What Do Teachers Need
to Know and Do?
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What Do Teachers Need to Know and Do? |
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Standards-based reform is having a huge impact on expectations for teachers. The new focus is on evidence of student learning. Teachers must attend to how and how well students demonstrate proficiency on state defined content standards and indicators. Though not all classroom teachers are feeling the shift yet, No Child Left Behind will most certainly speed up the impact. In standards-based education, teachers are expected to teach a set of state defined content standards to all students. And for the first time in our public school history, the federal government through the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets, expects teachers and schools to get all students to proficiency over the next 12 years. What does this mean for classroom teachers? It means that they need to figure out what the content standards are that they need to teach. They need to understand how the state or their district has defined proficiency on the indicators associated with the content standards, and if an indicator has not been defined for teachers, they must reach consensus in grade level teams on what they will accept as proficient work. Teachers need to identify opportunities for students to demonstrate proficiency and understand how to interpret each student's performance. They need to monitor the progress of each student in their classroom over time and regularly examine the monitoring data to determine who is getting it and who is not. They need to use the data to make instructional decisions. This shift in focus will be particularly painful for those veteran teachers who have developed years of lesson plans and activities, as they now must align classroom instruction and assessment with the state content indicators. For most teachers, this means they have to learn new content, learn how to assess and interpret student proficiency, develop a tracking system, and regularly examine data and student work as a collaborative team process. Stephen R. Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People reminds us, "To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction." If our ultimate goal is to improve student achievement and meet AYP, then a critical intermediate goal is to determine where each of our students is in relation to the state content standards.
What do teachers need to know and do to determine where their students are? Where should teachers start? [top] What do teachers need to know and do to determine where their students are?
[top] Where should teachers start? Some would argue that they should start at the beginning, which would be to thoroughly understand the content standards and what they mean. However, this would take a good deal of time and would delay implementation of a process that would allow them to get a better handle on where their students are in relation to achieving proficiency on the content standards. I recommend that teachers and schools start in the middle of the process by developing a monitoring plan and starting to collect student level classroom data on selected indicators. This gets teachers started and provides them with meaningful and important data on their students. Examination of the data would naturally focus them on other areas of need: understanding the intent of the indicators, what makes a good assessment, how to interpret student performance, and the instructional implications of the data. By developing a monitoring and plan and beginning to collect student level data, teachers would be more vested in their own data and better able to self-assess their needs for further capacity building. Most importantly, they would be beginning to learn where their students were on some of the indicators immediately leaving time to re-teach or intervene in other ways to help students attain proficiency. I believe that is the fastest way to hit the target and provides the best balance between building teacher capacity and focusing on student performance. There is no question that there will need to be some painful rethinking of how best to use our instructional time with students. Indeed, a number of favorite lessons or activities will need to go to the "recycle bin." I have found that having grade level teams conduct classroom walkthroughs focusing on student work is a particularly useful tool. Classroom walkthroughs are an excellent way to check on the alignment of student work with the indicators. In my classroom walkthroughs, I have found both a good deal of student work and a great deal of grading of student work that was not aligned with the state content standards. There may be some good reason for teaching something not aligned with state standards. However, if time is an issue for you, then you do not want to waste it on something that will not help you attain your student achievement target. |
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| How Have States Implemented AYP? |
| How Have States Designed Their Accountability Systems? |
| How Do States Report Progress? |
| How Do States Provide Technical Assistance to Districts and Schools? |
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