Tag Archives: Common Core State Standards

Chasing our tails with CCSS

Posted on by
Reply

There is no need for us to chase our tails with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Since the publication of CCSS a couple years ago, educators have been trying to “unpack” and amalgamate the grade level skills and skill strands contained therein. But most appear to be chasing their tails by trying to assimilate performance standards into the established unit-driven, content-based instruction (CBI).

There are a couple plausible explanations for insisting that square, CCSS pegs should fit into round, content-based holes. The most obvious explanation is that CCSS, as a body, “appears” to be content-based. To be sure, CCSS is organized along a content related structure of English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics, and Next Generation Science Standards. Another explanation lies within the formatted presentation of unit-type segments. Presumably the authors, themselves, were not entirely sure of how to teach standards (as opposed to content), only that performance standards were necessary. A third explanation acknowledges that instruction of skills is a seismic shift from imparting knowledge. The ramifications of this shift are frightening to those who may also acknowledge that very little from traditional, teacher-centered methods are effective in creating an environment wherein students learn to problem solve using their own skills as opposed to teacher merely showing them how.

Of course, there is the consuming notion that most teachers, themselves, learned their craft and trade through the very traditional methods which Standards-based Instruction (SBI) so willingly discounts. Often enough, the protests will encompass information which students just have to know, and that this information seems to be discarded in favor of basic skills. This is an invalid assumption. There is no aspect of SBI which negates subject area knowledge. Indeed, skills may not be developed to any level of complexity without an ever-increasing knowledge of the topic being investigated. But there is an inverse relationship. SBI allows the subject to be dealt with in a more critical manner as opposed to the subject being expanded for the student by the teacher. Whereas, in the latter case the teacher assesses student understanding by having the student repeat what what told, presented or assigned as opposed to the teacher assessing student understanding by allowing the student to demonstrate problem-solving skills within a subject area using the student’s own skills to show understanding of the material.

I don’t mean to imply that imparting knowledge is a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s a good thing. That’s what experts do. The primary difference between SBI and CBI lies in how students accumulate the knowledge. We must teach students how to gain information and understanding from a vast array of topical content; of content they, the students, must be allowed to select and investigate for themselves. We build their capacity for understanding by teaching them skills which allow them to think for themselves and to draw their own conclusions. The traditional method of CBI restricts their exposure to both content and thought processes and relegates them to the roles of note-taker and information regurgitator. The analogy here lies with the quote often attributed to William Butler Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

A typical content-based high school course will have an established amount of content which (presumed) experts have determined make up the knowledge a student should digest in order to fill the pail and thus ordain him/her credit worthy. Textbooks are created which guide both teachers and students through the material in an orderly fashion, hopefully reaching the last chapter at the end of the school year. All necessary content is covered within this format. Periodic unit assessments test whether (or not) the students have been paying attention and/or doing their homework. By the end of the year (or semester or whatever) the teacher will have taught all the material and, presumably, the students will have “learned” it.

How this relates to the difficulty in accessing and adopting CCSS lies in what the student can actually do relative to his/her own capacity for gaining knowledge independent of the teacher. Critical thinking, critical reading, problem-solving and metacognition are subordinated to “learning” a bunch of academic stuff. Relegating students’ minds to the back of the priority list in favor of all this stuff simply does not increase students’ capacity to think for themselves. This is where CCSS comes in.

When we talk about student independence and responsibility for learning (a la Charlotte Danielson and others) we should concern ourselves with our students’ capacity for independent thought. Lectures and other teacher-centered approaches do not challenge students to think for themselves on a daily basis. Sitting in a classroom while a teacher waxes on about whatever subject might be next on the agenda does not engage students in independent thinking or independent learning. We are not looking for parrots, particularly in elementary and high school. Although there is a certain amount of rules taking and memorization in the early elementary grades while children are developing their concrete operational base, there should be increasingly less direct, formula-based instruction as students begin to apply basic skills to increasingly real and relevant applications.

Students have to learn how to think for themselves. And teachers have to learn how to teach students to think for themselves. It’s messy, to be sure. I would imagine that for many educators the ideal classroom contains students who thirst for knowledge. This ideal situation is a rewarding experience for teachers and students, alike. But even if we have a classroom in which the students strive to do their best, without the skills needed to independently read, comprehend, analyze and evaluate information, the thirst goes unquenched. When students cannot fluently read the science texts, or intuitively relate math concepts, or rationally decipher op-ed primary source from fact-based reporting or literary prose they are just relying on what the teacher says. They decide whether to believe or not; they decide whether to care or not based entirely on the teacher-student dynamic. In the hand-holding culture of traditional instruction it’s really that simple.

Skills-based instruction such as that which is at the heart of CCSS gives all students a fighting chance to succeed. After X amount of content-based instruction about things students either don’t understand or don’t care about, what’s left? What can they do? As educators we cannot control parental involvement. We cannot control politics, budget, urban violence, or mainstream media and culture. But we can control what happens in the classroom. Being aware of external social forces may help us understand the problem and assist how we shape our students’ academic experience. But these external forces are not responsible for bad teaching. Requiring kids to sit through teacher-centered content-based lectures and do homework “because it’s good for them and they need the practice” has not worked for the mainstream student for forty years. At some point, educators have to get serious about the profession and quit taking the easy road and blaming others. We must stop chasing our tails by trying to insert CCSS into our content-based, teacher-centered formulae and begin restructuring our classroom instruction to skills-based, student-centered lessons which promote independent, critical thought. We need to start teaching students how to think for themselves. And so another quote seems appropriate, this from Plutarch, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

The Educators’ Guide to Skills-Based Learning and Assessment Curriculum – 7: Constructing the Curriculum Map

Posted on by
1

SBLAC 7: Constructing the Curriculum Map

Curriculum mapping is ubiquitous to public school education. But like standards-based instruction and the Rigor and Relevance Framework, much of the “ado” is noise. Curriculum mapping has become the incessant yammering of pedagogues and pseudo-reformists creating their “best practices” and how-to manuals. But in spite of all the noise pollution, curriculum maps are absolutely essential to serious instructional planning. They should be as important to a teacher as a flight plan is to a pilot. Curriculum maps are the single most important means of plotting the instructional course of the school. They tell us where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. They tell us what we need to do and what we don’t. They are both the starting point and the finish line. A teacher without a curriculum map is much worse than a driver without a street map (or a Garmin® GPS – street maps are so third grade). They plot your goals and your students’ objectives and keep you on track as a teacher.

