What are Academic Standards?

Academic standards are public statements about what students should know and be able to do. However, standards are not “standardized.” There are published sets of national and state standards, and some cities and local communities have created their own. 49 states and cities including: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, El Paso, and Cincinnati, have publicly agreed upon academic standards.

What are these standards and what do they mean? Standards describe the goals of schooling, the end result for students of a unit of study. Standards do not prescribe how to get students to the destination- that is determined by the curriculum. No particular curriculum is required. Local districts and schools are able to choose the teaching materials and methods that they find appropriate to meet the standards.

Standards are the WHAT of education while curriculum and instruction are the HOW.

Two Types of Standards:

· Content standards indicate what students should know and be able to do.

· A performance standard measures how well a student’s work meets the content standard. A performance standard has levels (4,3,2, and 1; or advanced, proficient, novice, and basic) with descriptors and sometimes-even examples of student work provided for each. Performance standard and rubrics are essentially the same thing. Rubrics describe what students work must consist of to get a certain score.

The Promises - What are the Benefits of Standards?

Standards provide a focus for reform efforts- all students must reach them. Teachers are able to see how well they are doing by looking at their progress toward the agreed upon standards.

The success of an organization is contingent upon clear, commonly defined goals. A well-articulated focus unleashes individual and collective energy. And a common focus clarifies understanding, accelerates communication, and promotes persistence and collective purpose. This is the stuff of improvement. (Schmoker, Marzano, 1999)

Because standards provide a focus, they can provide a measure to evaluate all aspects of schooling.

While focus is one of the key benefits of standards, their publication is another. Everyone can see what schools are aiming to teach and what students are expected to learn. What must be learned is no longer a secret, kept for a privileged group and kept hidden from the rest. Done well, standards can be an important tool for equity: if all kids are required to meet the standards, all schools must work to make children reach them, not just schools which have a majority of middle class, college-bound students.

The Perils - What Do Critics of Standards Say?

The movement toward standards has raised a number of concerns. Some worry that standards will force teachers to “teach to the test” and lead our focus back to rote learning and away from more creative and individualized approaches. Much of this criticism may be a result of confusion between standards based instruction and assessment and the use of standardized testing in general. Common concerns related to the use of standardized testing might measure test-taking ability rather than real-life skills, that cultural biases may be reflected, or that memorazation of facts and interpretations may be promoted over creative and original thinking. Although these concerns may be valid when applied to the standardized test used to assess students achievement at certain benchmark points along the way, standards-based teaching does not only or even primarily rely on such tests. Achievement is also measured by assessing skills through assignments where teachers and students determine in advance what type of work will show that the standards have been adequately mastered. Examples of such work might even be provided for students to view before completing work of their own.

Another common concern regards the level of difficulty at which standards will be set. If the bar is set too high, low achievers (and perhaps students from disadvantaged backgrounds) will become discouraged and drop out. If standards are too easily met, high achievers will pass through unchallenged. There is a concern that in the effort to demand a high level of achievement of all students, regardless of individual ability and background, we might be overestimating the ability of the school to overcome the effects of social class, disabilities, and other factors beyond its control.

Questions have arisen about who sets such standards. While critics might not take issue with these public statements of what students should know and be able to do, they have concerns about where these statements are coming from. Local control becomes the issue here with a concern about having standards “imposed” upon them rather than arising locally as community aspirations. The concern is that decision making power regarding what student should and should not learn is being pulled away from parents and school boards.

A final concern is that many published standard documents seem to violate the principle that “less is more.” Research has shown that students learn more when we teach less- but teach it well. One researcher found that to “cover” the material in many of them would require a 10-hour teaching day.

Because it is easier to add and enlarge than to reduce and refine, we are caught in the snare of having honored (perhaps for political reasons) far too many suggestions for inclusion in the standards documents. We have often failed to place hard practical limits on the number and the nature of the standards. The result? Bloated and poorly written standards that almost no one can realistically teach to of ever hope to adequately assess. (Schmoker & Marzano, 1999)

We might be making the same mistake with these documents that had been made with district curriculums before them.

Sources:

Schmoker, M. & Marzano, R. (1999). Realizing the promise of Standards-based Education. Educational Leadership, 56(6), 17-21.

Teaching to Academic Standards

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/month3/index

The Middle Web Guide to Standard-Based School Reform

http://www.middleweb.com/SBRGuide.html

What is Curriculum Integration?

Integrative curriculum is based on a holistic view of learning and recognizes the necessity for learners to see the big picture rather than to require learning to be divided into smaller pieces. Integrative curriculum ignores traditional subject lines while exploring questions which are most relevant to students. As a result, it is both responsive to students’ needs and intellectual because it focuses on helping learners use their minds well. There is in fact, no one integrative curriculum, but rather principles of teaching and learning which guide the development of integrative curriculum in diverse settings.

(Brazee & Capelluti, 1995)

The Curriculum Continuum:

Integrative Curriculum

Multidisciplinary/

Interdisciplinary

Curriculum

Beyond Integrative Curriculum

Integrated Curriculum

While the number of points on the continuum is limitless, five key points are briefly described, including a description of the curriculum characteristics, the role of the students, and the role of the teachers for each.

Conventional Middle School Curriculum:

• Is the conventional curriculum found in middle schools.
• Characterized by a separate subject approach.
• Textbooks as the primary sources of information.
• The teacher is in charge of everything- planning, teaching, evaluating.
• Little or no student involvement or input in teaching/learning process.
• Success is measured in quantifiable terms, standardized and unit tests, course completion and time spent in class.

