what is important to note when teaching content standards
Critical Event:
Integrating Standards into the Curriculum
Overview | Goals | Action Options | Pitfalls | Dissimilar Viewpoints | Cases | Contacts | References
The push for standards has guided modify efforts at all levels of education and has brought near positive results. "The standards-based movement in America is on solid footing and is slowly just surely changing the fashion nosotros think of teaching and learning in America's classrooms," notes the American Federation of Teachers (1999). "Nearly three-fourths of the teachers who have worked with standards for at least six years say the standards have had a positive impact on their schools." (p. 12). Ravitch (1995) adds, "Standards can improve achievement by conspicuously defining what is to be taught and what kind of performance is expected" (p. 25). Many efforts to better education brainstorm with the process of integrating standards into the curriculum.
Integrating standards into the curriculum is a complex endeavour that brings added dimensions to the curriculum-evolution process. Traditionally, the schoolhouse curriculum provides a plan of education that indicates structured learning experiences and outcomes for students. Information technology specifies the details of student learning, instructional strategies, the teachers' roles, and the context in which teaching and learning take place. More recently, however, the standards motion, research on pedagogy and learning, and inquiry on the characteristics of successful schools have broadened the scope of curriculum to include everything that affects what happens in the classroom and consequently affects student learning. The process of integrating standards into the curriculum emphasizes learning and growth for all as the natural and desired outcome of reform in the schools. From that perspective, a standards-based curriculum includes not only goals, objectives, and standards, just everything that is done to enable attainment of those outcomes and, at the same time, foster reflection and revision of the curriculum to ensure students' continued growth. Curriculum development is most successful when educators collaborate with parents, community members, and students. In fact, all stakeholders need to share their expertise in creating a curriculum based on high standards for student learning.
"The idea behind standards-based reform is to set clear standards for what we desire students to learn and to use those bookish standards to bulldoze other changes in the system," notes the American Federation of Teachers (1999). In result, development of a standards-based curriculum must exist considered in the context of school reform, which includes not but curriculum, instruction, and assessment just also professional person development, parent and community involvement, instructional leadership, and the use of engineering and other resource. What goals or standards volition the curriculum address? How volition students demonstrate an understanding of these concepts or goals? How will engineering be integrated into the curriculum to aid educational activity? How will teachers be prepared and supported as they implement changes? These questions will exist addressed every bit the curriculum is developed.
The process of integrating standards into the curriculum consists of 4 steps: developing a curriculum framework in the context of standards-based reform; selecting a curriculum-planning model that farther articulates the standards-based reform outlined in the framework; building capacity at all levels of the educational system; and monitoring, reflecting upon, and evaluating the curriculum equally teachers implement it in the classroom.
Developing a Curriculum Framework
The get-go pace of integrating standards into the curriculum is developing a curriculum framework. Curriculum frameworks can be adult at the national, country, or district level. National frameworks include those written by national organizations (such as the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the National Scientific discipline Education Standards adult by the National Research Council). National frameworks come in a wide variety of formats and unremarkably represent a specific content expanse.
State frameworks include those written by state departments of education (such as the Michigan Curriculum Framework adult by the Michigan Department of Educational activity). State curriculum frameworks tend to be highly circuitous due to the multiple purposes, the multifariousness of audiences, and the diversity of situations that must exist addressed (Blank & Pechman, 1995). A comprehensive listing of national and country curriculum frameworks can be plant in Developing Educational Standards.
District frameworks are those adult by local or regional school districts. Ideally at the local level, a curriculum commission is established to develop the standards-based curriculum and to accost the broader concerns that will be reflected in the curriculum framework. This commission is made up of administrators, school board members, teachers and school staff, parents, students (when advisable), and customs members, just the bulk should be school personnel. The goal of this committee is to develop a standards-based curriculum that will increment educatee learning and promote higher pupil accomplishment.
 Wisconsin Rapids School District, Wisconsin Rapids, WI The complexity of curriculum development with a focus non only on classroom material to be covered but likewise on standards, capacity building, and assessment can seem to exist an overwhelming task. To prove how one school commune navigated through this process and to delineate the steps they took, the Wisconsin Rapids School District, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, is featured throughout this critical issue. Donna Weber, principal of Grove Uncomplicated School, and Martha Kronholm, 5th and 6th form multiage teacher at Grove Elementary Schoolhouse, were members of the curriculum-development team for the Wisconsin Rapids School Commune. They share what they learned in their efforts to integrate standards into the curriculum. In Wisconsin Rapids, a group of educators met to look at the current science curriculum and develop a curriculum that would somewhen integrate the science standards. Donna Weber discusses the initial makeup of the curriculum commission. |
| [774 G audio file] "Our science planning committee has been led by a group of district leaders: the director of curriculum and teaching, staff development personnel, key administrators, and the K-12 science coordinator. Science commission members consist of two groups: interested staff members who have volunteered their services, and teachers who are asked to serve on the committee due to their leadership abilities and expertise in the subject area area of scientific discipline. In addition, careful attending is given to make sure that all grade levels are represented on the committee." |
The offset chore of the curriculum committee is to clarify the national standards and state standards that already are available and develop a mutual understanding of what components to include in the local curriculum framework. This framework can be as complicated or as simple as needed to guide the curriculum-development process. The latitude and telescopic of a framework certificate oftentimes depend on the size and diversity of the audience to be served past the framework.