In content-based curricula, curriculum maps are often used as pacing guides. Units of instruction which must be covered within a certain timeframe are often scheduled within a sequencing plan which is divided into semesters, quarters, 5-week blocks and one- and two- week blocks. This is the manner in which curriculum writers are then assured of fitting all of the “necessary” content into a school year. However, using a curriculum map as a pacing guide has two major flaws. The first flaw is that scheduling is predictive in nature. Once life and the other activities of the school get underway, our best plans are corrupted and must be adjusted. The second major flaw is that this practice utterly obviates differentiated instruction, relegating all students incapable of maintaining the pace to extracurricular and remedial tutoring. A third but less imperative flaw is the sin of omission. When school life blocks out critical lessons and when difficult units slow down the main body of students, pacing requirements disavow that fun part of teaching, known as student deep learning, and/or potentially very crucial lessons.

A SBLAC-based curriculum map tells us what we want to accomplish. We don’t fill it up with a textbook worth of content. We identify ten skills or knowledge standards of which an entire class will demonstrate proficiency (or mastery) within each ten-week period. At an average of one skill per week, students can incorporate a broader understanding and a deeper appreciation within a deliberate and conscious framework of instruction. When we select our relevant skills and knowledge from our established source documents, CRS, CCSS and ILS, we then create a structured plan designed around our instructional goals and those of our students. We want students to master and to demonstrate competency in the requisite, assessable skills and knowledge of the state exit exam (in Illinois, it’s the PSAE). We, therefore, must create an instructional plan which teaches them these skills and imparts the essential knowledge.

Building a curriculum map is where we get our first opportunity to “walk the dog.” We know that a high school English teacher had 73 ILS descriptors within the five ISBE former English Language Arts Goals (now replaced by CCSS ELA). Keeping in mind that there were 39 middle school descriptors and another 73 elementary descriptors (that meant a total of 185 descriptors), high school English teachers were required to teach to standard a massive amount of individual secondary skills for which where is often no sub-skill foundation coming in from grade school. The new CCSS ELA standards are no less voluminous. While ordinary content-based English I, II, and III courses cover a preponderance of literature, thirty seven descriptors were clearly not “covered” at all. Of the remaining thirty six skills, many assume a competency of elementary and middle school sub-skills which just does not existent. ILS 1.A.1.a for example asked students in early elementary school to “Apply word analysis skills to recognize new words.” Because it is obvious to high school English teachers everywhere that we are still trying to teach this skill to high school students, it is no wonder the mission of teaching to any real standard transcends our ability to manage it. Thus, we must determine, ourselves, how best to “walk the dog.”

Continuing with the English teacher’s dilemma, we must remember that the CRS contains 70 skill standards for English and 61 skill standards for reading. Of these 131 standards, some might be close representations of CCSS counterparts. Again, many are not. But all are being assessed in one form or another on the ACT. Incidentally, the writing portion of the ACT contains 62 additional assessable CRS standards (and CCSS identifies specific writing standards as well). The sheer magnitude of the task, ensuring competency of under-prepared children for the state exam is incredible. It is like trying to eat a whole elephant. It cannot be done! And this is just the English Language Arts part.

So, how does an English teacher teach 378 individual skills? It is probably obvious to most by now that he/she should not even try. But unlike most content-based curricula which simply ignore 75% of the standards and provide lip service to most of the remaining 94, a standards-based curriculum will attempt to instruct to proficiency all which has been assigned. But this is only possible with a K-12 aligned standards-based curriculum to which Chicago Public Schools, like most of the country, is currently not even close. So picking up the game in the third period (it’s a hockey thing), the high school teachers are left to salvage what critical skills are possible prior to the child’s most important assessment of his life, one whose score will remain with him on his high school transcript forever. And ignoring this for the first two years of high school and leaving it up the 11th grade English, math and science teachers is unconscionable.

So we concentrate on the CRS skills because they are fundamental to college success. College readiness programs, or a college preparatory high school, must do everything possible to give graduates the best chance to get a degree. Since we cannot be with them in college to give them extra credit, tutor them after class, or review their assignments and give them advice, we must load them up with the best mental development we can manage. We must teach them how to think and to use the basic and secondary skills we teach so that they may solve problems rationally, discuss issues intelligently, argue points succinctly, and make decisions based upon reason and ramification. They must be able to do all of this to a college-level standard. We can get our kids into college if they graduate and want to go. However, there is a formula for being successful in college which we owe them if they attend our schools.

I must interject at this point a common question regarding druthers. Complaints have arisen regarding our obsession with college. What if a student does not want to go to college? What if a student only wants to complete high school; why can’t that be enough? Well, I suppose that would be just fine. Graduating from high school is good. But then what? High school does many things: college preparation should be one of them. Since we cannot devote precious resources to non-mission essential tasks we must look closely to what our diplomas offer children in the way of preparing them for their futures as productive citizens and successful family members. The elephant is large. Our time is short.

So, in constructing our curriculum maps, we determine which skills at which levels must be addressed in a given year. There are natural associations with certain CRS skills and their complementary courses (or vice versa). Knowing that we cannot eat the entire package of skills in a single year, we must concentrate on the skills and skill levels most appropriate to the subject at hand. A rule of thumb tells us that freshmen should work primarily at mastering standards within skill levels 13-15 and 16-19. Sophomores ought to be able to demonstrate proficiency within skill levels 16-19 and some 20-23, but often only if they have been introduced to the CRS curriculum as freshmen. If the sophomores are new to standards-based instruction, they, too, should begin at the 13-15 and 16-19 skill levels. Juniors should operate within the 20-23 and 24-27 skill levels. Again, the sophomore preparatory caveat applies. Mastery of skill levels 28+ as course foci should be reserved for 11th grade honors, AP course work and students who have demonstrated skill mastery of the less complex tasks.

