Understanding by Design

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STANDARDS
Aligning Schools around State Standards
Dr. Ronald S. Thomas
rathomas_at_towson.edu 410-704-5770
Center for Leadership in Education
at Towson University
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Introducing
Dr. Ronald S. Thomas Associate Director Center
for Leadership in Education Towson
University Former Assistant Superintendent for
Educational Accountability Baltimore County,
Maryland, Public Schools
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The Big Picture
In this session, you will learn how several
components of curriculum, instruction, and
assessment can be aligned around state content
standards.
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Standards What
Is Alignment?
Assuring that all components of the school
converge to support students learning the states
content standards at a high level
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Shifting the Focus to the Standards
Standards have created a kind of vacuum. In
the main, this vacuum is being filled by tests
obsessions about tests, preparation for tests,
and fears of test results. So long as teachers
are ambivalent toward standards and passive about
them as a catalyst to improve instruction, tests
and accountability will fill the vacuum. Hayes
Mizell Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
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Shifting the Focus to the Standards
This does not have to be the case. When
teachers take action by using standards to focus
on improving their performance and that of their
students, they shift the focus from testing to
learning, from accountability to responsibility,
and from obligation to opportunity. Hayes
Mizell Edna McConnell Clark Foundation ASCD
Education Update, January 2002
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A Pause to Chat
Talk with a colleague or two around you What
are the implications of these ideas for you?
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The Most Essential
Question in a Standards-Based School
What are the characteristics of the
curriculum, instructional strategies, and
assessments (CIA) at our school that
contribute to our student achievement results?
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It is Essential Because . . .

The most important influence on student
learning Is what is happening daily in
classrooms
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Building the Capacity of Staff to Align around
the Standards

• Educators need to
• Understand the curriculum indicators and
  objectives
• Teach to the indicators and objectives
• Assess the indicators and objectives with the
• same content, format, and rigor as the
  important
• assessments
• Monitor individual student progress in relation
• to the indicators and objectives
• Target intervention programs to the indicators
  and objectives on which students are not
  succeeding

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What Does It Mean to Understand the
Curriculum Standards?

• When educators understand the curriculum
  indicators and objectives, they can unpack or
  unwrap them and will know exactly the specific
  knowledge and skills students need to learn in
  their grade or course.

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Standards may need to be unpacked because
of the way they evolved.

• 1983 A Nation at Risk
• 1989 Six National Educational Goals
• (Expanded to 8 goals in 1994)
• Early 1990s Subject matter standards from
  virtually every subject matter organization
• Mid 1990s 49 of 50 states developed standards,
  independent of each other
• 2001 Assessments must be linked to standards
  for NCLB test
• www.MCREL.org

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Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum (Grades
PreK-8)
Standards Indicators
Objectives (with Assessment Limits)
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High School Standards
Core Learning Goals Expectations
Indicators (With Assessment
Limits)
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Unpacking State Standards
To unpack standards, indicators, or objectives
means to identify the knowledge and skills
embedded in them. Unpacking content standards is
a proven technique to help educators identify
from the full text of indicators and objectives
exactly what they need to teach their students.
Unpacked standards provide clarity as to what
students must know and be able to do. -
Ainsworth (2003)
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Unpacking State Standards

• This is important so that we can
• Identify the prerequisite knowledge and skills
  that might stand in the way of learning.
• Know what to re-teach when students dont learn.

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Unpacking State Standards

• What does this indicator/objective mean?
• How can it be written in student friendly
  language?
• What knowledge and skills are embedded in it?

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Example of Unpacking
Indicator Collect, organize, and display
data. Objective Collect data by conducting
surveys to answer a question. Objective Organize
and display data in double bar graphs. Assessment
Limit No more than 20 data points and
whole numbers (0-100)
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Unpacking State Standards
How could you write this indicator and
objective in language that a student would
understand? How would you unpack it
to identify the embedded knowledge and skills?

