By Jim Green
In most of the classrooms I visit, I see teachers using standards-based textbooks and I see standards for the lessons that they’re teaching posted on the front board. I am happy to see them doing this. It shows that they’re aware of the standards and have made connections between the standards and their curriculum. Posting of the standards communicates to students — in some small way, at least — that what they’re studying was not chosen arbitrarily or at random and that it is, in fact, potentially important.
Reaching full potential
I have no doubt that using a standards-based text is far better than using one that isn’t standards-based, and I am very pleased to see that teachers know and share with their students the specific standards related to what they’re teaching and learning. However, I am convinced that we haven’t begun to reach the full potential of standards-based instruction.
But here — right here — is the problem. Most teachers and school leaders I’ve spoken to seem to think that if they are using a standards-based text and if they are posting the standards in their classrooms, they are doing standards-based instruction. From my point of view, they are not. Teachers and school leaders are not clear about what standards-based instruction is, and, because they are not clear, they implement it only in parts.
Most briefly, standards-based instruction involves not only clarity about what is to be taught (the standards themselves), but also a process for determining if students have learned and achieved mastery, and a process for re-teaching students who have not achieved mastery.
More fully, standards-based instruction involves six steps:
1. Teachers need to be clear (themselves) about what they expect their students to know and be able to do by the end of a specific unit or lesson (based on the standards).
2. Teachers need to tell their students what they expect them to know and be able to do.
3. Teachers need to teach students the knowledge and skills they’ll need to show mastery.
4. Teachers need to check (assess) to see if the students have learned what the teachers expected them to.
5. Teachers need to report to the students whether or not they’ve learned it.
6. Teachers need to re-teach as needed and whenever appropriate.
In other words, standards-based instruction is a cyclic process that involves more than just using curriculum based on standards. It has a beginning (identifying the relevant standards and planning instruction), a middle (delivering the instruction), and an end (assessing mastery with respect to the relevant standards, reporting the results and re-teaching as needed). It not only makes the statement, “Here is what I expect you to learn,” but it also asks the question, “Did you learn it?”
If a part of this process is omitted, much of the potential power of standards-based instruction is lost. Yet, I have rarely seen the cycle of standards-based instruction implemented fully. Here are four of the most common problems I’ve seen.
Problem 1. Teachers fail to define clearly what they expect their students to learn.
Although the new standards-based texts often identify the standards related to a lesson or a unit of study and teachers post them so that students know what they are, that does not necessarily clarify what students will be expected to know or be able to do by the end of the current unit or lesson.
For example, a teacher using “Creating America: A History of the United States” (Garcia, 2000), a state-approved U.S. history text for eighth graders published by McDougal Littell, might get to chapter 12, section 2 and say to her class that they are going be working on standard 8.8.2, which is one of the 47 high-emphasis standards for eighth grade social science. That standard says:
“Describe the purpose, challenges, and economic incentives associated with westward expansion, including the concept of Manifest Destiny (the Lewis and Clark expedition, accounts of the removal of Indians, the Cherokees’ ‘Trail of Tears,’ settlement of the Great Plains) and the territorial acquisitions that spanned numerous decades.”
When the teacher told her class they would be working on standard 8.8.2, she would be correct. Or, at least, she would be correct in part. It turns out that only part of 8.8.2, the part related to the removal of Indians from several eastern states, is covered in chapter 12, section 2. The Lewis and Clark expedition is covered in chapter 10 and Manifest Destiny is covered in chapter 13. (According to the “Creating America” teachers’ guide, chapter 12, section 2 also covers parts of three other standards — 8.4.1, 8.5.2 and 8.8.4 — which, of course, makes life far more complex, but is not an issue here.)
Writing standard 8.8.2 on the front board as students start section 2 or listing it in a lesson plan does not make clear precisely what the teacher expects students to know or be able to do when they get to the end of the section.
It would be fairly easy to solve this problem. All the teacher needs to do is to create a learning objective, based on the standard, which would clarify what the teacher expects students to know or be able to do at the end of the section.
For example, for chapter 12, section 2 the appropriate learning objective might be, “Be able to describe the purpose, challenges and economic incentives associated with westward expansion, including accounts of the removal of Indians and the Cherokees’ ‘Trail of Tears.’”
The difference between the full and the modified standard might not seem important, but it is a crucial part of the process. Without the added clarity of the learning objective, it is impossible to complete the steps of the cycle.
It’s necessary to be clear about what students need to know and be able to do (step 1) in order to tell the students clearly what they will be expected to learn (step 2), to plan lessons that will ensure successful mastery (step 3), to design an assessment that measures mastery (step 4), to report results to the students in terms of mastery (step 5), and to identify for re-teaching students who do not achieve mastery (step 6).
In other words, the failure to clarify the learning objectives for each instructional unit leads to other problems. Some of these are described below.
Problem 2. Teachers lose focus and fail to make the connection between what they’re teaching and what they expect the students to learn.
I have been in many classrooms where teachers used standards-based texts and posted standards on the front board and then covered the material in the text without reference to the standards and without a focus on the parts of the text that connect to the standards. For example, chapter 12, section 2 in “Creating America” describes the Cherokee Trail of Tears and the removal of other Indian tribes from the eastern United States. It also includes a section about Wilma Mankiller, chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985-1995.
On the one hand, Ms. Mankiller’s story is interesting and important. On the other hand, her story is not at all connected to any of the standards to which the section was addressed and was probably added to the text to meet requirements for inclusion of women and minorities.
In such a situation there are three possibilities.
1. A teacher who believed that Mankiller’s story was important and was aware that it did not address any of the eighth grade social studies standards might nevertheless decide to include a learning objective related to some aspect of Mankiller’s story. The teacher might then take some time to go over the story and to include some reference to the story in an assessment at the end of the section.
