Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

standards

Do Standards Improve Learning?

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Eight years later, did the Common Core Standards help or hurt? This might be the million-dollar question with equal numbers of supporters on each side of the debate. While this question can be posed regarding any set of state or national standards followed by a district in the past or present, one important distinction to remember is that not all districts providing scores started the implementation of the Common Core Standards at the same time. The debate rages based on measures of learning and implementation of instruction, which both might be valid or invalid to varying degrees. A look at some factors could lend skepticism in the use of data collected at this point, both positive and negative. No matter on which side of the debate one finds themselves, some common arguments cannot be easily dismissed. However, the cause of the success or lack of success is harder to pinpoint without taking a closer look. 

In an article published by Matt Barnum in Chalkbeat, April 2019, there is a list of pros and cons of the Common Core and a summary of the reasons that student learning data is or is not as strong as expected. The descriptions of positive statements about the Common Core Standards mostly refer to the standards themselves. However, the negative statements about the Common Core Standards mostly refer to the implementation of the standards within the classroom or the district.  Researcher Mengli Song of the American Institutes for Research summarizes the results of the Common Core Standards in much the same way, as Meador reported in an article for ThoughtCo in September 2019. Song also cites the lack of consistent data collection techniques and the fact that the research is lacking in reports on success.

We at the Curriculum Leadership Institute (CLI) have been working with districts for more than 25 years in finding solutions for districts to overcome the shortcomings in student success. Our hands-on research has led to conclusions supported by district and state data across the country.  CLI finds that the solution is often not limited to the existence or non-existence of standards. Our use of a specific model to establish a systemic process of determining curriculum, implementing curriculum, and developing and implementing measures of success within the district affect positive gains in student learning regardless of the standards in place.

Standards are essential and can lead to comparisons across various districts and currently across states. However, standards are not curriculum, and it requires collaboration among district teachers and stakeholders to define standards as curriculum.

Curriculum without thoughtful implementation produces less success in improving student learning than expected. Collaboration among classroom teachers for best practice and in seeking professional development for improving instruction produces positive results across the district.

Developing valid student assessments to measure success also requires the collaboration of classroom teachers and other professionals within the district. Following the administration of the assessments, analysis of the data is critical to critiquing and improving instruction. 

Structured, consistent collaboration among district stakeholders, classroom professionals, and local specialists produce positive results as long as there is a systematic approach to making and monitoring systemic efforts for improved student learning. 

All of these pieces have been critical parts of the CLI Model and the evolution of the model is in reaction to current research and current mandates at the state and federal levels. Need help to get it going? Contact us and we will get you started!

References:

Barnum, Matt. “Nearly a decade later, did the Common Core work? New research offers clues” Chalkbeat, April 29, 2019.  https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/04/29/common-core-work-research/

Meador, Derrick. “What Are Some Pros and Cons of the Common Core State Standards?” ThoughtCo, Sep. 3, 2019, https://thoughtco.com/common-core-state-standards-3194603.

Curriculum is a Roadmap

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“Curriculum” is discussed on a daily basis in conversations within schools among administrators, teachers, support staff, and outside stakeholders.  Strangely enough, it is a term that carries fundamental misconceptions that make those conversations difficult.  Unless everyone involved in the conversation has the same definition for curriculum, what is said and what is heard are often very different.

Perhaps the most common misconception about curriculum is that a textbook or series is the curriculum. Textbooks or any other instructional materials are actually resources. Resources are used to teach curriculum, but are not the curriculum itself. Many textbook series have a curriculum embedded into the resource; however, it is critical that a district determine its curricula locally before resources are adopted. This is to ensure that adopted resources properly support the learning that the district feels is essential – not the hidden curriculum that the publisher values.

Another misconception about curriculum has to do with the federal government’s requirement that each state determines a set of standard skills and content that must be taught at each grade level for each content area. Although these sets of skills and content are clearly called state standards, many educators are under the false assumption that they are curriculum. It is clearly stated in most standards documents that they are not curriculum and that districts need to determine their curricula locally to assure that students meet the identified standards for content and skills.

True, local curriculum must fully employ state standards, but the district may value additional skills and content. Furthermore, standards documents may not be organized into a teachable sequence, but rather they are typically categorized according to similar attributes (strands or domains) such as reading skills, number sense, or presentational skills that would not necessarily be taught in isolation of the other strands or domains within the subject area standards.

On the following page, please examine the graphic representation of curriculum as a roadmap and note the role that resources and standards play in the student’s learning journey.