Afterward examining the national and state standards, the curriculum committee is responsible for adopting, adapting, or creating the standards to be emphasized in the curriculum framework. The committee needs to look at standards in a much broader context than simply guiding the content aspects of curriculum development. Because the procedure of integrating standards into the curriculum dictates changes in the way the schoolhouse operates and teachers teach, the curriculum commission tin determine specific components of curriculum frameworks to include in the local framework. These components may include an overview, content standards or expectations, operation expectations, use of engineering science, and professional evolution or instructional activities. As they determine the curriculum framework, commission participants must be willing to heed to and talk with other commission members, not merely convince others about their own personal agendas.
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| [978 K sound file] "The coming together of these key individuals [curriculum planning committee] began approximately vi years ago. The initial procedure began with study groups. The written report groups read research including Project 2061: Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Science for All Americans, and other National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) publications. The first time that the district employed a process of mapping out a K-12 science framework, with the assist of North Primal Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), was approximately three years agone. The process has been a continual and evolving one always since. Nosotros feel the work nosotros have done, and are continuing to do, is a dynamic procedure. Our curriculum is a living, animate document! The development of our curriculum framework began with hours and hours of frustrating and hard piece of work from our secondary science teachers. It was before long evident that smooth progress would exist hampered by a variety of problems and concerns. These included differences in opinion and philosophies between junior loftier and high schoolhouse teachers, mediation of heated work sessions, trying to reach a consensus for grade-level groupings within our science curriculum, and resolving perennial issues of turfdom. Changes in leadership--at the science coordinator and director of curriculum and instruction levels--besides contributed to the demand of regrouping and refocusing. No one e'er said that curriculum work was going to be easy." |
Curriculum components should be selected on the ground of purpose and audience. A framework serving many purposes and a wide audience will be extensive and include many components. At the very least, framework development should investigate and delineate standards in the context of reform. These standards most certainly should include content standards, benchmarks, and functioning standards. In addition, many groups cull to include curriculum guidelines for teacher knowledge and understanding that are aligned with the content standards.
Content Standards. Content standards are "broadly stated expectations of what students should know and exist able to do in particular subjects and grade levels," notes the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Pupil Testing (1999). The center adds, "An example of a language arts standard is: Fourth-course students will be able to gather information for a written report using sources such as interviews, questionnaires, computers, and library centers."
Marzano and Kendall (1996) have identified 3 categories of content standards: procedural, declarative, and contextual. Using these categories clearly demonstrates that those standards often labeled as process standards in many of the disciplines are in fact a legitimate portion of the content in a specific discipline and help define those content standards that are contextual in nature.
Benchmarks. As a rule, content standards that are described in full general terms require more specific statements at each developmental level to facilitate integration into the curriculum. These statements that provide a more specific and a developmental look at each of the standards are often referred to as benchmarks. A benchmark is a "detailed description of a specific level of student performance expected of students at particular ages, grades, or developmental levels," notes the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Educatee Testing (1999). "Benchmarks," add together Marzano and Kendall (1996, p. 15), "describe the specific developmental components of the general domain identified by a standard."
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| [779 K audio file] "These [content standards] were adult after looking at a variety of publications, research articles, NSTA literature, land and national standards, and curriculum documents from other districts. Getting input from a variety of sources has helped us conceptualize an eclectic document of our very own. The benchmarks that we are in the process of creating add more specificity to the content standards and are written with the developmental levels of students in mind. Our benchmarks, at present in start typhoon format, are written in grade-level groupings at the K-half dozen level. This is consequent with the Wisconsin state science standards and matches the developmental nature of scientific discipline, which nosotros strongly believe in. Creating our commune's benchmarks has involved cantankerous-referencing our state standards to our district curriculum'south content standards. Key questions in benchmark development are continually being addressed, for case: What are the critical skills and knowledge that we want students to be able to know and to exercise? What is developmentally appropriate for students at these class-level groupings? |
Student Performance Standards. Pupil performance standards are "explicit definitions of what students must practise to demonstrate proficiency at a specific level on the content standards," states the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Educatee Testing (1999).