It must be remembered that by identifying skill levels as we do, we are not excluding higher, or even lower, level skills from being taught and/or reinforced within a particular course. By all means, much of what we do as teachers is to stretch (as in challenge) and review (as in spiraling) as we work with our basic subject(s). The particular point to be made is that we limit the range of skills and knowledge for which we hold ourselves and our students responsible. On the other hand, that which we identify must be mastered by each student absolutely. Do not expect a 14-year old child to grasp, own, and use a 24-level skill (even though some may be capable) without requisite sub-skill proficiency. Do, however, expect every 14-year old child in high school to grasp, own, and use a number of 13-15 and 16-19 level skills.

Each curriculum map is a common course document. Its creation, use and modification are necessarily a collaborative effort from all teachers teaching that particular course. We cannot abide by individual teachers teaching different standards in the same course. If the benchmark standards are not the same from one class to another, then we have different courses. This particular aspect of “dog walking,” i.e., the curriculum map, is a joint production of the teachers involved in teaching the course. Within SBLAC parameters, it is essentially up to them (or him/her) what constitutes the nucleus of the class work. Keep in mind that there can be no vertical alignment within a department or discipline if the next higher grade cannot depend on an established framework of student skills being learned to proficiency in the previous year(s).

As the school year is divided into eight five-week periods, so is the curriculum map. The teacher may identify an essential CRS skill for each of the five week periods. In this case, these skills will have preeminence throughout the five-week period. For teachers of the core subjects of English, math, and science, this should not be particularly difficult because all CRS skills coincide with the appropriate subject matter. Be mindful that Dr. Willard Daggett insists that in content-based curricula 33% of the content should be tossed even before he looks at it. And Dr. Richard DuFour reminds us that most teachers teach their personal interests, not the benchmarks for which the students are accountable. So, boil it down right now to eight major skills which will become the framework of the SBLAC benchmarks. This will become the Mission Essential Task List (METL) for the course. In fact, DuFour also recommends that department and discipline teams establish power standards which thread the instruction vertically and provide skills continuity throughout instruction.

Each quarter within the school year (10-week period) is special and really ought to have its individual theme. Themes in this case are not effervescent distractions of seasons, holidays, social commentary or the like. Themes in this case are skills which must be mastered by each individual student within a particular year-group and which cross disciplines and departments. The overriding motivation is that no one in the class is truly successful until everyone in the class has mastered the 10-week theme. When possible, this theme should encompass the entire grade level, not just a single course. The collaborative subtlety notwithstanding, in the child’s mind when two or more teachers are focusing on the same skill at the same time the relevance, value and appreciation are significantly increased. Selecting the theme is relatively simple. Of the two five-week primary skills identified above, which has preeminence? One skill fits perfectly into what the course is all about. When selecting the theme, consider that a child is not going to get much out of the courses for that quarter if he/she cannot master this particular skill, period.

Minimal proficiency is 80% of assessment attempts established by an individual course syllabus. An example of 80% proficiency is a multiple choice test which offers no less than five questions which require the application of a specific benchmark skill at a specific proficiency level. Proficiency can be determined if a child correctly answers four of the five questions. It should be obvious that if a child answered less than four of the five questions correctly, that would constitute less than 80% proficiency and, therefore, an unsuccessful assessment attempt. This is considered a No-Go. If a student cannot achieve a Go for each of the benchmark skills identified in the syllabus, the child shall not pass that particular class for that particular quarter.

Not all courses and, naturally, not all benchmark skills can be assessed via a multiple choice test. Writing, art, science lab work, foreign language speaking and listening require a variety of assessment techniques. Therefore, I cannot tell a teacher how to “walk the dog” when the benchmark skills must be individually assessed with a diverse arrangement of assessment methods. In this case, “walking the dog” means that an established and published means of assessment shall be implemented for each established benchmark skill which gives the student fair warning of what is being assessed, how it shall be assessed, and to what standard the 80% proficiency is to be determined. This is known as Task / Condition / Standard (T/C/S).
• Task. A task is a benchmark skill which is summarized into a performance measure. In order for a student to acquire, study, practice, and prepare for evaluation and assessment of the benchmark skill in question, the student must know what is expected. Tasks can be thought of through “I can” statements (or TSWBAT) and will have a corresponding CRS (or CCSS or ILS) skill identifier. Essentially the task identifies the action or process to be performed.
• Condition. The task condition refers to the tools (including prerequisite sub-skills), reference material (such as a textbook, notes or other resources), aids (perhaps a graphing calculator), cues and environmental arrangements under which the assessment takes place. The condition also refers to the methodology of assessment, be it essay, multiple choice, project and so on.
• Standard. The task standard describes how well and to what level the benchmark skill is to be performed. The task standard should be explained in terms of accuracy, completeness, speed and format. While 80% accuracy is a relatively easy mark on the wall in a multiple choice question configuration, the task conditions and task standards of benchmark skills associated with projects or writing assignments are significantly more complex. Grading rubrics become absolutely essential regarding the standard to which students are held accountable in demonstrating proficiency on writing assignments and projects. The CRS (or CCSS or ILS) skill level must be reiterated and highlighted in the task standard.

As has been stated, each quarter should have ten benchmarks. Whether one refers to these as “I can” statements, standards, or intermediate objectives, heretofore we will call them benchmark skills. These benchmark skills form the absolute minimum a child must master in order to get credit for learning enough in the class to receive credit. These benchmark skills must be relevant to the course work and form the focus of lesson planning.

