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How can we specify what we want students to learn in a way that promotes student involvement and understanding?

If you don't own a copy of Tim Ferriss's book Tools of the Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers (2017), I suggest you buy one. Of the many "titans" Ferriss highlights, few are more intriguing than Joe De Sena. When the stresses of a job on Wall Street were getting to him, De Sena sought to get back to the basics of life—namely, to seek water, food, and shelter. Out of this need was born the "Death Race." Now, let's be clear about one thing: I've never entered the Death Race, and I have no intention of doing so (I would rather chew on chunks of concrete). The "race" is grueling beyond measure. Besides running and swimming ridiculous distances under extremely difficult conditions, activities along the way include chopping piles of wood, excavating old tree stumps, and moving piles of cinder blocks up a mountain (Dupont, 2012). According to Ferriss, when De Sena was faced with a government directive that he remove a one-ton steel beam from the river on his property, rather than pay a contractor thousands of dollars to do the job, he simply included its removal as one of the challenges in his race—the January edition. Essentially, the race participants, through their rather expensive entry fees, paid De Sena for the opportunity to spend eight hours in the icy water removing the beam. What a deal.

De Sena designs each race element with a simple goal: get participants to give up. Although most race organizers might be discouraged if more than half the competitors threw in the towel, that's not the case with De Sena. As he commented on the Tim Ferriss podcast devoted to the Death Race (https://tim.blog/2014/07/01/spartan-race/), "he knew he had a winner" in the race concept when five of the first eight participants quit. Elements that encourage quitting are not that complicated, just bold and a little twisted. For instance, once the race is well under way, De Sena lures desperate people to withdraw from the event by depriving them of water and strategically positioning buses along the way, with signage and announcements such as "You could quit here. This is not for you" (Ferriss, 2017, p. 39). By design, only about 20 percent of entrants are expected to complete the race (Dupont, 2012). De Sena was delighted when a former Olympian was brought to tears as he gave up, arguing he was a world-class athlete, but the race was "f-----g crazy." One marathon runner completely broke down and, in his exasperation and tears, struggled to understand why chopping a pile of wood should have anything to do with a running race. (For more details, listen to this clip.)

In a clever twist, De Sena's competition pitches racers' fatigue and frustration against their own determination—exacting tremendous pressure on their will to continue. His goal is to have them struggle immeasurably on the razor edge between finishing the race and hitting their breaking point. You can't accuse the race's promoters of hiding their intent. As cofounder Andy "the Undertaker" Weinberg states, "Our goal is to break people … emotionally, mentally, physically, that's the goal. But we tell them that from the start" (Dupont, 2012, para. 3).

One of the many ways that De Sena and Weinberg nudge people closer to giving up is by being intentionally vague and misleading around really important race details. Competitors are often a little surprised, and frustrated, to find out that the race has started without notice (Ferriss, 2017). Participants should be extremely wary of any offers of assistance. Competition officials once offered racers a choice when moving a pile of cinder blocks up a mountain: use a wheelbarrow or carry by hand, but regardless, the decision is final. Those who selected "wheelbarrow" were understandably disappointed to find it was still in the shipping crate, unassembled, with no tools provided (Dupont, 2012). You know you've made a poor decision when you're dragging cinder blocks—and a complete set of wheelbarrow parts—up some godforsaken hill. Picture the poor sap paying a hefty entrance fee to lug that conglomeration up a mountain. As long as it's not you, the image is pretty funny.

The idea of the unassembled wheelbarrow is as warped as it is clever, and I can't help but smirk at the thought of people paying De Sena to clean up his property. Those depraved and malicious strategies aside, the Death Race has an even more frustrating element. De Sena typically doesn't tell the racers where the finish line is located or when the race ends. For all intents and purposes, they don't have a target. By design, this missing element helps transform the Death Race from difficult to desperate.

Stories like that of the Death Race cause me to wonder about my own teaching practices and beliefs, with questions such as these:

  How clear are the learning targets for my students?

  Do my students get any opportunity whatsoever to determine the course of their learning?

  Do I proclaim democracy while acting like an assessment dictator—the person who gets to make all the critical decisions?

Unlike the murky finish line in the Death Race, the target or goal of learning should not be shrouded in mystery. We need to clarify, share, and, when possible, codesign learning targets with our students. This is arguably the most important step in building an assessment plan that both engages and empowers students. The learning targets should help us design our instruction, be the benchmark for determining the extent to which students have met the targets, and form the basis for how student achievement will be reported.

The importance of sharing learning targets with our students is well documented. In their book Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson, Connie Moss and Susan Brookhart (2012) write that "without a learning target, it's unlikely that teachers, students, and administrators will make informed, evidence-based decisions about student learning" (p. 21). Anne Davies, in Making Classroom Assessment Work (2000), suggests that although "an education system may define the learning in broad terms through its documents, teachers must translate and summarize the hundreds of statements into language that parents and students can understand" (p. 20). In Grading for Impact, Tom Hierck and Garth Larson (2018) suggest breaking down our array of standards into student-friendly learning targets. Ken O'Connor (2018), in How to Grade for Learning, contends that grades must be "directly related to the learning goals" and that students must "understand clearly what the learning goals are so that they know what they are expected to know, understand and be able to do" (p. 46).

At this point, I can imagine the voices of 1,000 educators exclaiming in unison, "Oh, you're referring to standards-based grading!" And I would answer, "Well, sort of." For the purposes of this book, the terms learning objectives and learning standards will be used interchangeably, just as they are across many jurisdictions. To be clear, however, a learning standard or objective is not necessarily a usable learning target for students.

We will now delve a little into the transformation of learning standards into learning targets. However, for a more thorough study, I suggest looking at Making Standards Useful in the Classroom (Marzano & Haystead, 2008) or Grading for Impact (Hierck & Larson, 2018). It's imperative to distinguish between what and how when discussing transforming learning standards into clear targets for our students. For instance, all Wyoming grade 4 science teachers will have the same learning objectives or standards regardless of where they teach in Wyoming. These mandated objectives are what they should teach. Identifying the what of learning standards is relatively easy. How we communicate, clarify, share, and cocreate learning targets based on these standards is considerably more difficult, but arguably more important.

In the case of De Sena's Death Race, the what is getting from point A to point B (even if the precise location of those points is known only to De Sena). The how of the Death Race is the steps De Sena takes to craft the deprivation and exhaustion of the experience. How De Sena structures his endurance race reveals his purpose and mission. Similarly, how a teacher tackles the transformation of learning standards into student-centered targets, and the way these are shared and cocreated, will reveal a number of important elements. The how will do the following:

 Clearly communicate to the student the direction and intent of the learning.

 Affirm that the teacher is adhering to the standards established for that jurisdiction (rather than winging it).

 Reflect, in accordance with the standard, the depth of the learning experience.

 Determine the amount of voice and choice students have in the learning process.

 Help determine the extent to which the student can demonstrate learning in a multitude of ways.

Throughout the assessment process, the learning target will shape how we grade, evaluate, and report the learning that has occurred. As well, it will expose the extent to which lifelong competencies are being developed. We'll explore more on that later. Let's start with the what.