Curriculum illustrated as a roadmap

In this illustration, the journey begins with a teacher and her students. This teacher is tasked with leading her students to their final destination (the end of the “road”) which includes their ability to demonstrate skills and knowledge of the state standards and the district-defined values. This could be a daunting task, particularly if the “road” is not broken down into teachable chunks or units. The breakdown of the journey, the roadmap, is the curriculum.

Relationship between Curriculum, Resources, Standards, and Differentiation

Curriculum should be organized to include curriculum targets that can be accurately assessed after a unit is completed. The desired “outcomes” for each of these teachable units are depicted as blue flags along the road in the illustration. Essentially, these outcomes are significant checkpoints of student learning along the way.

To ensure that students can be successful at the unit outcome level, learning must be broken down further into smaller steps that will be formatively assessed on a regular basis (daily or every few days, at least). These narrow curriculum targets are depicted as footprints along the road. Each unit outcome (flag) includes its own set of footprints.

So, where do resources, best practices, and differentiation fit into this analogy? Resources are what you pack in your suitcase. They are the supplemental materials that make the trip fun, engaging, and successful. There is rarely one resource that will align perfectly to your curriculum, which is why we use the suitcase to represent resources; it is filled with many great tools and materials – some are essential, others are nice to have along.

Incorporating best practices (e.g., 21st-century skills, math practices, ELA text complexity, and ISTE standards) into instruction is like the sun that sheds light on the trip. Best practices help to produce a well-balanced experience for students.

Lastly, differentiation activities (i.e., intervention and enrichment) are the rest areas along the way. It is essential to pause to ensure all students are on board and ready to progress, using formative assessments as indicators of who might need remediation or intervention activities.  It is equally important to provide engaging, relevant activities for those students who are already with you and can keep up the pace.

There are so many elements that go into effective teaching; but, the foundation of everything is to determine what students need to know and be able to do – the curriculum ­­– and how it will fit into the time that you’re given. If you haven’t already made your roadmap, make it a priority to identify curriculum targets. You’ll feel more confident about having a plan and the chances of students arriving at the destination are much improved!

Second Cycle Curriculum Writing

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Most school districts have a “cycle” for revising curriculum, so that each subject is reviewed every five to six years.  The first cycle takes the longest because the curriculum must be created – a Subject Area Committee (SAC) must make decisions about what is most important and what will be required of all students.  Subsequent cycles usually take less time because our starting point is the existing curriculum, which has been implemented and assessed for a period of time.  However, there are still several considerations to be made as a curriculum is reviewed anew.  We still need to consider state or national standards (which may have changed), and we need to gather teacher input.  Now, we also have curriculum for other subject areas, which may not have been completed when the target subject was first written.  The existence of these additional curricula allows us to look more thoroughly for cross-curricular support than we might have been able to do in the first cycle. 

Below are some recommended steps for a second (or subsequent) cycle of reviewing and revising curriculum. 

  1. Gather information about what currently exists.  
    • Complete a crosswalk from the old standards to the new to determine the amount of change that may have occurred since the previous cycle. Make note of these changes.
    • Survey teachers of the subject to determine concerns with the current curriculum or suggestions for improvement.
    • Review data of student performance to identify areas that need improvement and determine if the curriculum is sufficient.  (If it is determined that curriculum is not the root of the problem, then the SAC will need to consider instructional causes and identify possible professional development needs.)
    • Examine curricula that have been implemented in other subject areas to identify where cross-curricular connections might be improved, or assessment items (especially at the elementary level) can serve more than one curricular area, thereby reducing the number of assessments.
    • Identify courses that may need to be added, removed, or modified.  (For instance, the addition of a compluter applications course at elementary or middle level may make the existing entry-level high school computer applications course unnecessary.)
  2. Make any necessary course changes according to information gathered.
  3. Review and update the subject mission and purpose statements.
  4. Add, remove, or make changes to outcomes and components as warranted, and recode to align to updated state standards.
  5. Identify where common assessments are affected by the curriculum changes and make adjustments to the assessments.
  6. Request professional development where data indicate a need.
  7. Evaluate existing resources for their appropriateness to the revised curriculum, and request new or additional resources if needed.
  8. Present changes to the Curriculum Coordinating Council for approval and recommendation to the Board.

Districts that have used the CLI Model for the first cycle are accustomed to using large sheets of butcher paper on the wall, with color-coded strands for curriculum topics.  Most districts find this is not really necessary in a second cycle, since they are using the existing curriculum as the starting point.  However, some CLI districts have found it helpful to make large-size copies of their curriculum and cut it apart.  They then highlight outcomes and components in color by strand so they can track standards across grade levels.

Depending on the extent of revision necessary or the quality of the assessments in place, the tasks listed above may take one school year or more, if necessary.  Some SACs may find their task can be completed in less than a school year if there are few changes required. 

