Three Realities About Education Standards
Regardless of the types of curriculum design your educational system embraces (homegrown, OER, or vendor-purchased), empowering educators to become standards professionals is imperative. To ensure such empowerment, provide your teachers with:
- Training on how to properly read standards based on symbols and texts’ form and function.
- K-12 (or widest span possible) vertical meetings to make learning, teaching, and assessing decisions based on systemic standards perspectives.
- Collaboration opportunities to increase content-specific understanding and instructional practices based on their expertise and who share the vision and mission for the students in their collective care (e.g., school, district).
When I work with teachers and administrators on standards-based curriculum development or standards gap analyses, I consistently experience three realities that, when embraced, positively impact student learning and teaching.
1. Don’t be surprised by what you don’t know.
You can’t know what you don’t know.
You can’t know about things you have yet to discover.
–Jonathan Raymond
Administrators and teachers assume they know how to read standards and interpret them accurately. While intentions are admirable, I find they do not know how. Regardless of the standards in focus, they are often shocked that they were “never trained how to really read the standards.” Why is it important to know how to accurately read standards? The Nation’s Report Card (2015) for Mathematics and Reading convey that students’ scores nationwide reflect a content proficiency that is still not conducive to achievement in high school and college or when entering the workplace. When teachers gain insight and understanding into how to accurately read standards based on form and function, it empowers them to make wiser curriculum decisions on behalf of the students placed in their care, whether designing curriculum or using purchased products or programs.
2. Kindergarten through Grade 12 teacher participation is necessary to address curriculum comprehensively.
You’ve got to embrace what you don’t know.
–Sara Blakely
The reality is that teachers rarely know the comprehensive nature and scope of a discipline’s K-12 standards. I find administrators and teachers want to meet vertically, especially when I share how meeting systemically to interpret standards leverages vigorous curriculum development. The greatest challenge is schedule conflicts. When overcoming this challenge becomes a high priority and teachers get to meet across grade levels–beyond the typical span of one or two years–learning and teaching improves immediately. While teachers may know their content well, they often do not consider what students must know, do, and apply from the broader perspective of a full set of standards. For example: standards-based academic vocabulary needs to be examined systemically. When high school teachers sit alongside elementary and middle school teachers to discuss what will be essential vocabulary, accurate meanings, and authentic application of the terms, magic happens. I have seen it first-hand. Misunderstandings are cleared up; ideas for instruction shared; and parents, who are their in spirit, are cheering knowing their children’s teachers are not living in grade-level silos, but functioning as one.
3. Gaining standards insights and determining meaningful applications is a collaborative process.
If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process,
you don’t know what you’re doing.
–W. Edwards Deming
While meeting virtually may be a solution to systemic standards conversations, nothing beats in-person meetings. These should last all day due to allow adequate time to dig deep and benefit from the collaboration process. Oftentimes, the process leads to focus points being born organically during a meeting.
For example: during a K-12 meeting focused on becoming literate in reading and interpreting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the elementary education teachers became increasingly anxious about their students’ performance expectations (PEs). They commented that the Disciplinary Core Ideas were, on average, learned two years younger than in their previous state science standards. They transparently shared their lack of science expertise was concerning for them and the students in their care.
In the moment, we created jigsaw teams: each team consisting of elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Each team focused on a different science topic (e.g., engineering, physical science, life science, earth and space science) and the related PEs. In the jigsaw groups, the elementary teachers, as well some middle school teachers, gained new science understanding from the high school teachers that aided them in considering how their students would be able to exhibit the PE requirements. After jigsawing, the teachers reconvened with their grade-level range and were instantly able to make stronger and more strategic decisions based on the gained K-12 perspectives.
How is your school or district embracing these three (or other) realities? If not, what do you wish would be happening?