We wish each quarter (10-week period) to include ten benchmark skills (a cutoff of 10 is clearly sufficient). Of these benchmark skills, two of them have already been identified (Meanings of Words and Interpretation of Data). The remaining eight benchmark skills are dependent on the two primary benchmark skills, paying particular attention to the quarterly theme. From where do the remaining benchmark skills come?
• For English and math they predominantly come from the CRS (no more than two from appropriate State descriptors). Eventually, as CCSS catches up, there we likely be a preponderance of CCSS ELA and math skills identified. For now, most elementary programs are not close to providing the necessary foundation for high school teachers to tackle 9-12 CCSS at face value.
• For science they will come mainly from CRS Science (with about 25% to 33% coming from appropriate State Goals, or ILS Goal 12, descriptors). Soon, next generation science standards will be published which promise to provide guidance for 9-12 science teachers. However, the same caveat applies as it will take time for elementary science programs to establish sufficient background to begin CCSS science at the 9-12 level.
• Social studies shall include a 50% mix of appropriate State Goal (ILS Goals 14-18) descriptors and CRS Reading and Science standards. Reading of non-fiction and expository writing is a bit of a bane on social studies teachers ability to teach students to manipulate texts in any critical way. CCSS has attempted to address this dilemma but there is no guide beyond CCSS, itself, and textbook publishers are slow to assist.
• Other non-core courses will contain at a minimum one CRS Reading standard (within Meaning of Words strand and identified as a Critical Benchmark Skill) and one CRS Science standard (within Interpretation of Data) per quarter. If these happen to be the CRS standards identified as the preeminent benchmark skills of each five-week period within a grade level (horizontal alignment) that is fine; but no more CRS skills are mandated. The remaining eight benchmark skills shall be derived from the appropriate State Goals and, at the discretion of the teacher(s), appropriate CRS standards.
• JROTC will also contain a minimum of one CRS Reading standard (within Meaning of Words strand and identified as a Critical Benchmark Skill explained below) and one CRS Science standard (preferably within Interpretation of Data) per quarter, but will derive its remaining benchmark skills from U.S. Army Cadet Command Program of Instruction for JROTC and State PE and SEL standards.

Once identified, each of the benchmark skills must be explained in a Task / Condition / Standard format for inclusion into the course syllabus. This group of tasks becomes the student’s Critical Benchmark Skills List (CBSL). The CBSL is like a student’s job book. In other words, it is a compilation of the skills needed to move forward. And while ten skills may not seem like a whole lot to ask of a child within an entire ten-week period, the reality for the child is that with seven classes the CBSL contains about 70 benchmark skills per quarter!

Naturally, having students demonstrate proficiency of 280 benchmark skills per year is still pretty spectacular. Imagine if we did not limit ourselves to ten or so benchmark skills and each teacher tried to “eat the whole elephant” of early and/or late high school State Goal descriptors (411 in Illinois) and the requisite set of CRS standards (367). If we were to consider the amount of elementary school standards of CCSS which are not “covered” (or obviously learned) and/or the similar State Goal descriptors we would be easily over a thousand specific skills with immeasurable contextual applications which we want our high school teachers to instruct. So, even without going into the elementary and middle school goals (which include the bulk of a 9th grade core teacher’s daily grind), by spring of their junior year, students are responsible for 778 individual skills. We have now established a format which allows us to teach and for students to learn an abundance of skills in a methodic, coordinated and organized manner.

Keep in mind, within the SBLAC system much of the CBSL is duplicated in other classes or even in the same class but within a different context. For example, the CRS Reading standard, “Recognize clear cause-effect relationships described within a single sentence in a passage” (SCC-ER 13-15), is a critical benchmark skill of both English I and World Studies. It should be clear to all trying to complete a course curriculum map that CRS standards are not exclusionary. This is why and how CRS standards are required across the curriculum as interdisciplinary benchmark skills. Students must get the message often and in a variety of contexts. Ray McNulty (former President of ASCD and former Senior Fellow at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) tells us to forget about pure disciplines anyway because they don’t exist outside of the classroom. As a note, the CCSS ELA standards include reading and/or writing for science, social science and technology which should encourage interdisciplinary designs such as Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum.

Thus, curriculum mapping establishes our big plan. Our first and second quarter CBSL tasks become our first semester CBSL. We create a CBSL for the second semester in the same manner as in the first semester. Critical Benchmark Skills can be duplicated in more than one class as mentioned, and can even be repeated within the same class under certain circumstances. In a spiraling program of study we may require what is technically the same skill but implemented in a different context. For example, the CRS Science standard, “Select a single piece of data from a simple data presentation” (ID13-15), may require the student to manipulate numerical data when addressing acceleration and velocity, but may require the student to manipulate non-numerical color schemes when addressing astronomical data later in the year. Do not underestimate the student’s penchant for isolating tidbits of information. Recalling and utilizing the same skill in a different context is a metacognitive episode which strengthens the skill. The big picture tells us what the take-away skills are and how they are broken down into semesters, quarters, five-week periods and more or less weekly instructional activities.

Although written for courses and programs of study within established time periods, curriculum maps are not linear. In as much as they progress chronically through the year, they are cumulative. They accumulate skills. Of course there are the sub-skill prerequisites of each new skill, but curriculum maps should not be thought of as content built upon content. While a particular CRS-based benchmark skill may require a student to select a single piece of data from a simple data presentation at skill level 13-15 and at skill level 16-19 a student must select two or more pieces of data from a simple data presentation, the second skill need not immediately follow the first skill sequentially. In essence, when we introduce and develop the skill of selecting data, we need not (and should not) chase the skill all the way up the skill level continuum to 33-36. Introducing the skill and staying with it until the students have demonstrated proficiency at combining data from two or more complex data presentations at skill level 33-36 is unreasonable and counterproductive at the freshman level, particularly if they have not mastered the skill of reading the x and y axes of a simple data presentation when they enter high school. As well, it violates the principle outlined earlier which lays out relative skill levels based upon course grade levels. Essentially, keep all Critical Benchmark Skills basic in the early going until we are comfortable with what students are able to do with new knowledge.

