A Moment with Vern
published September 23, 2011
The question has been asked, “Are we headed in the right direction and will focusing on standards really impact student achievement?” This is a great question and one that deserves an answer.
Found in this moment is just some of the evidence leading researchers and practitioners say about standards or about the significance of a “guaranteed and viable curriculum.”
Focus-Focus-Focus or “Focusing on the Right Work”
Larry Lezotte found that in effective schools each of the teachers in the school has a clear understanding of what the essential learner objectives are, grade by grade and subject by subject. Robert Marzano referred to this clarity of focus as a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Regardless of the terminology, the premise of learning for all demands that each teacher be clear on the specific knowledge, skills, and dispositions each student must acquire as a result of the course, grade level, and unit of instruction. This clarity requires more than distributing state standards or district curriculum guides to teachers. It demands teachers accept shared responsibility for the learning of all the students assigned to their course or grade level and that they work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn.
Raising
The Bar and Closing The Gap
DuFour,
DuFour, Eaker, and Karhanek
pp.33-34
Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum - Standards
“What we teach. This simply means a decent, coherent curriculum, with topics and standards collectively selected by a team of teachers from the school or district that is actually taught. The number of power standards must not be excessive; it should account for about half of what is contained in our standards documents. This allows us to teach the essential standards in sufficient intellectual depth, with adequate time for deep reading, writing, and talking. Why is this so important? Because such guaranteed and viable curriculum is perhaps the most significant school factor that affects learning. But such a curriculum is found in very few schools.
Focus by Mike Schmoker
p.
10
Keys to Assessment – Assessment.
The second key to quality assessment is the clear, complete, and appropriate articulation of the achievement target (learning target) to be mastered. We cannot dependably assess that which we have not defined. These days, we start target definitions with state standards or local adaptations of those standards. When these standards are organized in a logical manner to unfold properly within and across grade levels, they can be the focus of both interim/benchmark/common assessments and the annual accountability tests that help us know if students are on track to success.
However, our thinking about clear targets cannot stop here. We have yet to account for the classroom level, where we need to help students ascend through the levels of proficiency leading to mastery of each standard. Every standard must be deconstructed into the scaffolding that students must climb on their journey to success. These continuously unfolding classroom targets, then, become the focus of day-to-day formative assessments.
To accomplish this deconstruction, faculties can work in teams to organize standards and build the scaffolding for each standard. They can start by asking specific questions of each standard. Following is an example of this process for the standard, “Learn to write proficiently.”
- What must our students know and understand when the time comes for them to demonstrate that they have met the standard? What are the foundations of knowledge that underpin success here?
- What patterns of reasoning, if any, must students have mastered to be ready to demonstrate that they have met this standard? Must they be prepared to use their knowledge to reason productively in this case?
- What performance skills, if any, does this standard assume our students will master on their journey to competence? Do we expect achievement-related behaviors?
- What products, if any, must our students learn to create to be judged proficient in terms of this standard?
Ahead
of the curve: The Power of Assessments to
Transform
Teaching and learning
Rick Stiggins, pp. 63-64
Removing barriers to success – Professional Learning Communities.
For meaningful collaboration to occur, a number of things must also stop happening. Schools must stop pretending that merely presenting teachers with state standards or district curriculum guides will guarantee that all students have access to a common curriculum. Even school districts that devote tremendous time and energy to designing the intended curriculum often pay little attention to the implemented curriculum (what teachers actually teach) and even less to the attained curriculum (what students learn). Schools must also give teachers time to analyze and discuss state and district curriculum documents. More important, teacher conversations must quickly move beyond “What are we expected to teach?” to “How will we know when each student has learned?”
On Common Ground: The Power of Professional
Learning
Communities
Rick DuFour, pp. 38-39
Life beyond high school
“The academic quality and intensity of the high school curriculum is a key determinant of success in postsecondary education….whether in a two-year or four-year institution—and for work.”
Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in the
High
School
Core Curriculum
pp.
2-3
Other noted researchers supporting a guaranteed and viable curriculum, a focus on standards include but are not limited to the following:
Larry Ainsworth
Ken O’Connor
Douglas Reeves
Tom Guskey
James Popham
Jonathon Saphier
Larry Lezotte
“Are we headed in the right direction” and “will focusing on standards impact student achievement” are reasonable questions that we should all consider. I appreciate the question being asked. The question is answered through the research and that research is abundantly clear. A guaranteed and viable curriculum where students are exposed to rigorous standards is a strategy that profoundly impacts student achievement. Guaranteed and viable implies that in every classroom the intended curriculum is actually implemented and the implemented curriculum is actually acquired by all students.
Conversations around learning targets, standards, and what is guaranteed and viable is the correct path for us to take, and these conversations are already occurring in our district. Focused conversations about standards, what the standard measures, and criteria proficiency are the foundational pieces to improved student achievement.
It will take time to truly become standards-based. I am confident in the talent of our adults and I am confident that each day we become more comfortable, more knowledgeable about the standards.
