over to the latest hot topic in education, and the last thing in the world they want to do is move away from teaching methods, policies, and practices that have served them well for their entire careers.
Some teachers may have a substantial philosophical issue with the whole notion of teaching to standards. They may have entered the teaching profession because of their love of the content and with a strong desire to share that passion with their students. In fact, they’ve been doing just that for many years, and their students light up when their teacher “does her thing”! Now, with this new concept of teaching, they face the need to change. Will it be a positive change? Will it be stressful? Will they be successful?
Yes to all three.
It may appear that the only obvious outcome of this transition is the associated stress for teachers. Change is never easy, and shifting to standards-based learning won’t be either. So, if teachers are going to go through the stress of these changes, it ought to be for very good reasons. Let’s start by examining some of these reasons.
One of our authors, Jeff Flygare, taught in a traditional classroom for over twenty years before transitioning to standards-based learning. The following is his message to teachers facing the change to standards-based learning.
First, understand that I know how you feel. Before changing to standards-based learning, I had taught as a traditional English language arts teacher, using traditional instruction and grading practices, for twenty-one years. I was very successful. My students learned the content, and they returned to my classroom to take additional classes from me often. It was working for me, yet I took on standards-based learning without anyone telling me I had to. Why? Because, as good as I was, I knew I wasn’t reaching all my students. When I looked at changing my instruction, assessment, and grading practice, I knew that my best students would still learn under the new system, but I thought perhaps with standards-based learning, which promised more student involvement with and commitment to their own learning, I might reach more of my students. And that was exactly what I found to be true.
I shifted to standards-based learning over one weekend in August just before the new school year started. I figured out the basics of standards-based learning, found a way to make our very traditional online gradebook report standards-based scores, and rolled it out with my new students on the first day of school. They had no idea what standards-based learning was, so I committed as much time as they wanted to take during the first thirty days of the school year to explain how this new instruction and assessment system worked. They had lots of questions. I covered the same ground with them many times in that thirty days, but eventually they began to get the idea that I would have standards in the classroom, that instruction would focus on those standards, and that they would be expected to gradually reach proficiency on those standards.
I was sure I could explain the system to them given enough time. But I never expected the sudden (within thirty days) and profound change in their attitude toward their own learning that manifested itself in front of me every school day! The entire conversation in the classroom changed. In a highly competitive and high-performing high school, where most of my students would go on to college, the focus of my students went, almost immediately, off grades. They began to talk with me and each other about what they knew and what they were learning, and how they were doing on the learning progression to proficiency on each standard.
This will happen with your students. It may not happen as fast as it did with mine. But stay tuned into their conversations as you begin to practice standards-based learning and be ready to catch your jaw when it drops. The most important change you will see is the way in which your students begin to accept responsibility for their own learning. There will also be some additional benefits. Homework completion may increase. Enthusiasm about the content may increase. Apathy may decrease. And you will find yourself creating many more lifelong learners than you have been.
I realize how difficult it is to believe until you see it happen. But be open to it, and, most importantly, give standards-based learning a legitimate try. Don’t try it for two weeks, or two months. Give it a couple of school years. And really try it. Don’t leave something (like student goal setting) out. Do it all. Do it at your own pace, but do it all. Then, be objective about what you see and what you don’t see.
There is even more good news. While standards-based learning is better for students, in fact, once teachers make it through the transition stage to full implementation, standards-based learning is better for teachers. It provides time to go deeper, clarity about the content, and evidence that they are reaching more students.
A Necessary Paradigm Shift
Standards-based learning will require some fundamental paradigm shifts, but these shifts won’t mean teaching in a completely different and unfamiliar way. When standards-based learning is happening in the classroom, the content taught won’t change very much. Even the teaching strategies that teachers use won’t change much. But how teachers think about what and how they teach will change profoundly.
Perhaps the biggest paradigm shift for the teacher in the classroom is moving away from the notion that there is a substantial amount of content to work through in a school year and toward the notion that there is a set of standards, including factual knowledge and sets of skills, that he or she must develop in students. The content is there as the vehicle to develop those standards. The sequence of dealing with the content will likely be very similar to what has been traditionally taught, but its purpose will be different.
While curriculum and instruction will be very similar, the one area that will change a great deal will be assessments. Now, instead of assessing specific content in, say, a unit test, the unit test will assess certain standards by asking students to use the content they’ve learned to show their growth on the standards. This is a subtle but powerful difference.
Essential to standards-based learning is the use of the standards to identify, for teachers, students, and parents, what the students must know and be able to do by the end of the learning. This places what happens in the students’ heads at the center of everything pedagogical in the classroom. Teachers are looking to change the students’ knowledge and abilities through their actions. This represents a change from traditional teaching. Traditionally, teachers design instruction to present content to students that they expect them to learn. In standards-based learning, they design instruction to promote student learning of the standards through the content. The good news is that standards-based learning, in placing the student’s learning at the center of what happens in the classroom, is a much more effective method for accomplishing the teacher’s new educational task—helping every student learn.
One major focus of standards-based learning is to achieve an integrated model of learning. Because the standards will sit at the center of everything teachers do in the classroom, identifying and clarifying those standards properly will integrate everything teachers do. Therefore, standards-based learning is a highly effective method of connecting curriculum, instruction, assessment, and feedback.
A result of this alignment for teachers who have taught in a traditional setting for a very long time is that, once the transition to standards-based is made, a clarity emerges that often wasn’t there before. Importantly, that clarity will emerge for students as well. For perhaps the first time in their experience of school, they will see the relevance of everything teachers ask them to do, and they will be much more likely to participate in the learning because they are motivated to watch their own progress.
A Word About Terminology
In this book, we use the term standards-based learning rather than standards-based grading because the program involves so much more than assigning students grades. One important aspect of standards-based learning is that with standards as the focus of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and
