Failure in Goals

In recent years there has been a good bit of conversation in education about allowing students the room to fail and then learn from their failures.  The idea of Genius Hour or 20% time support this and encourage students to stretch themselves to learn new skills and sometimes limits.

We are even encourage as educators to try new things and to not worry about the lesson always being perfect.  The school I work in is encouraging teachers to try project based learning and personalized learning.  During the PD I present I often say "just try it" and "the kids can help figure out the technology."

Recently I was struck by this failure and how it might relate to goal setting for teachers.  The state that I work in requires that 40% of a teachers evaluation be based on a measurable assessment of student growth over the course of the year.

A teacher recently asked me to review one of their goals.  It was something like this "On this year's PBL project 90% of the students will achieve an 85% or above based on the rubric."  It made me start to think about whether we can really encourage the students to stretch and possibly fail if this is your goal.  Maybe the goal could be rewritten to allow for the experimenting.  Maybe the rubric already allows for the measurement of the process and not just an end result.  I would be interested to hear your thoughts as well.