SBLAC 2. Standards-based Curricula

The basic curriculum is task-based regarding the individual skills and knowledge deemed necessary to be successful in college. However, it is project-based in the sense that all work should be inter-related across disciplines and structured so that various concepts are instructed and reinforced in all classes. The emphasis of project-based instruction is less a matter of hands-on, kinesthetic learning (which is good) than it is a matter of working with established skills and knowledge in a variety of contexts.

The need for project-based instruction stems from “lane blindness” which has become an absolute enemy of authentic instruction. “Lane blindness” is an unintended by-product of specialization which, as a result of sharp focus in one discipline, causes any other discipline to be rendered irrelevant. It establishes an order of things which tells students (and teachers, too) that math is math, science is science, English is English, and so on. Rules, methods and processes used in one discipline are unnecessary, if not irrelevant, in another, which, in turn, has its own set of rules, methods and processes.

When social studies teachers do not demand correct grammar in history essays, or when English teachers accommodate faulty research methods(1), they are guilty of lane blindness. It often occurs at the intra-disciplinary level, as well. When educators have high school students read social novels in English class which are written in “stream of consciousness” style we might feel we’re reaching out to their interests or we’re trying to “keep it real” for them. The problem here is that the 9th graders in the class have likely not mastered the complete sentence (something they will be tested on during the ACT/SAT) and yet we have them read stories that blatantly and deliberately disregard grammar rules. The assumption that these children will know the difference is academic arrogance plain and simple. These children by and large do not know the difference and their poor English scores prove it. Teachers, themselves, often write letters, emails, even handouts with poor English grammar and misspelled words. Yes, even English teachers.

But back to the point about social novels, we must ask ourselves the question: Are we trying to entertain the kids by simply giving them something that they might read? Are we then hoping they will learn to read simply by forcing a preponderance of material down their throat regardless of whether it is drivel or academically relevant? Or are we deliberately teaching them something relevant? I believe that in most cases it is the former.

I believe, also, that an English teacher can have students read their social studies lessons and their science lessons in a language arts class to deconstruct the writings in order to illuminate author’s purpose, subject, topic outline, theme, character development and comparison. Class work across the curriculum must be mutually supportive rather than exclusionary. Staying rigidly in our own lanes disallows our students the inter-disciplinary experiences necessary for authentic instruction. The curriculum, then, is the structure we use to fuse the various disciplines to the educational process. If the different elements of the curriculum are disparate and exclusionary, the educational experience will be fragmented and incomplete. It will be dissociative and counter-productive to higher order thinking, least of all capable of any true rigor.

A standards-based and standards-accountable curriculum requires the same rules, methods and processes to be required throughout the school and encompassing all disciplines and departments. Grammar and rhetoric, research standards, scientific inquiry, and even classroom management protocols must be uniformly taught and enforced throughout the building. A child’s education must be understandable to the child. If rules, methods and processes do not translate from classroom to classroom within the school, how in the world can we expect them to have any relevance to academic discipline much less off-campus experiences?

The standards, in Illinois in this case, come from two sources. The first source, the Illinois Learning Standards(2) (ILS), published in 1997 by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), presents a comprehensive catalogue of skills and knowledge considered necessary to master in order for the state to deem a child worthy of state graduation certification. Recently, ISBE adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) of English Language Arts and Mathematics which supplant (replace) ILS Goals 1-10. Unfortunately, far less than a third of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) juniors currently meet the state standard.

The second source in Illinois, the College Readiness Standards(3) (CRS), brought to us by ACT, Inc., contains core skills and knowledge which extensive research has determined that high school graduates must have mastered in order to have a relative probability of success in college. The College Readiness Standards are the primary focus of many college preparatory programs. Of course, there are many factors which contribute to a college student’s success or lack thereof, but these skills and the knowledge they represent indicate preparation and baseline readiness for higher level academic work.

The national average ACT composite score is ≈20, perhaps marginally higher depending on the year as it seems to be creeping up. This is the minimal score a high school graduate would need to have an even chance of success in a moderately difficult college if he/she was to attempt a degree. The Chicago Public Schools average is approximately 17.3. And this being the average means that there are roughly as many students below this as there are above it. If you cut off the bottom at a score of 15, this still would not get an average score of 20, which is minimally acceptable for college-level work at most universities. Yet, there is much clamoring within the system that we must focus less on standards and more on creativity. Our children are generally incapable of college-level work already and only little better than one in four meets minimal state requirements. But instead of focusing on the things that our government, businesses and colleges say are necessary for success in college and in life after high school, many educators and politicians wish to focus on creative content and scholastic entertainment in hopes that through more fun stuff students will magically achieve competence of skills we’re not teaching.

Let us look at music. Music is not tested on the ACT or the PSAE (or the7th grade ISAT, for that matter). Although graduation requirements stipulate that all graduates must have successfully completed one year of music, exactly what they are supposed to do during that one year remains gloriously nebulous. We shall assume that the requirement stems from a desire to mandate some type of culture class within the district-wide curriculum. And knowledge of the Arts is important; please don’t take this the wrong way. Music offerings include courses which attempt to teach kids to sing or to play a musical instrument. But why this elementary level of basic rhythm and tone was given to the high school curriculum is anybody’s guess. Clapping out quarter notes has value but it belongs in elementary school. Secondary school should provide a cultural significance to the musical art form but virtually any music class (course number) checks the block. This is lip service.

When discussions come up about students entering high school but not being prepared for ninth grade class work such as algebra or biology (or physics), the conversation invariably touches on the schism created by the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) standards and the Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE) standards. Having never taken or even seen an ISAT test, I have been nodding my head as the conversation moves on. Often this is a blame-laying interjection to which most agree and nod, like me, that this is life and there is nothing anyone in the room can do about it. Fortunately, the State of Illinois has agreed to incorporate CCSS and appropriate periodic assessments to better align elementary school focus and standards to that which is required in high school.