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But can the students master all the VCS
indicators and objectives?
Marylands Reading, Writing and Language VSC
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A National Perspective

• A problem is that we have too many standards.
• MCREL analyzed 116 standards documents from
  across the country. They found that, when all
  subjects are counted, there are an average of
• 200 different standards, broken into
• 3,093 specific topics (often called benchmarks or
  indicators) in these documents.
• MCREL estimated it would take about 5 hours of
  instruction for students to learn most
  indicators.
• Needed Total of 15,500 hours
• Marzano and Kendall, Awash in a Sea of
  Standards (1998)

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Students cant learn all the standards at a high
level. We must prioritize.
In the most optimistic scenario, schools
currently have less than 10,000 hours of
instruction over 13 years. Therefore, to teach
and reinforce all the benchmarks, we would need
to increase schooling to 20-21 years, instead of
13, if time each year is not increased. Marzano
and Kendall, Awash in a Sea of Standards
(1998)
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How do we prioritize? Douglas Reeves talks
about the concept of Power Standards. In
Maryland, we would call them Power Indicators or
Objectives.

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What Does It Mean toTeach to the Curriculum
Standards?

• First, this means that educators focus
  instruction on the indicators and objectives that
  are
• Assessed on national, state, and district
  assessments in which achievement data indicate
  students are weak
• Most needed by students for success in future
  grades and in life (have endurance)
• Most useful in more than one academic discipline
  (have leverage).

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How to Begin to Identify the Power Indicators
Arrange for two faculty conversations about
reading or math. First, teams ask teams from the
grade above them, Using the criteria, what
indicators and objectives should we be sure our
students know by the end of this year? Then,
teams meet with teams from the grade below them
and list for them (using the criteria) the
indicators and objectives that students should be
sure to know when they get them next year.
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What Does It Mean toTeach to the Curriculum
Standards?

• Second, this means that all students are taught
  grade-level work every day.
• 12
  Content standards
• 
  
• 8
  Assignment level
• 1
• 
  
• 1 8
  12

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The Instructional Gap

• The difference between the rigor of the state
  content standards and the rigor of student
  classroom assignments
• Average Assignment Level Gap
• Grade 1 0.9 - .1
• Grade 3 2.7 - .3
• Grade 5 3.9 - 1.1
• Grade 8 5.8 - 2.2
• Grade 12 7.8 - 4.2
• Curriculum Calibration Study by DataWork
  Educational Research of 192,252 assignments from
  174 schools in 62 school districts

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Why is teaching on grade-level important?

• Students can perform no higher than the
  assignments they are given.
• State tests assess grade-level content.
• Students cannot learn what they are not taught.
• All students learn more when taught at a higher
  level than at a lower level.

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How can you know if your instruction
is not on grade level?

• Analyze the verbs in the indicators and
  objectives.
• Be sure that you are asking your students to
  demonstrate these skills at the level called for.

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Aligning Instruction with VSC Grade-level
Objectives

• For example, when indicators and objectives call
  for students to analyze, this means assignments
  should ask students to examine a reading closely,
  study it, pull the material apart, and find its
  sub-parts or components in order to understand it
  better.
• Terms in blue in the VSC are hot-linked to their
  definitions on www.mdk12.org.

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Aligning Instruction with VSC
Grade-level Objectives

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What Does It Mean to Assess the Curriculum
Standards?

• When educators assess the curriculum
• standards, they align the content, format, and
  grading rigor of their classroom assessments with
  the expectations of the indicators and objectives
  and with sample questions from the important
  assessments.

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Alignment of Assessment Content withCurriculum
Standards

• When teachers assess the curriculum standards,
  they center the content of their classroom
  assessments on the objectives from the VSC with
  assessment limits.

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Alignment of Assessment Format withCurriculum
Standards

• When teachers assess the curriculum
• standards, they use in some of their class
  assessments the same format and routines as the
  most important assessments so that students
  become familiar with responding in these ways and
  within strict time frames.

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Why is classroom assessment alignment important
to analyze?

