By Jeanie Cash
One day last spring I was looking over the achievement data that was going into our district’s Board Update. I was feeling pretty smug and a whole lot complacent. After all, most of our schools could be classified as high performing, I work with an exceptionally gifted superintendent who makes the success of students his highest priority, and I serve a Board of Education that we affectionately call the Dream Team because every decision it makes reflects its deep commitment to students and our instructional programs.
The euphoria was short-lived.
The very next morning I visited classes at one of the high schools in our district when a teacher stopped me to ask if I would send him “ a copy of those new standards.”
“Excuse me, I thought as I tried to hide my astonishment. NEW?!”
And, if that didn’t deflate my euphoric mood, my visit to open house at one of our elementary schools that same evening certainly did. The first classroom I visited had 32 identical turkey handprints pinned in perfect rows on the bulletin board. Each finger represented a one-word description of something for which they were thankful. Since this was the month of May, I thought, “She must have each month displayed around the room.” Not so! Those were still there from Thanksgiving!
Much to my dismay, I moved up a grade level and lo and behold, there was the infamous dinosaur unit boldly displayed.
Driving home that evening I consoled myself by thinking this day was the exception, not the norm. Still, I mentally went through the blame checklist – district’s fault? Site administrator’s fault? Why, 10 years later, isn’t every teacher in this district of 27,000 students teaching a coherent, standards-based curriculum?
I reflected on my own first years of teaching and the yet unknown “S” word, a time when the word “standard” meant “traditional.” In those days, Madeline Hunter and Earlene Minton taught us how to teach, but did anyone really tell us what to teach?
I began teaching in the late 1970s in the days of Proposition 13 and declining enrollment. Because of the closing of schools in my district, I changed grade levels five times in five years. One year, my rookie status landed me in a sixth grade assignment the day before school started. I managed to find an outdated set of reading books and a fairly up-to-date set of math books in the book room. I could not find any books for social studies, so at lunch I asked the veteran teachers at that grade level what the sixth-grade curriculum was for social studies.
Some 30 years later, I vividly recall their answers. One teacher said, “I went to China this summer, so I’m going to teach about China.” Another said, “I went to the Middle East with my church, so I’m going to cover Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. I have a lot of slides.” The third teacher, whose room was crawling with snakes, iguanas and other like creatures said, “I don’t have time to teach history because I like to spend my time teaching science.”
I discovered over the next few years that teachers pretty much taught their heart’s desire, based on their interests and the textbooks available. It’s no wonder dinosaur units flourished. Because colorful tyrannosaurus rex pictures were found in every teacher supply store, students were studying dinosaurs in almost every grade level!
When a new superintendent arrived, he surveyed the teachers as to what we perceived to be the greatest needs in the district. I recall writing at the top of my list, “A coherent, sequential curriculum of study for each grade level in every subject.” Over the years we didn’t get a coherent, much less standards-based curriculum, but we did adopt new textbooks and, as is often the case, those became the curriculum guides.
What is a standards-based, coherent
curriculum?
Standards have been one of the hottest topics in education reform for more than a decade. The first I began to pay attention to the “S” word was when the State Board of Education adopted the English-language arts standards in 1997. With the adoption of these content standards, California set forth for the first time a uniform and specific vision of what students should know and be able to do in this subject area. Amazingly, dinosaurs could not be found in any of the standards at any grade level!
Since 1997, we have standards for virtually everything in public education. We have content standards in all subject areas and, with the newly adopted career technical education standards and the finalization of preschool standards looming on the horizon, it seems that all bases are covered.
In addition to content standards, we have standards for teachers (CTSP), standards for administrators (CPSELs) and several years ago Kappan came out with an article that outlined standards for districts (Sirotnik and Kimball, 1999).
Coherence means each and every goal in an accountability system is clearly specified and is measured completely without added irrelevance. Standards-based means that there are essential standards that are the basis for the curriculum. Standards-based reform has become the driving force behind most federal, state and local education policies in the United States today.
In California, the focus on standards-based instructional programs rests on the belief that all children should have access to more challenging curriculum content and that they should be expected to learn that content at a proficient to high level of performance.
For 10 years, we have advocated that curriculum and instruction, assessment, professional development and financial resources all should be aligned to help students and schools attain the standards. At the heart of a standards-based curriculum lie academic content standards, specifying what students should know at each grade level and, by extension, what should be taught. From these content standards emerged a framework, or a blueprint for schools to use to implement the state-adopted content standards. These standards and this framework should guide all classroom instruction.
