	Can select and arrange reasons and include specific supporting details. Can group reasons with evidence to form (implicit or explicit) paragraph structure.
Intermediate (text to context)	Can track and distinguish multiple positions when they are discussed in the same text. Can evaluate the accuracy of a summary and the credibility of a source text based on strength of arguments and evidence.	Can recognize counterexamples and distinguish facts and details that strengthen a point from those that weaken. Can distinguish valid from invalid arguments and recognize unsupported claims and obvious fallacies.	Can organize reasons/evidence contrastively to compare opposing positions. Can summarize and embed sources as supporting evidence. Can write simple critiques or rebuttals.
Advanced (text and context to discourse)	Can evaluate arguments in light of existing knowledge and discussions, actively verifying, challenging, and corroborating the case presented in terms of other sources of knowledge.	Can identify and question the warrants of arguments, distinguish necessary and sufficient evidence, and synthesize a position from many sources of evidence, using that to identify key evidence and propose new lines of argument.	Can write extended discussions that place arguments in the context of a larger literature or discourse. Can embed critiques and rebuttals effectively into a longer argument.

Deane P, Sabatini J, and  O’Reilly T 2011 English Language Arts Literacy Framework Educational Testing Service Princeton NJ available at http://www.ets.org/s/research/pdf/ela_literacy_framework.pdf accessed 10th February 2012