Marzano and Kendall (1996) state that a performance standard "describes a specific use of cognition and skills; it is non a description of knowledge, but a clarification of some awarding of information technology" (p. thirteen). They give the following example of a performance standard used in conjunction with a content standard:
"A content standard in science might specify that students should understand the characteristics of ecosystems on the Earth'southward surface. The functioning standard for that piece of declarative knowledge would specify the level of accuracy and the facts, concepts, and generalizations about ecosystems on the Earth's surface that a pupil must empathise to exist judged as having obtained a suitable level of accomplishment. Information technology also would put that noesis in some blazon of performance environment past stating that the information must exist presented, for example, in the form of an essay, a simulation, or an oral study with accompanying graphics." (pp. 13-14)
Borthwick and Nolan (1996) explain: "Performance standards brand content standards operational. They transform inert statements of content into active expectations for functioning. They take the content standards an essential step further past giving meaning to the idea of meeting the standard." Borthwick and Nolan also ascertain three components of performance standards: functioning descriptions, samples of student work, and commentaries on student work.
Marzano and Kendall (1996) concur that "performance standards are a critical component of a comprehensive, standards-based approach to schooling," and they bespeak out that "performance standards identify the environments in which that knowledge and skill should be demonstrated" (p. 14). They recommend that schools and districts begin by developing content standards and so ascertain a "complementary prepare of functioning standards" or functioning tasks (p. 14). These tasks will grow and evolve every bit students and teachers larn more well-nigh the knowledge and skills needed to consummate the task or attain the standard.
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| [498 K audio file] "The secondary teachers' initial planning sessions took identify prior to the publication of state standards. Many of their first curriculum drafts included statements of what students should know or should empathize instead of looking at what students should exist able to do or what students should be able to perform. When the NCREL personnel became involved with the development of our Science Framework, they helped the secondary teachers work through a process to look for the big ideas of science. These big ideas, or strands, helped teachers to conceptualize a plan, or a route map, for our entire commune. This route map focuses not only on what students should know. It focuses on what students should exist able to do." |
In addition to specifying the necessary tasks inherent in content standards, performance standards may be used for other purposes, including educator accountability and certification of individual achievement (McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995). These divergent purposes could call for entirely unlike types of performance standards. Operation standards for accountability and certification "must be articulated in the class of rules for translating assessment results into pupil-achievement categories," note McLaughlin and Shepard (1995, p. 36). They also suggest that performance standards should commencement be used to clarify students' awarding of the content standards and afterward can exist used for educator accountability and certification purposes.
Guidelines for Teacher Knowledge and Understanding. To ensure that students achieve content standards--by attaining performance levels chosen for in the performance standards--framework designers may choose to include guidelines for teacher noesis and understanding. These guidelines tin can provide suggested instructional techniques, recommended activities or learning experiences for students, specifications nearly teachers' content cognition, and recommendations for instructional materials. Intendance should be taken, withal, that these techniques or activities are viewed as suggestions less they limit teachers' rights and responsibilities to make pedagogical decisions based on the minute-to-minute and mean solar day-to-day needs of their students.
Darling-Hammond (1994) adamantly states that efforts to ensure high levels of educatee performance should demand that teachers know as much almost students and learning every bit they do about content. Teachers' requisite cognition base of operations should include a wide diversity of instructional strategies and agreement of when to use those strategies, a thorough grounding in current learning research and awarding of that research in the classroom, and a substantive assessment repertoire to monitor what students know and are able to do. This cognition base presupposes structures and processes in place in the schools and in the teacher-preparation institutions that clear loftier standards for teachers.
Some other factor that can exist addressed in the guidelines for instructor knowledge is the use of technology in the classroom. Every bit rapid advances in technology dramatically change the world, the schools must ready students to confidently use and benefit from these changes. Guidelines tin can provide teachers at all levels with suggestions for when and how to integrate the apply of technology into their teaching and then students will do good.
While developing the district curriculum framework, the curriculum committee should proceed in listen its audiences and purposes. The completed framework communicates to the larger public the goals, expectations, and standards for which the educational institution is willing to be held accountable. Information technology serves as a guide for educators to use when planning the curriculum. It besides provides guidance for teachers and administrators every bit they seek to increment pupil achievement and better instructor exercise. Finally, information technology serves as the ground for educational discourse and for further framework revision and development. When the framework is finalized, the curriculum committee tin can select a curriculum-planning model to determine the specific curriculum.
Selecting a Curriculum-Planning Model
The second step of integrating standards into the curriculum is selecting a curriculum-planning model. This model provides the foundation for the development of the specific curriculum. Bybee et al. (1990) draw how the specific details of the curriculum fit into the framework:
"A complete framework provides information needed to brand decisions about the content, the sequences of activities, the selection of instructional strategies and techniques that are probable to be constructive, advisable assessment practices, and other specifics of the curriculum.... A framework is like the broad sketches of an builder's plan. The framework gives an initial picture of the program and is based on certain specifications. The builder'due south programme has to fulfill certain requirements. At the same time, the more than specific details are left to the contractors and the carpenters. Everyone knows there will be modifications equally the framework is developed and implemented, but there should be some allegiance to the original intentions, specifications, and design." (p. 86)
The quest for the attainment of loftier standards by all students in conjunction with current research on teaching and learning calls for a "customized arroyo (learning-focused) to education" rather than a "standardized approach ... (a sorting-focused arrangement)," notes Reigeluth (1997, p. 204). From a curriculum-development perspective, such an approach necessitates knowing where each learning feel fits in a given unit or field of try, as well as how all experiences and units fit in the big picture of what students should know and be able to do. Units and lessons are developed by considering all components of the curriculum framework and determining how the activities and strategies will assist students understand necessary concepts and gain new skills to successfully encounter commune learning goals.