Grade-level standards establish high expectations for all students. They are the heart of our mission that all students can reach their full potential, succeed academically, pursue higher education, find fulfilling careers, participate in our democracy as informed citizens, contribute to our culture and pursue continuous learning throughout their lives.
Ten years later, where are we?
When the first standards were published, districts across the state began to scramble to identify and purchase supplemental materials that were standards-based. Publishers quickly modified their texts to include their version of an alignment to grade-level standards. Those who had the resources to move quickly to align the written, taught and tested curriculum were able to cash in on their alignment documents and sell them.
Elementary schools have faired better than middle schools and high schools during the standards-based reform movement. Data now tells us that schools that have embraced a coherent, standards-based curriculum have closed both the equity and achievement gap.
How did they do it? Here are five strategies.
Cashology 101
1. Aligned curriculum. Curriculum alignment is a coordination of what is written, taught and tested. It is also the articulation of the curriculum from pre-K-12, as well as the alignment of instruction within the department/grade level and from school to school.
I am an advocate of pacing guides and have witnessed the success of backward mapping. Simply put, teachers must identify what students need to know and be able to do by the end of the year to demonstrate mastery of essential standards, be prepared for the next grade level and demonstrate proficiency on a standards-based assessment (CST). Written curriculum is defined as those standards, goals and objectives that students are to achieve and teachers are to teach.
An effective curriculum guide contains objectives that are aligned to district-developed benchmark assessments, suggested timeframes, examples of instructional strategies, aligned resources, correlation to the California Content Standards Test and a scope and sequence.
I have discovered that involving large numbers of teachers in curriculum writing is time-consuming, expensive and not always productive. It is incumbent upon district and site leaders to assume leadership and responsibility for an aligned, written curriculum by engaging a few teacher leaders who are well qualified and highly respected by their colleagues in this process.
Curriculum development is an ongoing process and must be reviewed yearly. The best examples of curriculum guides I have seen contain one page per each identified essential standard for a particular grade level. Subcategories on that page include:
• A clear explanation of the standard.
• Prior knowledge needed to obtain mastery of the standard.
• A correlation to the textbook pages and supplementary resources that teach to the standard.
• A correlation to the district benchmark assessment items that test mastery.
• A sample of a norm-referenced test item that shows how this standard is tested on the CST. (This idea is often overlooked, but I became a believer when some years ago, I saw the best third grade teachers with the lowest STAR math scores. We discovered students were skipping over multiple digit multiplication problems that were written horizontally because the only problems they had seen were printed vertically. Students need opportunities to practice in the format in which they are tested.)
Finally, a curriculum guide should look like a worn out tennis shoe! A district can have the best curriculum guides in the world, but if they sit on a shelf unused, they serve no purpose. It is indeed a paradigm shift to get teachers to teach to the curriculum guide rather than the textbook; however, if the next four behaviors are in place, this can and will happen.
2. Talk, talk and talk some more! Get the data to the teachers in a format they understand and give them opportunities to talk about it – frequently! Teachers need to work together to study the latest research and trends surrounding their subject areas, analyze assessment data, align objectives and discuss strategies that are successful.
The professional learning community is a buzzword for teachers to have the opportunity to talk. Defined, a PLC is “composed of collaborative teams whose members work interdependently to achieve common goals linked to the purpose of learning for all” (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker & Many, 2006).
A PLC is a systematic, goal-directed learning process in which people work together in grade level, vertical, special-topic or subject-matter teams to improve individual and collective results for all students. In a PLC, there are opportunities to dialogue on curriculum, common formative assessments, instruction and strategies.
Teachers need opportunities for frequent conversations about teaching and learning. They need to be able to talk with school leaders about their observations and the challenges they face. They need to reflect on and talk about their data, about student work and about their curriculum. Finally, adults in schools need the opportunity to teach each other what they know about teaching, learning and leading.
3. High quality professional development. I am convinced after years of visiting classes in under-performing schools that the majority of teachers are willing to engage students and implement best practices in their teaching, they just don’t have the tools in their toolkit to be successful. Leaders need to invest their time, energy and resources on those who are “willing but not able,” and help them build capacity.
Teachers are accustomed to being the sage on the stage and do not have a good understanding of how to shift from teachers teaching to students learning. In addition to the challenges of implementing educational standards, teachers are working with more diverse populations and with students whose primary language is other than English.