Once the CBSL has been established within the curriculum map. The next task for the teacher is to formulate the assessment scheme. How will a teacher know that students have the skills firmly within their skills tool kit? We must resist the temptation to be begin lesson planning until after we have decided what constitutes proficiency of each standard and have determined how each skill will be assessed.

The Educators’ Guide to Skills-Based Learning and Assessment Curriculum – 5: Incremental Cognizance

Posted on by
1

SBLAC 5: Incremental Cognizance

The benchmark curriculum is a type of standards-based curriculum. The SBLAC system (remember? Skills-based Learning and Assessment Curriculum) is a type of benchmark curriculum. SBLAC assumes that higher order thinking is a product of intellectual capacity. Intellectual capacity is created and expanded through the accumulation of skills and knowledge stored in a person’s mind like a tool kit. Just as there is an infinite variety of tools based upon use, specialization, quality and the experience of the person using the tool, intellectual skills have infinite variety.

When we set out to establish a true standards-based curriculum such as SBLAC, we must first identify the skills and knowledge that will make up the benchmarks. What are the standards? Fortunately, we have two source documents which provide the pool from which to select the standards; CCSS and ACT’s CRS for core subjects and ISBE’s ILS for non-core subjects. Our chore is merely to determine which of them to benchmark and where to put them sequentially. For purposes of college readiness, nearly all of the CRS and much of the CCSS skills are relevant. With the exception of a few CCSS high school standards and late high school ILS descriptors much of the late grade school continuum is rather sporadic for a focused approach. The ELA reading and writing standards become esoteric in that they take off on tangents which, if not fully developed in earlier years, become new information rather than developmental skill building. It must be clear that both the CRS and the CCSS are progressive and sequential. Therefore, placement within a curriculum map must be carefully considered. Identification and placement of the targeted, benchmark skills are crucial.

For every skill taught in grade school, there is a set of sub-skills which must be mastered before the new skill – the benchmark, in this case – can be mastered. Once mastered, this benchmark becomes a sub-skill of the next level of skills and benchmarks. The progressive nature of skills and knowledge must be evident to the individual accumulating the skill (i.e., the student) in order to assimilate it into the skill set or tool kit. When teachers and students think of resources to assist in problem-solving, be it math or ELA, these mental skills are as valuable, if not more so, than dictionaries, graphing calculators, progression charts or rulers. Just as a tradesman has course and fine tools from which to choose, a problem solver needs a progressive set of intellectual skills which may be applied to a given situation. But the problem-solver must be aware that the skill exists, what it is used for, and when to apply it given the situation.

Often children are taught skills and have accumulated knowledge for which they have no known purpose or application. Just as often, a teacher becomes frustrated by a child who may have demonstrated mastery or proficiency of a skill previously but cannot bring the skill to bear when needed at a different time or within a different context. A child will claim to not know information or how to do something when the teacher knows absolutely that the child has successfully negotiated the same terrain earlier. What went wrong? Is this child just lazy?

A child can master a skill only if it is presented as a skill. More often than not, however, children learn tricks and tidbits that they perform on certain cues. This is a basic drawback of content-based instruction which relies on units of information. Remove the trained cue (attempt to apply a skill within a distinctly different context) and the trick is gone. Unaware that the trick has value outside of the initial context, without the original context the tidbit becomes trivia. Try to connect the dots with no numbering system. This is what happens to students who perform tricks in class to satisfy a short-term requirement from a specific teacher within a specific unit of study. The phenomenon is common in content-based curricula because topic-related units are taught followed by unit tests. There is no appreciation that a valuable skill, which has relevance in a multitude of applications, may be utilized by the child as a gift to be placed in his/her tool kit. Students (and, perhaps, the teacher) may be clueless that a valuable skill has been brought to bear in a problem-solving way.

There is a metacognitive transition which must occur for the child to claim ownership of the new skill. He/she must acknowledge the event. Children know that to master a new Wii® application a person must start slow and train the fingers and hands to make certain, often times unnatural, movements in association with a television screen in order to negotiate a new game. The more they play, the better they become. Eventually, they can show others how to negotiate particular aspects of the game because of their own mastery of the necessary skills. The relative value of such mastery notwithstanding, this is a metacognitive experience. The child (or adult) deliberately thinks about what mental and physical skills to bring to bear in order to solve problems and negotiate obstacles. Once mastery evolves into expertise, deliberate thought is not necessary to bring the basic skills to bear and the child (or adult) manipulates the challenges and obstacles with ease. At this point, the deliberate thought can be focused on improvement of skills and nuances of the game, itself. It is the same thought process which must be tapped into for the child to learn algebra or English grammar.

We can identify the skills and knowledge. But we seem to have significant difficulty both incorporating them into our classroom goals and objectives and developing strategies which encourage children to focus on the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful in life after high school. Why is it so difficult to focus on those tasks we have identified? Why can’t we train, instruct, assess, and develop the skills we want the students to master? Why do we spend so much time doing other things? Tangents! We spend a lot of our time and our children’s time with, well, drivel when we need to focus on the things that experts say are necessary for the children’s success in life after high school; and for what the state is paying us to teach, it seems pretty plain and simple.

The basic idea of SBLAC is that for students to progress beyond the Third Grade Brain they have to know that there is meaning and value to this whole education thing. They also must be shown how the progression works. They are not as smart as they think they are, but they are not dumb, either.

Regarding the need for metacognition, it may be possible that it is unnecessary for deep understanding and there could even be people, I imagine, capable of a certain level of complex communication and/or expert thinking without knowing it (please read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Dr. Oliver Sacks). But these tasks of deep understanding, complex communication, and expert thinking have serious limitations when considered independent of conscious thought. To deeply understand something without knowing it is clearly the exception. To unwittingly engage in complex communication seems absurd. For the mind to conduct expert thinking unaware that it is taking place is an infinitesimally rare event.

