How To Best Teach the Standards

Oct 30, 2017 | Uncategorized

The introduction of College and Career Ready Standards (CRS) has really complicated things — especially with curriculum in schools across the country. Many districts have decided to deal with the changes in silos, but that’s not the best method.

Instead of putting curriculum, instruction and assessment into silos of their own, these three foundational pieces of sound teaching and learning environments should all be working in tandem to deliver accurate data.

Here’s how: If one changes, the others must follow suit. Not next year, not tomorrow, not phased out over a multi-year “plan,” but at the same time.

  • If you change the curriculum, you need to change how you instruct and assess the new lessons, because it’s not the same as what you taught before the shift to CRS. These standards require different levels of rigor and thinking, so you’ll need assessments and instructional methods that match the variance of rigor levels.
  • If you change your instruction, you also need to change the curriculum and assessment. New teaching methods may not work as well as they did with the standards of the past. Assessments need to match your instruction and curriculum.
  • If you change your assessment, changes to your instruction and curriculum should follow suit. If the assessment doesn’t match your instruction or the curriculum you’re teaching, it’s not going to provide accurate data to students.

And what is the entire point of CRS? To prepare the students for the 21st Century world or work and provide students with accurate feedback on how they are preparing for that world.

You can’t improve student learning without accurate data, and you don’t get accurate data if all three of these parts aren’t working and changing together.

Think Beyond the Bubble…

Don’t spend another year testing kids over and over again with data that could be rendered useless and instead shift your focus on aligning curriculum, instruction and assessment to the intended rigor of standards and targets.

Are you struggling to properly align these foundation pieces to create a healthy, productive and sound learning environment in your school? Download my FREE sample toolkit!

It will change your approach to planning and teaching for CRS! The toolkit will successfully teach to the rigor of CRS and close the achievement gap.

Scott is a proven school and district leader with 23 years of experience. He has led the turnaround of five different urban schools in Florida transforming their cultures into high functioning systems that produced record breaking results in student achievement and teacher performance. Scott is available to consult with schools, districts, and organizations to create a focused strategy that will lead to improved results, increased engagement, and overall results. He can be contacted at sneil@schoolleadershipsolutions.com