The Beginning Teacher Support Program in California has been very successful because it is focused, sustained, has built-in accountability and provides teachers with ongoing support and coaching. Teachers don’t need a “one-stop shop” for their professional growth. They need staff development that is meaningful, relevant, sustained and inclusive of a coaching model. All too often, districts limit professional development opportunities to teachers.
The capacity of leaders must also continually be increased. In our district, we have a Leadership Academy for aspiring leaders, another for assistant principals, and a more advanced one for principals. Each of these meets once a month and the message is clear – leaders need to build their capacity to lead the learning. We choose a theme for the year and focus our training on increasing the capacity of leaders in a particular area.
Two years ago, the training was centered on culture-building leadership. Last year, the focus was on decision-making, rational action and problem analysis. This year, the focus will be on instructional supervision and the leader’s role in professional learning communities. When leaders get excited about learning, their passion flames the desire of their teachers to be continuous learners and implement new strategies.
4. Intervene on behalf of those who don’t get it! Schools that close the achievement gap make it a priority to identify students who are not proficient or advanced and take steps to help them. In a high performing district, it is very easy to overlook these students. When students are identified at-risk and teachers put a name with a face, it is difficult to ignore them.
Two years ago last spring, our district had an Intervention Think Tank. We invited counselors, psychologists, teachers, site and district administrators and our special education staff. We identified a three-year plan for intervening on behalf of students who are not successful due to academic or behavior challenges.
Year one of our plan has included training in Response to Intervention; professional learning communities; the implementation of a district-wide, well-defined strong English development program and the opening of opportunity classes that look different, focus on differentiation and student engagement and provide extensive counseling.
Districts need to develop an intervention plan, identify an assessment tool that will provide frequent diagnostic information, and “sort the deck” regularly so that students are placed in the most appropriate instructional setting to meet their individual needs.
We must come to terms with the fact that a $150,000 intervention program will not solve the problem. It is not the program, but the teacher that makes a difference. After-school tutorials are not proving to be successful.
What works, then? It is equipping teachers to continually assess students, learn to differentiate the instruction, and implement strategies that engage all students in the learning process.
5. Rock solid leadership. One of the criteria identified for the successful implementation of Response to Intervention is to fortify the curriculum. We not only need to fortify our curriculum, we need to make it a high priority to fortify our leaders.
Not long ago, one of our strongest principals said, “Can you please focus on coaching and instructional supervision in our Leadership Academy? I know what to say to a teacher who is teaching to the standards and using best practices. I can write a good lesson summary and I can conduct an outstanding conference. But, in all honesty, I have no idea how to work with a teacher who is still teaching dinosaur units. How do I change the behavior of veteran teachers and hold them accountable for teaching to the standards?”
I dare say many of our site and district leaders, if they were honest with themselves, would admit to asking that same question. Rock solid leadership means being able to recognize whether or not standards for a particular grade level or subject are being taught, being courageous enough to confront those teachers who, 10 years later, are not teaching to those standards, and providing them with tools they need in their toolkit to increase their capacity and be successful.
In Robin Crow’s book, “Rock Solid Leadership,” he says, “Leadership comes down to a person’s ability to influence others, and the ability to influence can’t be awarded or appointed, it must be earned. Leadership is about taking charge, going against the odds, and accepting responsibility for the outcomes along the way. It’s about exceeding expectations and consistently going the distance to insure success. No one achieves genuine leadership using quick fix formulas. It takes time, persistence, and commitment” (Crow, 2006).
Unlocking the barriers
Perhaps you are like I was that day last spring and have discovered that your teachers are not quite as far along as you thought they were, 10 years after the first standards were published. There is no quick-fix formula to implementing a coherent, standards-based curriculum.
However, these five keys will help you in assessing your district and your schools. They are keys that will assist you in unlocking barriers — a task that can and must be accomplished if our students are to be successful in this high stakes accountability system. After all, aren’t they what this is all about?
The question confronting most schools and districts is not, “What do we need to know in order to improve?” but rather, “Will we turn what we already know into action?” (DuFour et al, 2006).
References
Crow, Robin. (2006). Rock Solid Leadership. Naperville, Ill.: Simple Truths.
DuFour, Richard; DuFour, Rebecca; Eaker, Robert and Many, Thomas. (2006). Learning by Doing. Bloomington, Ind.: Solution Tree.
Lezotte, Larry. (1997). Learning for All. Okemos, Mich.: Effective Schools Products, Ltd.
Jeanie Cash is assistant superintendent, educational services for the Placentia-Yorba Linda USD.