The document describes a project to design a system for Breakthrough, an organization that prepares underprivileged students for competitive high schools and colleges, to measure the development of non-cognitive skills in their students. The researchers conducted interviews with Breakthrough teachers, examined existing assessment tools called KidTalks, and created prototypes for a revised KidTalks template and training. The final prototype and training materials were designed to provide constructive feedback to students in a format that is easy for teachers to implement and tracks students' growth in character strengths over time.

1. Breakthrough
Erik Yamada, Mayu Tobin-Miyaji, Sam
Wittmann, Michael Moran

2. “Breakthrough’s mission is to
prepare students who possess
high academic potential, but
limited educational resources, for
competitive high school
programs and college
admission.”

4. Goals Identified by Breakthrough
A system to assess growth in non-cognitive skills
during Breakthrough for:
1. Student Intervention
2. Program Improvement
3. Funding

5. Research
Chris Stickney - McMurtry Master - high school teacher
Dr. Jeremy Taylor - CASEL
Ryan Brown - Doerr Institute
Robin Page - Center for Teaching Excellence
Film - Most Likely to Succeed
Book - How Children Succeed
Visiting the school year program

6. How can we create a system to
measure the development of soft
skills in the Breakthrough
Classroom?

7. ◉ Provide feedback that is:
■ Constructive
■ Actionable
■ Demonstrable
◉ Create a system for collecting
data that is easy to implement
within Breakthrough’s
curriculum
Design Goals

8. Measures of Success
● Short: Is the system understood by Breakthrough teachers and
approved by Breakthrough administrators?
● Medium: Do teachers and parents feel that the assessment aligns
with the reality, from anecdotal experience or qualitative
assessment?
● Long: Do the results of the system align with student success in
life after Breakthrough (such as college dropout rate)?

9. Brainstorming
◉ Peer (teacher/parent/student)
◉ Self-evaluation
◉ Experimental Data
◉ Natural Data

10. Interviews with Teachers
Met with 3 previous summer program teachers and learned…
◉ Teachers are very busy (sometimes 10 hour days)
◉ Teachers get to know students very well (Families & Advisor groups)
◉ Many systems in place for encouraging character strengths
◉ Word of the day
◉ Spirit stick
◉ Family time
◉ School assignments that relate to character strengths
◉ KidTalks

11. Original KidTalks

12. Adaptations to KidTalks
◉ Character strength tracking
■ Scoring based on how often specific behaviors
associated with each character strength was observed
◉ More robust tracking on deltas
■ After a delta is identified, discuss their progress and
consider new actions plans
◉ One sheet per student
■ Easily refer back to the past weeks to discuss progress
in the current week

13. Prototype #1

14. Prototype #2

15. Testing
● Negatives:
○ Previous action plans
○ Confusion between action plans and goals
○ “new delta” and “new action plan” can be
confusing
○ External problems field
○ Rating improvement 1-5 can be cumbersome
○ use concrete examples for delta
● Positives
○ Pluses are a big ‘plus’
○ Rating character strengths 1-5 works well though

16. Final Prototype
◉ One sheet per student
◉ Sheet functions as timeline that
can be used for letter and
parent-teacher conferences

17. Final Prototype (Excel Sheet and Training)

18. Training Overview
◉ Thorough explanation of each section
and how to fill them out
◉ Definition of each character strength
◉ An activity for teachers in the family
■ come up with examples of
behavior reflecting the
character strengths
■ Discuss what others came up
with and what strengths they
reflect

19. Next steps
◉ Give Breakthrough the Kid Talks template
◉ Introduce the training documentation to Breakthrough admins
◉ Attend teacher training to introduce and explain solution, if
possible

20. THANK YOU!
Any questions?