In many cases, the curriculum-planning model may be determined by the state or the commune or even by the adopted curriculum materials. Equally a general rule, nevertheless, the usability of a planning model depends on whether it provides the guidance and impetus to answer the questions that enable educatee learning. Such models should provide the context and content for pedagogy and, at the same fourth dimension, let the flexibility for change. Such flexibility is needed when educators wish to apply current learning research and when community members and students are part of the curriculum-development procedure.
Thus, the new models for curriculum planning and development look much different from the lesson-plan formats and the scope-and-sequence documents traditionally used. The chore is to detect or design a model that informs, drives, and enables the attainment of high standards by all students in a customized fashion and to address developmental differences and differences in experience, prior noesis, and interest that each student brings to the classroom. As Reigeluth (1997) points out:
"We need customization to supervene upon standardization, in club to have an education organisation that is focused on learning (attaining high standards) rather than on sorting. This does not mean that the basic standards for faster learners should be different from those for slower learners; rather, it means that we should not wait all students to meet standards within the same fourth dimension frames. Further rationale for this conclusion is provided by differences in developmental rates for learners of the same age, differences in opportunities to learn outside of school, differences in prior knowledge and skills, differences in interests, and many other factors." (p. 204)
Researchers have constitute that near curriculum-planning models fall into five categories of curriculum design. The advisable design depends upon the learning goals or standards to exist met. After teachers choose their model, they make up one's mind units of report for the units and lessons that will be taught.
One way to foster the curriculum-development process is to use the 5 models adapted from templates developed for Science T.R.Eastward.E. (Teachers Reaching Educational Excellence), an instructional pattern tool from the North Central Mathematics and Science Consortium. Science T.R.E.East. design-team members (including teachers) developed the templates to exist easily adapted to other content areas and grade levels every bit well as to address a broader context of curriculum pattern. Although these models are science based, they can easily exist modified for whatever content area. The vision of these models is important in broadening the definition of curriculum planning and development, and thereby increasing teacher effectiveness and pupil learning. Each of these models ties together the planning of investigations (learning experiences), units of study, and the consummate curriculum with the integration of standards.
The v Science T.R.E.Eastward. models are:
- Model I (Apple tree Template). This model focuses on engaged learning, It also brings in the use of available technology to prepare students for the future.
- Model II (Giant Sequoia Template). This model emphasizes learner-centered didactics. It presents questions that are posed to keep students involved in the planning and implementation of the curriculum.
- Model 3 (Maple Template). This model is based on inquiry. It emphasizes edifice and sequencing activities, units, and curricula to explore unifying themes and concepts.
- Model IV (Pino Template). This model has an up-front focus on assessment. Its first footstep enables teachers to decide what students are to learn and how students will demonstrate what they take learned. And then attending turns to how to achieve the desired results.
- Model V (Oak Template). This model is the most comprehensive in guiding teachers through a footstep-by-footstep process of curriculum development. Guiding questions assistance teachers determine what they want to teach, how to provide the best learning opportunities for students, how to manage the learning environment, and how to determine what students have learned.
These five models, too as many others currently used in schools and districts, comprise electric current learning enquiry and provide opportunities for teacher reflection. The reflection component allows teachers to record and analyze the educational strategies that worked and the changes that need to exist made in the classroom.
When curriculum development is a dynamic process involving the entire educational customs, it is imperative that classroom teachers fully understand the latest teaching and learning research, the content standards and the knowledge required to meet those standards, and the student-functioning levels required to demonstrate that students have learned what they need to take learned. High-quality curriculum-planning models can help those teachers develop professionally as they programme their time with the students.