2. A teacher who is focused on learning objectives and the standards might decide not to take much time for the paragraphs about Mankiller. She might, in fact, decide to skip them completely, and would not include anything about them on the assessment.
3. A teacher following the text and not focused on the standards or on the process of standards-based instruction might include Mankiller’s story, either because it’s interesting or important or just because it’s there. In that case, without creating an additional learning objective related to the story, the teacher might include a reference to the story in an assessment.
In cases 1 and 2, there is the possibility of clear links between the learning objectives provided up-front to the students, what is covered during the unit, and the assessment at the end. In case 3, no such clarity is possible.
I do not mean to raise this issue as a legalistic quibble. It is not that it was “wrong” of McDougal Littell to include the section on Mankiller and it’s not that it would be “wrong” for a teacher to go over the passage or refer to it. The issue has to do with what’s important. The standards are one attempt to define what’s important — important, in this case, for students in eighth grade social studies classes — and then to make sure that those students are taught what’s important.
Focusing on those topics may mean that there are other interesting or important topics that get left out or that are touched on but not covered thoroughly. Inevitably, some topics will be left out. What’s important is that teachers decide what’s included and what’s not and that they separate clearly for their students what is more important (as identified by the learning objectives) from what is less important or “merely” interesting (and not identified by the learning objectives).
I suppose there’s a way in which the issue here is the student’s age-old question, “Will it be on the test?” Which brings us to the next issue.
Problem 3. The assessments teachers use don’t report results in terms of mastery of standards (or learning objectives).
Often, the material that teachers cover with their students is related to several standards or even to many standards. This is not a problem in and of itself — it’s possible to define several learning objectives or to focus on only a few of the standards and to write learning objectives just for those. However, when teachers give assessments related to several standards, they tend to report success with respect to the assessment in terms of a single indicator: an overall score or a grade.
The problem is that grades are not a clear indicator of problems. Low grades often do not make it clear to teachers and hardly ever make it clear to students what specifically the problems are. Are there problems with respect to all of the standards covered? With respect to some, or with respect to one? Which one?
Such information is critical if there is to be any hope of a conversation between teacher and students — “Let’s look again at the three things that I expected you to learn. Did you learn them?” And the information is critical if there is to be any hope of identifying specific deficiencies and re-teaching those students who did not achieve mastery.
Problem 4. Teachers use assessments that are not connected to the standards (or learning objectives).
A good rubric is one way to avoid problem 3. Ideally, a rubric can make it possible to identify clearly the criteria by which an assignment or assessment will be evaluated. If those criteria are linked to the learning objectives laid out at the start of the unit or the lesson, and if the results for each criterion are reported to the students, that would complete the cycle and close the loop.
Unfortunately, I have often been in classrooms where teachers were using rubrics that did not connect to the standards or the learning objectives they had written on the front board.
For example, in an economics class, the standard posted on the front board was economics standard 12.1, “Students understand common economic terms and concepts and economic reasoning.” Small groups of students had prepared presentations about the feasibility of opening a student store on campus. As each group made its presentation, other students were asked to evaluate the presenters’ work based on a rubric that referred to the quality of the presentation, whether the presenters spoke clearly and made eye contact, whether the posters they had created were colorful and attractive, whether they had collected data, and whether their proposal was clear. The rubric contained no criteria related to economic terms or concepts or to economic reasoning.
The problem is not that presentation skills are unimportant. If the learning objectives had to do with presentation skills, the assignment and the criteria would have made perfect sense. But the stated learning objectives were not about presentation skills — they were about economic standards — and the assignment and the criteria failed to make the connection and close the loop.
A success and a proposal
So far, I’ve reported here on the ways in which I’ve seen teachers fail to complete the cycle, but I have also seen cases of teachers using the cycle thoughtfully. I have been in several schools where groups of teachers have begun to use benchmark tests as part of an eight- or nine-week cycle.
Often the tests have been created by district teams or by textbook publishers, often the tests are aligned both to the curriculum and to the standards, and often teachers meet in groups to go over the results of the tests and to use them to decide what they need to be teaching.
At their best, these tests and the way that they are being used are models of standards-based instruction. What would be even better is a model with a much shorter cycle time. Instead of the eight- or nine-week long cycles usually associated with the benchmark tests, teachers could use a less formal cycle on an almost daily basis.
With each pass through the cycle, as the teachers planned lessons, as they taught and as they evaluated student work, they would be thinking about what they wanted students to learn that day or that week and about whether or not the students had learned it. Then they would be talking to their students about the results.
Indentifying failures quickly
While I have not seen anything like this happening in schools that I have visited, the potential for such a process to improve student learning is immense. One of the goals of standards-based instruction is to identify areas in which students have not achieved mastery in order to make appropriate re-teaching possible. In that case, it is clearly better to identify such failures as quickly as possible. It is much easier to correct one day’s confusion than to correct a confusion that has compounded itself over eight or nine weeks.
In summary, I am promoting a vision of standards-based instruction that is more thorough than the way in which most teachers and school leaders understand standards-based instruction at present. It involves more than the use of standards-based textbooks and the posting of standards.
It is a process in which the identification of standards is just the beginning, and which works most powerfully when taken through to its conclusion — from a clear statement of learning objectives (linked to standards), through an assessment and a report of mastery with respect to the learning objectives, to re-teaching of students who did not achieve mastery.
As a whole, this is a complex process, but, fortunately, it can be approached in step-wise fashion. The biggest problem, and the one addressed here, is that unless the goal is understood, unless teachers and school leaders understand the big picture and understand the full cycle of standards-based instruction, they will not be able to implement it and students will not achieve at levels that true standards-based instruction will make possible.
Jim Green is a retired school principal currently working as a principal coach in several Program Improvement schools.