Having been told that ISAT and PSAE assess different skills and knowledge I understand the frustration. I have seen data showing that meeting the academic standards on the ISAT does not correlate to meeting the academic standards on the PSAE. Many notable and respected educators will gladly point out that there is a difference between what we ask of our grade school children (what we assess) and what they need to know and do in order to be successful in high school. Until recently I, too, waved off this anomaly as the state requiring us to do stupid things so that they can track achievement data for different sets of reports. The problem here is that the ISAT is taken throughout elementary school. These are, I presumed, formative assessments of cognitive development related to reading and math skills. They seemed to be viewed as some sort of mandated individual progress report, standardized so that all children are asked the same questions, and used to determine general academic development of the student, the school, and the district. This is not the least bit controversial on its face.

Disparity arises when we see 50% of students meeting the ISAT standards but only 23% of these same children meeting PSAE standards in the 11th grade(4). The immediate assumption is that we must be testing different skills. And as absurd as it sounds, it appears to be quite correct. But it is only correct when taken into the context of the ISBE ILS skills and knowledge as they progress through the sequences of ever more complicated tasks to arrive at the late high school descriptors.

Children are asked to do more with numbers in the sixth grade than they are in the third grade. Children are asked to convert fractions in the 7th and 8th grades – skills that are unheard of in the third grade (and not often mastered by the 9th grade). As well, high school students are expected to expand their knowledge and skill base and develop new skills along the various ILS sequences of Goals 1 through 30 (remember, CCSS replaced Goals 1-10). Yet pay particular attention to former ILS Goals 1, 2, 6, and 7 as these are the only translatable standards from ISAT to PSAE. But the PSAE covers Goals 1 through 13 (and only Goals 1 through 13). For additional insight, CRS covers none specifically and only loosely touches Goals 1, 2, 6-10, 11, 13 and parts of 5 and leaves 3, 4 and 14 through 30 completely alone.

The breakdown occurs because neither the students nor their teachers really know what the students are supposed to be doing. Perhaps some of the teachers do not really know what they (the teachers) are supposed to be doing, either. Without going into the psychology of why teachers go into elementary and secondary education in the first place, my experience shows that most teachers like and appreciate children, most like their subject(s), and most have a passion at some level for helping the students succeed. A proud student is a very satisfying feeling for a teacher. I know – I’ve been there. But how many proud students know what performance objectives have been achieved relative to the ILS or CRS? How many teachers know?

Most children are never told where they are going. Any parent who has ever taken a trip with a child knows that the predominant questions are about the trip itself. Are we there yet? When are we going to get there? I’m hungry, can we stop? How much further? Are we at least half way there yet? Kids (and teachers) have a right to know where they are going and when a particular journey is supposed to end. They should know what happens year by year without all of the abstract mumbo-jumbo about going to college and being successful. They need to know in the third grade where all these numbers games are leading and why it is important to pay attention to what is coming next. The vast majority of students and a goodly percentage of teachers have no clue throughout grades K-10 as to what is expected of 11th grade students on the PSAE. And all together too many never figure it out.

Like a farmer preparing his field, this is where the earth needs turning. We must stop teaching esoteric content and start (or return to) teaching standards, skills, and specific, identified skills and knowledge. We must stop preparing for tests and begin building known and acknowledged skills – skills that are built upon sub-skills. These new skills then become prerequisite and foundational sub-skills of new, more complex skills. Education is less about test taking and content cramming as it is about developing a skill base with which to process information so that we may solve the next more challenging endeavor.

Often it seems that grades and test scores have become an end in and of themselves. We measure students by grades and test scores. Children get high grades and low grades based on work within a content area within a larger content area. These grades may or may not have anything to do with established skills and knowledge relative to a year group beyond; “This is what we study in the fifth grade.” But grades, particularly high school grades, are often so subjective and relative to the teacher and the school that they are inconsequential as a measure of achievement outside of the particular classroom or the particular school. If the ACT only assesses 9½ goals of the ILS’s 30 goals and the entire PSAE only assesses 13 of 30, how can they be used as measures of student performance and of what is actually going on in the school? In a content-based curriculum, they cannot.

The soil must be tilled. Rather than teaching a content curriculum and merely identifying ILS and CRS skills and knowledge included in a lesson, we must begin with the ILS, Common Core and CRS skills and knowledge and only sparingly add content. Content should be introduced if it supports the known and acknowledged skills and knowledge. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how we can know what is to be assessed by the state and post-secondary institutions and disregard it so completely. This unimaginable defiance within education is truly heartbreaking when we consider the vast number of children relegated to low-paying, dead-end jobs and occupations because they were never taught the skills which employers, businessmen, college admissions officers and our own government tell us are absolutely essential to post-secondary success today.

(1) Use of proper research methodology is, in fact, included in the English portion of the Illinois Learning Standards, but the schema are located in the seldom referenced State Goal 5, Use the Language Arts to Acquire, Assess and Communicate Information. Interestingly, ILS Goals 1-10 have been replaced with Common Core State Standards of English Language Arts and Mathematics.
(2) See http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ils/Default.htm.
(3) See http://www.act.org/standard/.
(4) Chicago Public Schools, Office of Research. Evaluation and Accountability (REA) offers much in the way of achievement data both current and historical for the entire District 299. Unless noted otherwise, please assume that the data was derived via REA online from either the CPS Dashboard, https://cpsdashboard.cps.k12.il.us/Pages/default.aspx, or the REA web page, http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/.