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| [1.1 MB audio file] "Science is an active procedure, and science is for all students. These are principles that permeate our scientific discipline curriculum. In addition, a blend of 2 ideologies pervades our Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools science curriculum: constructivism and developmentalism. The constructivist view is that all students come to learning tasks already well supplied with their own sets of cognition, conceptions, and misconceptions. Developmentalism is a conventionalities that rather than plumbing fixtures the child to the curriculum, students are better served if the curriculum is fitted to the child's stage of development. The developmental arroyo to curriculum pays attention to the ways children abound and learn. By understanding children'south abilities and capabilities, worthwhile educational activities for students can be planned. Our elementary curriculum is organized into developmental levels: grades Grand-2, three-4, and v-half-dozen. These levels match those found in NSTA'southward Pathways to the Science Standards. We appreciated the model entitled Scientific discipline for all Students, which was provided by the Florida Department of Education. Information technology offered specific examples of how science curriculum is put into do. In add-on, NCREL'southward Tree Templates were beingness adult about the same time as our curriculum was being written. This gave teachers a variety of choices for planning lessons in their classroom. During professional person development sessions, our kindergarten through 6th- grade staff had the opportunity to select the template model that matched their education mode and lesson-format preference." |
In many schools, the nucleus of curriculum planning is formed by materials review, piloting, adoption, and implementation. In some cases, those adopted materials define the school'due south curriculum framework. Although many of these schools, teachers, and students are showing positive results due to the high quality of the newer materials and the intense and professional nature of their implementation plans, the ultimate goal still is to develop a curriculum based on the standards prepare by their customs for their students. Curriculum planning, curriculum review and implementation processes, and alignment of materials with the standards by necessity must form a cohesive whole that enables teachers and students to perform at their highest levels. This goal is linked with the process of building chapters.
Building Capacity at All Levels of the Educational System
The third step in integrating standards into the curriculum is promoting capacity edifice at all levels of the educational organization. Capacity edifice is any process that increases the capability of individuals to produce or perform; it enables all stakeholders to carry out their tasks to the all-time of their power.
In the educational community, chapters building is not express to teachers and administrators, nor does it relate but to increasing educatee learning and achievement. In the context of standards-based educational reform, capacity building is a multifaceted, systemic endeavor that involves the educators and the institution, the students and their parents, and the larger customs of stakeholders. Enquiry and do demonstrate that changing the way education is done, equally schools promote higher standards of performance and exercise, requires new and unlike capacities for all stakeholders. Finding means to build capacity for a multifariousness of roles and for a wide-based group of individuals is the claiming.
Capacity edifice requires much more than traditional professional and personal development for administrators, teachers, and other schoolhouse staff. Goertz, Floden, and O'Twenty-four hour period (1996) note:
"If all students are to learn to new standards, not merely teachers, but administrators, teacher educators, and other participants in the education system must change their roles and expectations. Educators, researchers, and policymakers are outset to explore different ways to heighten the ability of the organization and its teachers to meliorate educatee learning. But before they can blueprint effective policies, policymakers must make up one's mind what capacities are needed and what mechanisms and strategies might foster their evolution. About capacity-building strategies in instruction today are targeted on individual teachers and are designed to enhance their knowledge and improve their instructional skills through the provision of workshops and academy courses. Notwithstanding, our data and that of other researchers suggest that the traditional model of professional development reflects a express conception of the dimensions of teacher capacity necessary to back up and sustain pedagogy reform and ignores the function of the schoolhouse and other communities of practise in instructor learning and educational improvement."
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| [762 M audio file] "During the implementation phase, several professional person-development sessions were held. These large grouping sessions provided a forum where a mutual cognition base and philosophical base of operations could exist discussed. Outside consultants--including Department of Public Instruction personnel and teacher leaders from within the state--were involved in these discussions. Pocket-size-group discussions inside each of the elementary buildings followed the big group sessions. These study groups enabled individuals to question, reverberate, and refine their understanding of the curriculum. Some individuals and teams of teachers designed classroom science lessons using our new curriculum and NCREL's Tree Templates. Nosotros felt that the Tree Templates would be one vehicle to share exemplary investigations [lessons]. Optional staff-development opportunities have besides been structured in our district. Hands-on science classes and workshops were offered in the summer. Some of these classes had follow-upwards meetings that reinforced concepts learned and gave teachers additional fourth dimension to reverberate and to discuss curriculum issues." |
A plan for capacity edifice initially should focus on bringing together school administrators and staff in a professional learning community. In such a customs, all educators are united in their delivery to student learning. They share a vision, work and acquire collaboratively, visit and review other classrooms, and participate in shared decision-making (Hord, 1997b). Eventually, this grouping may expand to include parents and members of the community. The long-term goals of the learning customs are to enable educators and students to go on learning and growing, to empower educators to participate in decision making, to create a school culture of accountability built on respect, and to optimize the accomplishment of all students. Continued chapters building is contingent on the ability of educators to implement, monitor, and evaluate the curriculum.
Implementing, Monitoring, Reflecting Upon, and Evaluating the Curriculum
The final step of integrating standards into the curriculum consists of implementing the curriculum in the classroom and connected monitoring, reflection, and evaluation to improve information technology. Teachers are responsible for implementing the curriculum as it evolves and determining if information technology is having the desired result on pupil learning. In their daily classroom activities, teachers keep data to monitor student progress and evaluate educatee performance. They take care to use a variety of assessment tools that are performance based instead of relying on standardized tests. Along with the curriculum commission, teachers use ongoing reflection to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and to make needed changes. Evaluation can include the unabridged curriculum framework, the curriculum-planning model, and the instruction strategies used in the classroom. The ongoing goal is to improve the curriculum and raise student achievement.
