Episode 125: Interview with Starr Sackstein

In this episode, I chat with Starr Sackstein, a recovering perfectionist who is an assessment reforming enthusiast. Currently, she is the COO of Mastery Portfolio, an Edtech Startup committed to helping schools move to Standard-Based communication.  Additionally, she works with teacher teams to engage students in the learning process, advocate for personal growth, and effectively use student data to drive instruction. Starr was a high school English and journalism teacher for 16 years, a lead Humanities learner for 2 years, a publisher and developmental editor, and social media manager. She is an author, blogger, and speaker committed to changing the way we do assessment nationally and globally. You can learn more about her work on her website MsSackstein.com and you can follow her on Twitter @MsSackstein. When Starr isn’t advocating for students and educators, she is a mom and partner looking for the next adventure.

During our conversation, we talked about … assessments. In fact, Starr pointed out that we cannot expect major risk-taking in high stakes situations. And this goes for both our staff and our students. Starr shared stories of how she developed spaces for students to serve as cocreators of the curriculum in her space and was then investigated when students came to her class but skipped others. She shares the idea that our modern approaches disrespects and dishonors the natural learning process and questions why it seems that the love for learning happens to begin diminishing around the same grade level when these high stakes assessments are implemented.

Ready to hear more about the role assessments could play in your classroom? Let’s go!