Does Your Local Curriculum Pass the “Local” Test?

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Examine any state standards document closely and you will find a statement similar to this one from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, page 5:

“These standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods.”   

If all states and all content areas agree that you should not be using the state standards document as your curriculum, the first question you must answer is, how are your state standards being used within your district?  Has the local curriculum been developed?  Developing local curriculum can take many different forms.  Some districts buy a canned curriculum (which we would actually call a resource).  Some simply take the state standards and ask individual teachers or individual grade levels to identify which parts of the standards they will use in their classrooms.  Other districts have committees of teachers who actually go through a process to create local curriculum. 

Does your district truly have a local curriculum? Answer the following questions to see…

  • Does your staff use a curriculum document other than the state standards or a canned curriculum?
  • Is it clear when the document was created and by whom?
  • Is it clear who is responsible for using the document and where a copy can be obtained?
    • Is it on the district website or is a digital or hard copy K-12 version available in each building?
    • Do parents and board members have access to the document?
    • Are teachers encouraged to find and use the latest version to drive instruction (or are copies provided for them)?
    • If there are pre-K classes, do those teachers have a copy of the kindergarten curriculum?
    • Do Title I and Special Education teachers have copies of multiple grade levels?
  • Has the format of the local curriculum been explained, as well as differences in format from other subject documents?
    • Were all state-tested indicators included and marked in such a way as to be easily identified?
    • Were decisions made K-12 about which indicators (other than state-tested ones) to include at each grade level?
    • Were some district-only indicators written at the local level?
    • Are there appendix pages?
    • Has formatting such as the use of bold, underlined, and italic fonts been used consistently to enhance readability and understanding of the curriculum?
    • Is there a glossary?
    • Are there instructional examples?
  • Is each item listed in the curriculum considered “non-negotiable” for each grade level?
  • Are both the state-tested items and the non-state-tested items considered “non-negotiable”?
  • Is it an expectation that students will be assessed over each item?
  • Was there a “pilot” or implementation year for the new local curriculum?
    • Was emphasis placed on instruction of the new curriculum?
    • Was the curriculum considered in draft status until the end of the implementation year?
    • Was teacher feedback gathered throughout the year regarding the curriculum, materials needed, staff development needed, and classroom assessments used?
    • At the end of the year, was the curriculum updated and presented as a final document?
  • Is the local curriculum expected to guide instructional decisions and pacing?

Curriculum is a Roadmap

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“Curriculum” is discussed on a daily basis in conversations within schools among administrators, teachers, support staff, and outside stakeholders.  Strangely enough, it is a term that carries fundamental misconceptions that make those conversations difficult.  Unless everyone involved in the conversation has the same definition for curriculum, what is said and what is heard are often very different.

Perhaps the most common misconception about curriculum is that a textbook or series is the curriculum. Textbooks or any other instructional materials are actually resources. Resources are used to teach curriculum, but are not the curriculum itself. Many textbook series have a curriculum embedded into the resource; however, it is critical that a district determine its curricula locally before resources are adopted. This is to ensure that adopted resources properly support the learning that the district feels is essential – not the hidden curriculum that the publisher values.

Another misconception about curriculum has to do with the federal government’s requirement that each state determines a set of standard skills and content that must be taught at each grade level for each content area. Although these sets of skills and content are clearly called state standards, many educators are under the false assumption that they are curriculum. It is clearly stated in most standards documents that they are not curriculum and that districts need to determine their curricula locally to assure that students meet the identified standards for content and skills.

True, local curriculum must fully employ state standards, but the district may value additional skills and content. Furthermore, standards documents may not be organized into a teachable sequence, but rather they are typically categorized according to similar attributes (strands or domains) such as reading skills, number sense, or presentational skills that would not necessarily be taught in isolation of the other strands or domains within the subject area standards.

Please examine this graphic representation of curriculum as a roadmap and note the role that resources and standards play in the student’s learning journey.

Curriculum illustrated as a roadmap

In this illustration, the journey begins with a teacher and her students. This teacher is tasked with leading her students to their final destination (the end of the “road”) which includes their ability to demonstrate skills and knowledge of the state standards and the district-defined values. This could be a daunting task, particularly if the “road” is not broken down into teachable chunks or units. The breakdown of the journey, the roadmap, is the curriculum.

Relationship between Curriculum, Resources, Standards, and Differentiation

Curriculum should be organized to include curriculum targets that can be accurately assessed after a unit is completed. The desired “outcomes” for each of these teachable units are depicted as blue flags along the road in the illustration. Essentially, these outcomes are significant checkpoints of student learning along the way.