Multidisciplinary Curriculum:

• What many middle level schools think they must have to be a “true” middle school.
• Represents a move from separate subject approach toward interdisciplinary work.
• Several teachers from the same team offer work related to a central theme or topic, but in their own separate subject classrooms, with varying commitments of time.
• While they may be considered as interesting, exciting, fun, and thought provoking, the units exist outside the “regular” curriculum and are not seen as the serious business of school.

Integrated Curriculum:

• Builds on successful work with multidisciplinary units and leads to even more serious questioning and study of curriculum issues and processes.
• Topics and themes are pursued across subject lines by dissolving subject boundaries and using a block of time approach.
• Math, science, social studies, language arts and other areas identified as critical content, skills, and attitudes are studied within the context of the unit.
• At this point on the continuum, more and more time is devoted to integrated projects, and is seen by teachers and students as serious business.
• Students are able to choose from a variety of teacher-planned activities.

Integrative Curriculum:

• Distinguished from multidisciplinary and integrated curricula by the process of choosing the topic of study, and who chooses.
• Focuses on finding the answers to authentic questions of young adolescents, not as an add-on to the “regular” curriculum, but as THE curriculum.
• Subject matter is not discarded, it is re-positioned in a new form.
• Teachers, students, their parents, and even administrators, based on continuing conversations about “what is most important to know”, identify skills, content, and behaviors at the local level.
• Curriculum is organized by students into broad-based themes, which then become the focus for all learning.
• Teachers do not abdicate their duties, but rather work with students on a more equal basis.

Beyond Integrative Curriculum:

• Rarely seen in schools today on any sustained basis.
• Places huge responsibilities on students to recognize, plan, carry out, and evaluate what they want and need to learn.
• Yet to be envisioned or articulated, but will most likely develop from students success with integrative curriculum.
• Students will demand opportunities to study independently and at their own pace, using technology to access great amounts of data and communicate with outside sources.
• Teacher and student roles will be partially reversed or intertwined, with students having much more responsibility for setting the direction of their learning.

Source:

Brazee, E. N., Capelluti, J. (1995). Dissolving Boundaries: Toward An Integrative Curriculum. National Middle School Association.

What is a Student-Centered Curriculum?

Continuum of Curriculum Models:

Teacher-Centered Student-Centered

In a teacher-centered curriculum:

• Students are seen as receptive “sponges.”
• Teachers make all of the decisions about curriculum, approaches to learning and the methods of assessment and evaluation.
• Teacher’s role is that of director, the giver of knowledge.
• Learning would not happen in the absence of the teacher.
• Grade-centered and motivated.
• Curriculum is less flexible.
• Everyone does the same thing at the same time.
• Teacher keeps all (or at least most) of the control.
• Fits well with textbooks.

In a student-centered curriculum:

• Students are seen as potentially interested, responsible citizens.
• Teachers and students, in collaboration, make the decisions about curriculum approaches to learning, methods of assessment and evaluation.
• Students can and do learn in the absence of direct instruction or someone to tell them to learn.
• Centered on real-life situations, problems and solutions.
• Flexible curriculum, but can still build framework for given curriculum.
• Students may or may not do the same things, but individual needs are more easily met.
• Students take appropriate control.
• Textbooks are not generally used.

Is a student-centered approach compatible with a standards-based curriculum?

Some teachers have used the adoption of national and state standard to defend a return to, or maintenance of, a more traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction. The time factor required to prepare students for a student centered approach and to build consensus on units of study, and standard of quality, may seem to make impossible the “covering” of all the required concepts. Those advocating a change suggest that our present curriculum is a “mile wide and an inch deep” and that teachers can be caught up in a “treadmill effect,” going faster and faster to cover more and more, and leaving students further and further behind. Experts advocate for a process of prioritizing those standards that are most essential to the understanding of a discipline and to work toward a deeper understanding. Teachers could begin this process in a practical way by designing curriculum around those standards that they know will be assessed through standardized testing. This selection process could serve to avoid spending too much of our time on those concepts that might be considered less vital, or unassessable.

In a process known as “Backward Design” that seems to successfully bring student-based instructional practice together with a standards-based curriculum, Grant Wiggins (1998) argues for a curriculum designed in such a way that students should never have to ask the questions, “Why are we doing this?” and “What is its value?” These answers should be evident. To answer these questions he advocates curriculum writing grounded in three strategies. First, the entire curriculum should be organized around important questions. These “Essential” concepts and questions, drawn from the standards, provide the rationale for including, or excluding, content from the designed curriculum. Second, the curriculum should reflect the concerns of young adolescents. Third the work should be oriented toward the assessments, the tasks that students will successfully complete to demonstrate the intended knowledge and skills.

Research has shown that the knowledge of experts in a discipline is organized around important concepts within the field.

“If experts’ knowledge is structured around concepts (the organizing or big ideas), then curriculum should be structured in the same way in order to foster conceptual understanding. However, many approaches to curriculum design make it difficult for students to organize knowledge meaningfully. Often there is only superficial coverage of facts before moving on to the next topic; there is little time to develop important organizing ideas.” (Turning Points 2000, p. 44.)

A use of concepts and essential questions will help students to focus on the big ideas that reveal patterns while they engage deeply in the process of making sense of the world around them. If students can discover the connection between the disciplines and themselves, the current world, and their future, “the curriculum we have been trying so hard to ‘cover’ may at last be uncovered as meaningful, relevant to their own lives, and motivating.” (Turning Points 2000, p. 47)

Sources:

Carr, D. (2003). Getting Started with Curriculum Integration. Topsfield, MA: New England League of Middle Schools

Jackson, A., & Davis, G. (2000). Turning points 2000: Educating Adolescents in the 21^st Century. New York: Teachers College Press

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.