In our international school we are beginning to select standards. In social studies we have chosen to use AERO standards, which are based on NCSS standards. Now teachers have been asked to look at the benchmarks under each standard and assess if that benchmark is appropriate for each grade level. It is a hard task for teachers, especially when we are confused about how standards should be choosen. Should only one standard be used per unit or multiple standards? How do standards drive instruction? How do we make sure that standards are directly connected with assessments?
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I think that standards based on a group of people who haven’t been in a classroom since they got their doctorate 20 years ago isn’t useful. However, I suppose you have to choose standards based on someone with the appearance of credibility.
That said, please only choose a few standards for each academic year. I have experienced dozens of standards a year and several benchmarks for kids in a public school in the inner city who were far from reading on grade level. I’m sure in your school you don’t have the same sorts of problems, but we want our students to succeed and reach these benchmarks and still enjoy school. If there are too many, teachers are pressured to rush through them without making sure students can reach the benchmarks, making students and teachers alike feel like failures.
One benchmark can often be the result of multiple standards. You can also have standard driven instruction while keeping instruction student centered. Some sort of standard much drive the instruction regardless of how you were teaching before unless students were choosing what to study. So, you’ve probably been using standard driven instruction all along and didn’t realize it. So, too, you’ve probably been directly connecting assessments to those standards already since the point of an assessment is to determine whether or not students retain knowledge and understanding of the material in the standards you’ve been using.
I agree with Rukiddin that you probably already have been addressing the standards without realizing it.
Your teachers should look at the NCSS and AERO strands and standards for their grade level, as well as strands/standards from different states, such as California and Texas. That will give them a sense of what is appropriate for their students. According to NEAtoday, standards tend to be collections of content, rather than developmental series (in which what is learned one year positions the student for the next).
That said, strands and standards are the road map for instruction. They help teachers focus on the essence of the instruction. Standard-based instruction eliminates the “pet projects” some teachers have that take up much time that could be used for essential learnings. This may not be an easy transition as I recall from our first endeavors with standards over 10 years ago. One kindergarten teacher was incensed that her three month long Teddy Bear unit was no longer part of the curriculum because it did not directly address the standards. A second grade teacher was able to tie her “Apple Unit” to literature and science standards, although she had to cut it back drastically.
This does not mean, however, that you can no longer use thematic instruction. It just has to conform to the thematic strands as defined by the NCSS or AERO.
In our school we did “backwards planning.” We had no choice in the strands or standards because we were a public school. We started with the end-of-the-year expectations in the standards, and planned accordingly for the year. Assessments were built into our plans.
Sadly, standards-based instruction was meant to expand and improve student learning, but is having the exact opposite effect. High-stakes assessments tied to standards force teachers to “teach to the standards,” which is a euphemism for teaching to the test. Multiple-choice tests do not probe the higher-level thinking that our students could demonstrate in open-ended questions, but are cheaper to use (0.1 cent vs. 50 cents per test).