Efforts to develop a curriculum framework that is congenital around standards and district learning goals, to develop quality curriculum based on that framework, and to empower stakeholders to carry out the activities to the best of their power does non ensure that learning volition have place. Attention also has to be given to the procedure of implementing the curriculum as it evolves and determining if it is having the desired issue on pupil learning. Changes to the framework, curriculum, and strategies used should be made if the desired results are not existence achieved. Just if students are meeting performance standards is true educational activity taking place.
To determine the quality of pupil learning, teachers and the curriculum commission tin can answer specific questions to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum. These questions could include:
- What information and data are available to support the belief that education did in fact happen?
- Tin specific learning exist linked to specific actions, learning experiences, strategies, people, or environments?
- Did any specific learning or learning experiences contribute in a major way to attainment of a particular standard? What performance demonstrated that attainment? How many students attained that level of functioning?
- How advisable are the content standards, operation standards, and benchmarks for the students?
- How advisable are the learning experiences in generating the performances chosen for in the standards? Which experiences need to be eliminated? Which experiences demand to be revised or expanded? What new experiences need to be designed to assistance students attain a higher level of performance?
- What embedded cess tools provide reliable evidence that pedagogy has happened?
- What curricular materials are the most valuable in designing learning experiences that enable education to happen?
- How are district resources--including human resources, material resource, and fiscal resources--organized to facilitate the standards-based reform processes in identify?
Such questions enable all stakeholders to reflect on and evaluate the curriculum. If students are not meeting performance standards or if other desired results are not existence achieved, teachers and the curriculum committee should determine what changes are needed.
If the curriculum-development process is to evolve continually, opportunities to reflect on and to question the effectiveness of the curriculum are essential. It is the responsibility of all stakeholders to participate in the evaluation procedure and determine whether students are attaining the standards set up for them. Stakeholders should agree themselves accountable for doing their job and accepting this responsibleness. The lesser line is what happens between teachers and students, notwithstanding everyone monitors the end line.
Developing a curriculum framework based on standards and commune learning goals, designing a curriculum-planning model based on that framework, empowering stakeholders to carry out the activities to the best of their ability, and ensuring continued monitoring and evaluation as the curriculum is implemented in the classroom are four steps in the procedure of integrating standards into the curriculum. The importance of these steps becomes more than apparent when educators consider the bear on of current learning in helping students gain the knowledge and skills they will demand later to function as productive adults.
Some scientists are now predicting that by the yr 2015, the amount of available knowledge will exist doubling every two months. This figure has innumerable ramifications for curriculum-framework evolution that serves students who volition be living and working in an unimaginable world of the future. Thus, it is imperative that curriculum development brings together a varied and knowledgeable grouping of individuals to guide the process and that the standards-based curriculum is updated and improved on an ongoing basis.
- Teachers, administrators, parents, and community members are involved in determining what they want students to know and be able to do.
- District, state, and national goals and standards are aligned, coherent, and understandable in a curriculum framework.
- The curriculum framework includes not only content standards simply complementary performance standards, guidelines for teacher knowledge and agreement, capacity-building activities and processes, and opportunities for reflection and evaluation.
- Teachers work together with the curriculum commission to develop the school'southward curriculum using an appropriate curriculum-planning model within the guidelines of the curriculum framework.
- Chapters building for all stakeholders is valued. It is thoughtfully and comprehensively planned and carried out.
- Monitoring and assessment of student accomplishment is accomplished using multiple assessment tools.
- Develop a curriculum framework at the local level.
- Study land and national educational standards, district standards, and information on developing and implementing standards.
- Be aware of various principles that reflect advisable employ of standards.
- Review research on student learning and teaching strategies.
- Acquire nearly the characteristics of successful schools.
- Use the knowledge gained from the review of research to set local content standards, performance standards, benchmarks, and possibly guidelines for instructor knowledge and understnding by adopting or adapting available standards, combining a number of sources, or writing new local standards and benchmarks.
- Contain the standards into a curriculum framework that volition inform, guide, and support curriculum development.
- Make up one's mind the additional parts--such as chapters building and evaluating--that demand to be added to the framework to accost additional audiences and purposes, such as informing community members, parents, and business partners of the standards and how they will become a part of the school curriculum.
- Select or design a curriculum-planning model for curriculum development.
- Choose a curriculum model incorporating the areas that the learning community has decided are necessary for integrating standards into the curriculum.
- Encourage the participation of students and community members in the curriculum-development process.
- Give substantial attention to monitoring educatee learning and reflecting on instructor practise.
- Ensure that the model reflects the evolving nature of curriculum development.
- Promote capacity building at all levels of the educational arrangement.
