“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
A conversation I had one time with a teacher that, I assume, wanted to prove a point about student’s motivation to learn, proved a different point. This teacher, a high school science teacher, had just given a test to his junior Chemistry class a test and after grading them, came to my office and put the tests in three different piles: a short pile, which had the students that scored a “B’ or better; a little larger pile, that had the students who scored a “D” or “C”; and the last pile, that had a majority of his students failing the test. He told me, ”I taught this to them back in ninth grade!” To which my response was, “You may have taught them but apparently they didn’t learn it!”
According to AdvancedED, Accreditation Standards for Quality Schools, a school system is successful in meeting the teaching and learning standard when it implements a curriculum based on clear and measurable expectations for student learning that provides opportunities for all students to acquire requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The system ensures that teachers use proven instructional practices that actively engage students in the learning process; provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and skills to real world situations; and give students feedback to improve their performance (Quality systems standards. p. 3).
In many of our classrooms today, data that is collected from formative and summative assessments in the classroom are broken down but there is no follow through with the results. Assessments are given, results are analyzed, but that’s as far as it goes. If a student failed an assessment, that was it, they failed; there was no follow-up to work on problem areas, no chance to continue to learn the material; teachers proceeded on whether the students were successful or not. Sadly, this is the way it is in many schools throughout the nation, textbooks drive the curriculum and the pacing guide is established by the amount of chapters that need to be covered from that textbook.
The introduction of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the year 2000 placed a huge emphasis on standardized testing as well as other requirements. These requirements, which include annual summative testing of students in third to eighth grade as well as once in high school in mathematics and reading, are designated by expert panels in nearly all states. The federal goal is for all students to score at or above grade-level proficiency according to state standards by the end of the 2013–2014 academic year; and a lack of adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward this goal can lead to sanctions (Zimmerman and Dibenedetto, 2008). The result of the summative test does not indicate growth of individual students, school, or the school district. Instead it compares one group of students to the previous year’s students. For example, a group of sixth graders taking the state test in 2006 would be compared to the group of sixth graders that took the test in 2005; this type of comparison does not credit schools that improved but fell short of Average Yearly Progress (AYP) standards.
Concerns with NCLB, like the one just stated, prompted the U.S. Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to request that NCLB be modified to allow the states to measure growth of individual students. Growth models are designed to improve the sensitivity and fairness of a summative measure of criterion mastery by adjusting posttest decisions about mastery based on pre-existing levels of knowledge. However, summative growth models do not provide feedback designed to improve individual students’ methods of learning. The need for formative tests to improve accountability was recognized by the CCSSO, which was seeking more state authority to use these tests to track the classroom learning of individual students during the school year (Hoff, 2006b).
Teachers, parents and community leaders have all weighed in to help create the Common Core State Standards. The standards clearly communicate what is expected of students at each grade level. This will allow our teachers to be better equipped to know exactly what they need to help students learn and establish individualized benchmarks for them. The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well—and to give students the opportunity to master them (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, 2010) .
The introduction of state standards brings back the discussion of using mastery learning as an instructional model for all classrooms and all school districts.
AdvancED. (n.d.a). Accreditation standards for quality schools. Schaumburg, IL: National Study of School Evaluation.
Hoff, D. J. (2006a). Education dept. poised to approve more states for growth-model project. Education Week, November 8, pp.1 – 2.
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, C. O. C. S. S. O. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, N. (2010). Common core state standards . Retrieved from National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers website: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
Quality systems standards. (2010, October 20). Retrieved from http://www.advancd.org/districts
Zimmerman B.J, & Dibenedetto M.K. (2008). Mastery learning and assessment: Implications for students and teachers in an era of high-stakes testing. Psychol. Sch. Psychology in the Schools, 45(3), 206–216.
The Prepared Student 