• Pedulla (2001) found that
• About 80 of 12,000 teachers from 47 states
  reported that they felt pressure from their
  principals to raise student scores on state
  tests.
• But, only 50 of these same teachers reported
  using the content and format of the state tests
  in their everyday classroom assessments.

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Alignment of Assessment Rigor with Curriculum
Standards

• When teachers assess the curriculum
• standards, they grade their classroom assessments
  with the same level of rigor as that used by the
  state in grading the tests.

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To Align the Rigor of Classroom Assessments with
the Rigor Expectedby the State

• Use the state rubric to score
• sample papers from the state
• web site and compare your
• scores with scores given
• by the states scorers.

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Which aspects of your classroom assessments need
the most work to align them with the state
assessments?

• Content? What have you done?
• Format? What are your next
• Rigor? steps?

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What Does It Mean to Monitor Individual Student
Progress in Relation to the Curriculum Standards?

• When educators monitor individual student
  progress in relation to the curriculum standards,
  they can identify the indicators and objectives
  that individual members of their class have
  mastered and the indicators and objectives they
  need to work on more.

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If We Tracked Student Progress on Power
Indicators?
What would grade books look like?What would
report cards look like? Brainstorm with a
colleague.
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To Monitor Individual Student Progress in
Relation to the Curriculum Standards

• Go to
• www.mdk12.org/data/course/m4w2/pr2
• for data collection templates that enable
  educators to generate Excel spreadsheets on which
  they can track student progress on the VSC
  indicators and objectives that they identify.

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Going to that site on the web will enable you to
access the Voluntary State Curriculum.

• Voluntary State Curriculum
• English Language Arts 10 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 K PK
  Mathematics 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 K PK
• Science  8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 K PK
• Social Studies  8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 K PK
• Click on the subject and grade you want.

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You will then go directly to the VSC.

• Reading, Grade 3Please check the objectives you
  would like to include in the grade book.
• Determine important ideas and messages in
  informational text
• Identify and explain the author's/text's purpose
  and intended audience (MSA)
• Identify and explain the author's opinion (MSA)
• State and support main ideas and messages (MSA)
• Summarize the text or a portion of text (MSA)
• Identify and explain information not related to
  the main idea (MSA)
• Identify and explain relationships between and
  among ideas (MSA) (MSA) indicates the item is
  assessed on the Maryland State Assessment.
  Generate worksheet

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The site will generate an
EXCEL spreadsheet.

• Determine important ideas and messages in
  informational text
• Identify and explain the author's/text's purpose
  and intended audience (MSA)

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What are the drivers and barriers in your school
to tracking student progress on Power
Indicators?
What could you do to overcome the barriers and
put in place in your school this year a process
of tracking student progress on a few Power
Indicators?
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What Does It Mean to Intervene with Students
Not Succeeding on the Curriculum Standards?

• When educators intervene with students not
  succeeding on the curriculum
• standards, they focus their academic assistance
  on the specific indicators and objectives
  students need help on and vary the assistance
  based on individual needs.

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Additional Alignment Questions

• Do expectations increase as students move up the
  grades and take more advanced courses?
• Are expectations consistent from teacher to
  teacher in a school and school to school in a
  region and district?
• Why is each of these questions important?

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Zero to Five

0 I am opposed to this and will not do
it. 1 Not Planned This is not on my radar
screen. 2 Planned but Not Implemented I know
about it but do it only occasionally. 3
Implemented a Little I am really trying to do
this on a regular basis. 4 Implemented a
Great Deal I am pretty good at this but
know that I have more to learn. 5 Fully
Implemented I am an expert at this.
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Apply Zero to Five to Each of These in
Terms of Your Academic Area of Interest

• Do you
• Understand the state indicators and objectives?
• Teach to the indicators and objectives?
• Assess the indicators and objectives with the
  same content, format, and rigor as the MSA/HSA?
• Monitor individual student progress in relation
• to the indicators and objectives?
• Target intervention programs to the indicators
  and objectives on which students are not
  succeeding?

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Say, Goodbye to your weakest link.
How could this knowledge guide you as you plan
your grade level and vertical team meetings this
year?