Naturally brilliant people will use their minds to gather extensive knowledge. The experts are capable of being experts only in so much as they are aware of their expertise. Even so, technical expertise is only as valuable as its technical currency, which requires constant and continual updating and upgrading. Expert thinkers must be aware and conscious of their thought processes in order to be of value. Problem solving demands that the person or people solving the problem possess the potential skills and knowledge to do the work.

The idea that person can develop his/her mind is not at all unlike the athlete (or any person for that matter) developing muscles on the body. With or without a toned body, a person can go to the gym and “work out.” But an un-toned person can lift weights, do exercises, get tired and leave sweaty and will have accomplished little more that lifting weights, doing exercises, and getting tired and sweaty. If that was the purpose, then hallelujah. Themselves, these attributes do not assume a quality workout and likely do not portend a well-toned physique. While it may be doing work or even working out, it is random physical activity that likely risks injury and may or may not have value other than psychological.

The modern gym is equipped with weight machines which identify for the user which muscles or muscle group a particular activity is to utilize and strengthen/tone. The person doing the exercise must consciously be aware of which muscles he/she is using to perform the task and limit exertion to those muscles. To do otherwise risks injury because the direction, arc, hand and leg placement are specifically designed to work with a particular muscle or muscle group in a specific manner. It is particularly risky when one overloads the weight before he/she has control of his/her muscles. The mind will convince the body to get the weight moving through the repetitions but all the muscles of the body will pitch in to get the job done. Back and groin strains are a common result.

By consciously training the muscles, one can build targeted muscles and muscle groups and develop physical definition through a conscious, directed regimen of physical exercise. The mind is similarly developed. Unfortunately, however, we seat our students in the classroom and do not tell them what muscles we’re working on. To the child many classrooms are places where educational things happen like the gym, where sweaty things happen. Continuing with the weight machine metaphor, often we want to teach and learn more so we overload the weights (by increasing the “rigor”) we are using and the kids just give up. Equally as dangerous is when students cannot push the weight and we simply lighten the load, often to the point of no real work being accomplished, anyway.

The point here is the need for conscious recognition by the student that the work is being done for a specific purpose which has specific take-aways. The metacognitive acknowledgement demands that the student is aware of his/her own thought processes. The child must know the skill, the value of the skill, where it lies within the established skill bank, and what its purpose is in a variety of applications. Without these conscious attributes present during the instructional activity, learning is marginalized. We’re back to performing tricks or less.

The problem, of course, with performing tricks is that as an intellectual activity it is essentially mindless. While the activity being taught is, from the standpoint of the teacher, problem-solving, from the point of view of the student these tricks and activities are ethereal. They are not tied to real life regardless of how well the teacher may present the functional application of the material. Too few students appreciate the progressive nature of problem-solving and continually start back at the beginning of any individual task at hand. Unable to search their own knowledge for solutions and processes previously associated with a specific challenge they will “best guess” with a related trick or give up altogether (a la B, B, B, B . . .). Without an acknowledged tool kit students are helpless.

So forget the tricks. They are little more than random, fluffy educational activities designed to make us all feel good about ourselves and our students. Unless classroom activities are specifically focused on building the skill base, unless they are designed to put a tool in the tool kit or improve a tool already there, we are wasting precious time. Regarding the Rigor and Relevance Framework (See http://www.icle.net/rrr.html.), Christine LaRocco of the International Center for Leadership in Education tells us that we must keep relevance in front of rigor. Particularly when students are failing our expectation already, making instruction more difficult or complex is not a solution. We need to make our instruction relevant, first.

And be mindful that the skill base is built incrementally. Just as a person cannot walk into a gym one day and walk out with a perfectly toned body, a student’s tool kit cannot be filled up in a single semester. Most students are unaware that they even have a tool kit much less know that they have any tools to put in it. They must be made aware of the skills and knowledge that they possess. They must be enlightened as to the progressive nature of both CCSS and CRS. They must accept a realistic perception of their skill levels in the various disciplines before any meaningful progress can be made. Just as a person who goes to the gym to get fit, lose weight, or train for the marathon, students need a good diagnostic sense of where they are relative to the standards, good advice on where to set their goals, and a plan and tracking system to measure progress. Only then are they ready to begin filling up their tool kits.

The Educators’ Guide to Skills-based Learning and Assessment Curriculum – 4: Focus on the Mission

Posted on by
3

SBLAC 4: Focus on the Mission

Think for a moment about the reason for testing. We would not want doctors practicing medicine without first passing the medical boards. We would not want a lawyer to represent us if he/she had not passed the bar exam. As menial as it seems, in most states drivers must pass a notional drivers test and vision exam in order to drive our streets and highways. We test our food, our drugs, and our automobiles for minimal standards. When they don’t pass, they’re not released to the public. Educators who oppose standardized testing are similar to automobile executives who would sell you a car that did not run, as long as it made it all the way through the assembly line. It sounds absurd. It is absurd.

The idea behind the assessments is to first determine the skills and knowledge that you want your people to possess. This “high-stakes testing” junk is not an answer and never should have been presented as such. State assessments are not a solution to the problem; they merely identify the problem. The assessment, then, is just the means of determining whether an individual has mastered the relevant skills and knowledge. Although I am quite stymied as to why this concept is so outrageous to many people, I am equally confused as to how a system can go from kindergarten through 12th grade and so completely disregard these known and published standards.

Yes, the standards we discuss in this case are published and posted. They are assumed to be common knowledge throughout the K-12 system. Every educator I know tells me he/she is familiar with them. But regarding the ILS, the sad reality is that the vast majority of high school freshmen do not possess the late elementary skills and knowledge that would put them in a position to begin high school. Perhaps this is because Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT) only tests Goals 1, 2, 6, and 7. As even willing high school faculty struggle to teach high school standards, the sheer enormity of the task often relegates standards-based instruction to mere lip service. Winking and nodding our way through both ILS and CRS has become a way of life as teachers continue to teach their specialized content while sporadically invoking a college readiness skill here and an Illinois learning standard there.