- Admit the importance of building chapters for education reform.
- Ensure that standards provide opportunity for staff development.
- Develop a plan for creating a professional person learning customs comprising administrators and school staff.
- Expand the learning customs to include parents and customs members.
- Create a civilisation of accountability; ensure that all members of the learning community take buying of the curriculum-development process to promote high educatee achievement.
- Guide the monitoring of, reflection about, and evaluation of the curriculum equally teachers implement it in the classroom.
- Apply an ongoing reflection procedure to involve all stakeholders in improving the curriculum.
- Use a variety of cess tools to determine if students are reaching learning goals.
- Provide time and opportunities for teachers to reflect on and evaluate the curriculum.
- Convene meetings with teachers to hash out the overall effectiveness of the curriculum in improving student learning.
- Determine the appropriateness of the content standards, benchmarks, and educatee performance standards for meeting learning goals.
- Develop strategies for making changes to the curriculum.
- Continue meeting regularly to review progress and allocation of resources, plan the next steps, bank check for alignment and coherence, and implement changes to the curriculum.
"A horse and buggy is non at error for not being able to go sixty miles an hour. Exhorting driver and horse to get faster or blaming them for having insufficiently high expectations is a futile exercise. What is needed is to invent the machine. As a society we decided that anybody deserved the best . . . . Simply once we wanted everyone to take the 'best,' we had in effect told the equus caballus and buggy to exercise the impossible." (p. 271)
Darling-Hammond (1990) states it some other way: "American public schools designed for the 19th century are incapable of solving the problems that will face usa in the 21st [century]" (p. 286). She adds that some people think "schools can be made to ameliorate if standards are set and incentives established," but such reasoning is faulty because "[school people] work inside a dysfunctional organizational structure that has made inadequate investments in the knowledge and tools they demand to accost students' needs" (p. 287). Prevalent in this dysfunctional organizational structure are many of the pitfalls for integrating content standards into the school curriculum: tracking, teacher shortages, lack of professional development, and time and financial concerns.
Tracking. The practice of tracking students is still used extensively in the United States. Proponents of tracking believe that grouping students by power enables educators to better meet the needs of students. Opponents of tracking believe that this practice actually is harmful to the students placed in the non-college-spring classes because it typically provides a low-level curriculum taught past less-qualified teachers in a negative classroom environs. "These curricular differences also explain much of the disparity between the achievement of higher- and lower-income students and between the achievement of white and minority students," notes Darling-Hammond (1990, p. 289). For standards-based reform to provide all students with the opportunity to work with a challenging curriculum, the long-established tracking arrangement in America'southward school volition need to be abolished.
Teacher Shortages. Abolishing tracking and working to help all students come across district, land, and national standards will require well-trained, highly skilled, and knowledgeable teachers. Unfortunately, shortages of qualified teachers are most prevalent in high-poverty areas and in the subjects of math, science, special education, bilingual education, and strange languages (U.S. Department of Education, 1999). Also, most 22 percent of new public schoolhouse teachers exit the profession in their starting time three years (National Middle for Education Statistics, 1994).
Professional person Development. Those teachers who are remaining in the classroom, at present more than ever, need professional evolution in the areas of standards-based curriculum, student learning and motivation, and specials-needs children. "Constructive educational activity, and peculiarly teaching for higher-order agreement requires a range of education methods that have been found to be highly dependent on the extent and quality of training that teachers accept received," notes Darling-Hammond (1990, p. 292).
Time and Financial Concerns. Further complicating this motion picture is that the resource of time and money are at a premium in American schools. Time and money are badly needed to provide this ongoing professional person development coupled with continuous support, to encourage high-quality people to remain in the education profession, and to purchase the curricular materials and the engineering science that support a standards-based curriculum.
That these pitfalls are interconnected is no surprise. The true reformation of our nation'south schools cannot afford to be likened to forcing the equus caballus and buggy to become faster. A standards-based curriculum based on the belief that all children can learn and achieve at a high level requires a systemic approach--in consequence, a totally new car. Integrating standards into the curriculum is but one part of this new machine chosen educational reform.
McLaughlin and Shepard (1995) question whether standards lonely can brand a difference in improving the quality of pedagogy:
"Serious questions have been raised near whether the standards movement is what is needed most to amend public didactics. Excellence in bookish accomplishment requires more than than setting goals and expecting students to see them. What if reformers focused instead on the necessary weather of a highly literate and well-educated nation? What conditions would foster loftier-level academic outcomes for most of our citizens? A respect within the general populace for intellect and its utilise? The guarantee of acceptable educational resources? The availability of opportunities to use and benefit from high-level pedagogy? If these conditions prevailed, it is less probable that we would accept to worry about students meeting high standards." (p. 12)
Berkson (1997) as well questions whether national standards are needed. He claims that content standards are already in place for the top 25 percent of students and that those standards are enforced through the Scholastic Aptitude Test (Sabbatum), the American Higher Test (ACT), and the Advanced Placement exams given by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. For the other 75 percent of students, he recommends testing for a national Basic Skills Certificate. He believes that passing such an exam will demonstrate students' mastery of basic academic skills to hereafter employers and to institutions of higher didactics. In effect, he says, national and state content standards are not needed, and district standards are of nebulous value.