To ensure that students can be successful at the unit outcome level, learning must be broken down further into smaller steps that will be formatively assessed on a regular basis (daily or every few days, at least). These narrow curriculum targets are depicted as footprints along the road. Each unit outcome (flag) includes its own set of footprints.

So, where do resources, best practices, and differentiation fit into this analogy? Resources are what you pack in your suitcase. They are the supplemental materials that make the trip fun, engaging, and successful. There is rarely one resource that will align perfectly to your curriculum, which is why we use the suitcase to represent resources; it is filled with many great tools and materials – some are essential, others are nice to have along.

Incorporating best practices (e.g., 21st-century skills, math practices, ELA text complexity, and ISTE standards) into instruction is like the sun that sheds light on the trip. Best practices help to produce a well-balanced experience for students.

Lastly, differentiation activities (i.e., intervention and enrichment) are the rest areas along the way. It is essential to pause to ensure all students are on board and ready to progress, using formative assessments as indicators of who might need remediation or intervention activities.  It is equally important to provide engaging, relevant activities for those students who are already with you and can keep up the pace.

There are so many elements that go into effective teaching; but, the foundation of everything is to determine what students need to know and be able to do – the curriculum ­­– and how it will fit into the time that you’re given. If you haven’t already made your roadmap, make it a priority to identify curriculum targets. You’ll feel more confident about having a plan and the chances of students arriving at the destination are much improved!

Build-A-House: An Educational Analogy

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The processes of curriculum, instruction, and assessment schools should use to assure student learning might be compared to the steps of building a house. Let’s look at those steps and compare them to best practices in education… from what is established at the district-level, through all the stages of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, to what is mandated of schools by the state or other accrediting agencies.

1. You wouldn’t hand over your hard-earned money to a contractor and simply say, “Go build me a house.” You would decide ahead of time what kind of house you wanted, and, in general, what the finished house would be like. In other words, you would have a plan or blueprint that describes the overall building project.

Equivalent: The initial blueprint is like a district mission statement with student exit outcomes.

2. The next thing to be decided is all the elements of the plan and who will execute them, such as a plumber to do the plumbing, carpenters to do the carpentry, electricians for electricity and so forth.

Equivalent: The subjects for which there will be established curriculum need to be decided upon and are often listed in a district mission statement. Qualified teachers are needed to teach those subjects.

3. Let’s select one element of the house-building project (like one subject area) to use as our example. Let’s take plumbing, and follow it all the way through. The plumber would have to know, before beginning any actual work, specifically what the overall plumbing requirements are for this particular house.

Equivalent: The plumbing is like one subject – let’s use math as our example; the overall requirements are the Subject Mission Statement for math.

4. The plumbing job then would be divided into specific projects: the master bath, the half bath, the kitchen, and so forth. The plumber looks at the purpose of each room to determine its specific plumbing needs, and how each is related to the whole project.

Equivalent: Specific courses (algebra, geometry) and grade levels (3rd grade math, 4th grade math) of the subject are identified, and purposes (or focus areas) are determined for each, so that it’s clear where each fits in accomplishing the mission of the whole K-12 math subject area.

5. Before beginning work on a particular room, the plumber decides what must be accomplished to meet the plumbing needs for that room’s purpose. If working on a master bath, the things to be accomplished include putting pipes in the walls, a drain for the shower, installing fixtures, and so forth.

Equivalent: The “room” is like one particular grade level or course; the things to be accomplished are the high achievement unit outcomes for that grade level or course.

6. Now the plumber looks at each one of those things to be accomplished, and decides the details of actually doing it – the specific tasks or steps that need to be done. To put pipes in the walls, the workers will have to measure, drill holes, fit brackets, and so forth.

Equivalent: These are like the components – or smaller “steps” – of a high achievement unit outcome.

7. The plumber must decide how to approach the work. In what order will he do the steps? What techniques will he use for each task, and what tools will he need?

Equivalent: The teacher must plan instruction, including the order in which things will be done, strategies to use, and materials that will be needed.

8. The plumber must know ahead of time what his criteria are for quality. As each task is finished, he checks to see that it has been done properly before proceeding to the next step. Errors are corrected along the way – alternative parts or procedures are used where necessary, or work is redone for better quality. When all of the steps are successfully completed, the plumber checks to see that the plumbing does indeed work as it should.

Equivalent: Teachers set criteria for quality student work. Formative assessments are given throughout instruction. Students not succeeding receive corrective assistance; others participate in enrichments when appropriate. A summative assessment then tells whether the whole outcome has been met; again correctives and enrichments are used as necessary.

9. The plumber also adheres to building and environmental codes, keeps informed about quality materials and procedures, and provides owners with instruction on care and use of plumbing.

Equivalents: Standards and other mandates are met; staff development is pertinent and on-going.