The frustration associated with test failure rates when we have supposedly been teaching the standards via our content can only be imagined. There is a universal concern that something is wrong with the process because when we do what the education wonks say to do, we should be getting better results. It must be the assessment. These are intelligent kids whose skills and knowledge are just not captured in a multiple choice test. These are capable children whose potential and creativity are just not measured by the high stakes testing offered via the NCLB solution. How can we quantify a child’s intellect with something as impersonal as a two-day multiple choice standardized high-stakes test?

Quite frankly, how else could we quantify a child’s intellect other than via a comprehensive standardized assessment? Irrespective of the voluminous arguments to the contrary, children who possess the skills pass the tests. Regardless of the myriad conflicting explanations of why a “smart” student does poorly on a standardized test, the bottom line is that he/she simply has not mastered the skills and knowledge being assessed; which begs the question, “What have we been teaching the students?”

Lessons which have little or nothing to do with specific, measurable testable skills are the enemy of the successful student. Recalling our first assumption, a content-based curriculum is not a standards-based curriculum. Students are assessed on skills competency, on their mastery of established and published standards. When we create classroom activities that children like in order to hold their attention, we are giving in to future underachievement. Watching movies when we should be reading, drawing pictures and pasting fancy coversheets when we should be writing and formatting, or reminding students of previously covered material when we should be requiring them to search their brains for answers and problem-solving solutions are examples of teachers as enablers of mediocre students.

Children eat up class work until third or fourth grade. When the work gets tougher, when students begin to build upon previously learned material, there is no way to make it easier or less than what it is. There is a huge difference between being taught something new and learning to manipulate a previously learned skill. If we try to teach fifth, sixth, and seventh grade skills using first, second, and third grade techniques, we may have covered the higher level content, but the students haven’t mastered higher level skills. Instead of using apples and oranges, we’re simply using Jonathans and Valencias. If the child does not know that we’re not using Granny Smith and Navel or Golden Delicious and Persian, he/she is not building on previously learned knowledge, but rather learning new stuff. If the lesson does not carefully and specifically explain the skills that take you from an apple to a Jonathan apple and as opposed to a Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apple, then we are missing the point. Then our instructional method is not standards-based or skills-based, but rather, osmosis-based. Being in a room where educational-type things happen is often confused for having been taught something.

No one benefits when we tell kids a bunch of stuff and hope they figure out why we bothered. In the example above, early on a child can discern an apple from an orange. But what makes an apple a Jonathan apple? If confronted with a Jonathan, a Granny Smith and a Golden Delicious, we might select a Jonathan as the red apple from the other two which are green. But what distinguishes a Granny Smith from a Golden Delicious? There are discerning skills at work which the child should consciously bring to bear on the problem. Memorizing pictures of various types of apples does not help the child use these discerning skills in any other example. Why, specifically, are they different? What are the closer relatives and what makes them more similar? What are some of the things that make close relatives different? Higher order thinking is not about piling on more information and memorizing more detailed pictures. It’s about evaluating and analyzing the problem for patterns and possible solutions using ever more sophisticated skills. Benjamin Bloom told us this fifty years ago and all we seem to have now is that lame pyramid everyone in education seems to revere but does not understand.

Merely being in a classroom when the material is presented will likely not produce high academic achievement. The value of the metacognitive experience cannot be overstated with regards to a student having any idea what he/she is doing. We cannot create a metacognitive transition without forcing a new skill. The reading, the writing, the remembering are the tools. They are the skills we are trying to master and hone. But the content is relative. Remembering is a skill. What we remember from school is less important than the fact that we can remember, that we have the ability (the skill) to go back into the brain and consciously pull out problem solving skills and knowledge on command. We often spend eight to twelve years playing various games with content but completely miss the point about a standards-based education, the Rigor and Relevance Framework, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Worse, we usually disregard completely the skills that we know will be assessed in the end.

If we do not teach to mastery the skills and tasks that a child is supposed to master as he/she progresses through childhood, there is no conceivable way we can jump to the end of the development continuum expecting significant success. This is essentially what we are doing and only about 50% of our children meet our standard, nationwide. We do it year after year and blast the test for telling us our children do not meet the standard. “The test is biased.” “The test is faulty.” “The test is an outrageous affront to our children and our educational system!”

The fact that only 52% of Illinois children meet/exceed the learning standards and the education system is not considered an abysmal failure is what is truly outrageous. When we know what tasks the children are responsible for and do not teach it, that is outrageous. If we focus on content and creativity while our children cannot read story problems in math and cannot decipher a simple data presentation using an x/y axis or cannot write a short essay using proper form and grammar, that is outrageous. To know that half of our young adults do not have the basic skills we expect from them after 13 years of education and continue to teach the same material in the same manner is to stick our heads in the sand and admit there is nothing we care to do about it. Now, that is outrageous.

So what can be done about the situation? Essentially the only way to prepare children for a skills-based assessment is with a skills-based curriculum. It would appear that true standards-based instruction from the first grade on would be the logical solution. It should include the early sub-skills of the later testable PSAE skills (both ILS and CRS). If such-and-such is being assessed, then it only stands to reason that we teach such-and-such. But we don’t. We teach this-and-that. Think about it. We teach this-and-that but we assess such-and-such. Why don’t we teach such-and-such? If we tested this-and-that, then we would be okay to teach this-and-that. It is a mindless contradiction that educators refuse to teach what they will ultimately assess and that they insist on testing that which has not been taught. Many elementary teachers and administrators insist they teach what is tested. But the problem with their argument is that by focusing so restrictively on a handful of reading and math standards assessed on the ISAT, the grand expanse of skills assessed on the PSAE are left without subskill mastery. To say the Common Core State Standards will now take care of that, my response is “Hogwash.” We’ve had standards before. We essentially ignored them. If we continue a content-based approach to CCSS, we will get ILS-like results.