Others argue that the standards debate is virtually neither challenging content standards nor bones skill competencies. Lewis (1995) says that "technology is nigh to pause up the education system every bit we know it" (p. 750). She states that "computers and other interactive resources at present (or soon to be) available pose a serious challenge to educators because they make control over the scope and sequence of learning--the traditional function of the Yard-12 system--obsolete" (p. 750).
Clinchy (1996) notes that simple and secondary schools often have difficulty integrating standards into the curriculum and restructuring themselves to prepare students for the 21st century considering teachers are even so required to teach an "outmoded, essentially 19th-century, nearly entirely academic curriculum" (p. 269). He adds that these demands seem inappropriate because "institutions of higher teaching are non being required to 'reform' and 'restructure' themselves for the very aforementioned reasons" (p. 270). He suggests that if elementary and secondary schools have to set up students for a traditional collegiate feel, M-12 reform efforts always will exist thwarted.
Many classroom teachers worry that instructor and pupil accountability for the content dictated by district, state, and national standards will be based on standardized tests written to evaluate the teaching and learning of the curriculum. McLaughlin and Shepard (1995) note:
"If national content standards are used narrowly equally 'test specifications' for national, state, or local accountability devices, teachers will then merely implement the exam-divers curriculum rather than inventing instructional activities consistent with broad curriculum frameworks but responsive to their own students' learning" (p. 14).
In addition, McLaughlin and Shepard (1995) suggest that integrating national and state standards into a commune's curriculum may usurp the local control that has been a hallmark of the U.South. public pedagogy system and, quite possibly, will lead to a highly specified national curriculum. They notation that much of the opposition to standards reform is based on fear of losing the "flavor of the community" and "of undermining professional and local responsibility for student learning" (p. xiii).
Ohanian (1996) believes that many educational-reform leaders are unable to recognize a loftier-quality curriculum:
"Essayist Will Cuppy once noted that penguins are dignified, they get their names in the newspaper, and only an good tin can tell a live penguin from a stuffed 1. Curriculum reform must be at the heart of any noun modify, but too many people who talk the talk of reform tin can't tell a alive curriculum from a stuffed i" (p. 277).
Ohanian adds that setting high academic standards is expert for students, merely she worries that lilliputian is being said near what happens to the students who are not reading by 3rd grade and who are not taking algebra or leading discussion groups in a foreign linguistic communication past ninth grade. She believes that teachers must have children as they are and do the best task of educating them today: "If I teach them well today, this infinitesimal, tomorrow will have care of itself" (p. 279).
Finally, there is controversy most the terminology beingness used in this educational reform debate. "Fifty-fifty staunch supporters of national standards admit in that location is considerable confusion nigh the idea of a standard," notes Noddings (1997). "Some encounter a standard as a flag of sorts--something to rally effectually. Others see it as a goal to exist reached, and nonetheless others see it as a clarification of various proficiency levels. In this last sense, a standard is a norm for quality control" (p. 184). For all stakeholders to share a mutual understanding and a common vision, there must be national, state, and district understanding on terminology such as standards, benchmarks, and course-level expectations, and an understanding of their implications for students and teachers.
- Grand Rapids Public Schools, Grand Rapids, Michigan
- Wisconsin Rapids School District, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin
Mid-continent Research for Teaching and Learning
Standards at McREL
2550 S. Parker Route, Suite 500
Aurora, CO 80014
(303) 337-0990; fax (303) 337-3005
Contact: Janie Pollock
Due east-mail: info@mcrel.org
World wide web: world wide web.mcrel.org/standards/
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST)
University of California at Los Angeles
Graduate School of Education and Data Studies
301 GSE&IS;, Mailbox 951522
300 Charles East. Young Bulldoze North
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1522
(310) 206-1532; fax (310) 825-3883
Contact: Joan Herman, Associate Director
E-postal service: Joan@cse.ucla.edu
Www: http://cresst96.cse.ucla.edu/
National Center on Teaching and the Economic system
700 11th St. North.Due west., Suite 750
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 783-3668; fax (202) 783-3672
Contact: Marc Tucker, President
E-mail service: info@ncee.org
Www: http://www.ncee.org
Donna Weber, Principal
Grove Elementary Schoolhouse
471 Grove Ave.
Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494
(715) 422-6136; fax (715) 422-6325
This Disquisitional Upshot was written by Cyntha Pattison and Nancy Berkas, program associates with the Due north Cardinal Mathematics and Science Consortium at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.
Date posted: 2000
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