Honest standards-based instruction assumes very little. Every task, every skill is composed of sub-skills which are, themselves, composed of sub-skills. It is absolutely essential that we ascertain a child’s understanding of the prerequisite sub-skills before we introduce a new skill. For example, we must be sure a child has mastered the skill of fraction conversion before we try to teach him/her about algebra. By assuming that a child has the basic skills and knowledge to begin algebra instruction we often find ourselves as de facto educational entertainers just making conversation. Trying to make sense out of concepts for which the students do not possess the requisite skills is a task of Herculean proportions. And our track record of success reflects the depth of the problem. Ninth grade algebra has the highest failure rate of any general education topic in high schools.

More than two thirds of Chicago children do not meet state standards at the end of the 11th grade. Consider that this percentage only reflects the number of children who are still in school at that point. It should be painfully obvious that what we’re doing is not working. Educators often violate their own principles just to get students to do something resembling academic effort. Some teachers may have students turn in papers with atrocious English grammar promising not to count off for it. They just want the children to turn something in. As a group, we often reward every minimal effort, regardless how miserable. Yet we wonder why, after eleven years of this, the students cannot meet the standard. Clearly, a line must be drawn.

The Media and Misunderstanding Standards-based Instruction

Posted on by
9

A significant amount of discussion has revolved and evolved around the concept of standards-based instruction (SBI). Discussants join the conversation from a variety of viewpoints, experiences and foundational understanding. The most unfortunate reality of the topic of SBI is that most of the contributions lack a fundamental appreciation for what it actually is. It has become as nebulous, and yet as ubiquitous, as “instructional rigor.” SBI, in many instances, has become nothing more than code for marketing of instructional design material and content-based textbooks which seem to want to assure teachers and school administrators that buying a particular product will increase students’ chances of scoring well on state mandated tests. More often than not, the materials and texts have little, if anything, to do with standards-based instruction.

The concept of standards-based instruction is much too complex to be given the short shrift of peripheral educational reform critics, instructional wonks, and purveyors of pedagogical claptrap. With the plethora of blogs, articles, websites and advertising devoted to SBI, precious little has anything to do standards-based instruction in any substantial way. Bandied about with indiscretion, SBI is as prevalent as Bloom’s Taxonomy but understood far less. Benjamin Bloom knew that educators who had never read the book or even comprehended it’s purpose were referencing the taxonomy pell-mell. It was popular. It was necessary for “intelligent” discussion of education and educational reform. It still is. But Bloom’s work is known more for its anecdotes than for the development of cognitive skills. There are critics and apologists, passionate educators and educational politicians staking their fortunes on one interpretation or another, none of whom may have ever opened a volume to know, for certain, just what Bloom and his colleagues were trying to accomplish.

It seems a vast majority of educators and educational writers attribute the accession of standards-based instruction onto the educational reform scene as an off-shoot of High Stakes Testing. While the connection may appear logical, even intuitive, it is misleading at best and patently false in most applications. Much of what constitutes High Stakes Testing assesses established standards; this is true. The ACT, SAT, GRE, ISAT and others do indeed test student skills in a number of academic areas. We must consider, however, that the skills and standards under consideration have been identified by state and national experts as those needed to advance to higher order thinking and more complex academic work. The Prairie State Achievement Examination is one such High Stakes Test taken over a two day period and used to determine a student’s relative proficiency on a number of academic skills. The resultant data are great indicators of student academic capacity but are, unfortunately, used primarily to rate students, schools and school systems based upon metrics concocted in educational think tanks. As Kim Marshall once told me, “I put it out there, but I can’t be responsible for how it’s used.”

So the question has been begged; what is standards-based instruction? SBI is a systematic approach to learning which utilizes proximal development of cognitive, problem-solving skills across disciplines to continually increase depth of understanding and interdpendency of skill relationships. In order to utilize proximal development of cognitive, problem-solving skills, an SBI practitioner must regularly assess student skills for proficiency and mastery. He must continuously review and reflect on the skills and skill levels under consideration. If the skill and level have already been mastered by the student, the student is not learning. If the skill and/or level has not been properly anticipated in previous work the lesson may appear too abstract or unconnected to established skills resulting in a variety of responses, few of which promote student learning. Gradually increasing depth of understanding of simple skills to complex skills, within a framework of skill “strands,” creates a progress map for mastery and expertise.

What is often lost in this simplified explanation is the very crucial role of cognitive and metacognitive development. When teachers teach units of instruction based solely upon topic content, student learning is isolated into specific knowledge within a particular aspect of a particular discipline. This type of instruction limits contextual implications and applications which are often unrecognizable outside of that particular classroom. Within the gathering of discipline-specific information there are few opportunities for student discussion and/or problem-solving. As students are assessed on retention of what was taught, they lack any real investigative skills which may be applied in other contexts. Content-based instruction usually does not require, or sometimes even request, that students develop cognitive skills to improve their understanding. Having observed hundreds of classrooms, I can tell you it’s often quite mindless.

Another barrier to standards-based instruction are the many brain-based neuromyths. These logical sounding pseudo-scientific nuggets are often little more than fabrication that have for one reason or another become accepted “truisms.” They dot the educational reform landscape like European starlings and daylilies. Once inserted into the dialogue, they take hold and seem as natural as any scientific rationale. Probably the favorite (surely the favorite of John Geake ) is the common belief that humans use only 10% of their brain. If this was true, Geake tells us, we’d all be brain-dead. Perhaps we are. Another of Geake’s favorites is the VAK (Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic) learning styles theory. While we should all use a variety of instructional strategies in the course of teaching, VAK is just not based upon any scientific research supporting its widespread acceptance.

Introduction of VAK methods in the classroom would surely lead to greater student engagement than continual lecturing. By breaking up the monotony of a teacher talking for an hour or so at a time, students given a change of pace are not so easily lulled into unconsciousness. But the research here does not support VAK; the research opposes the droning lecture style. The research supports classroom discussion. The best way for students to learn is to have them participate in their own learning. Substituting one passive learning style for another does not improve academic skills or problem-solving capacity. Richard Elmore’s mantra, “Task predicts performance,” should be an ever conscious aspect of classroom instruction. What are the students doing? Students are never assessed on how well they stay awake in boring classes.