A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Student Learning

Priority: Improving curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning at all levels of education to promote high academic achievement, problem-solving abilities, creativity, and the motivation for further learning.

On their way to school, the children pass a crevice in the street where the jackhammers have broken through; a half-dead elm that came down in last night's storm; a new video game that has just appeared in the laundromat. They hear Mrs. Ulanov, lunchbox in hand, calling after her son Dmitry with a rush of words that all sound like "hush" and "shush." Seven televisions in the window of Acme Appliances show seven silent, wildly expressive singers. The children get to school, stuff their jackets in their lockers, and copy the "Do Now" from the blackboard.

As Marshall McLuhan commented, a child today knows that sometimes "in going to school he is in a sense interrupting his education."¹⁴ But teachers, and the people and institutions responsible for their training, are now making a concerted effort to educate children by tying instruction more closely to real world experience. Enriching education with challenging curricula and strengthened instruction means making the world come alive in the classroom. It means engaging learners in the process of making sense of the systems that give shape and order to that world. It means helping them discover their own place in it, their own ability to act upon it, their own capacity to make a difference in it. Given the performance, scope, and size of American education, this is an enormous challenge.

In 1996, nearly 52 million children enrolled in the nation's elementary and secondary schools--a record for American education. Over the next decade, enrollment will increase by another 3 million students. Public high school enrollment will increase by 15 percent; college enrollment will rise by 14 percent. Just to maintain the current level of class and school size in grades K-12, the nation will need 190,000 additional teachers and more than 6,000 additional schools.^l5

By the year 2006, the nation will spend $321 billion per year on K-12 education.^l6 What does the nation get for its investment? Recent reports repeat a well-known story. The most rigorous international comparison of education ever conducted shows that in mathematics, our eighth-graders on average score below their peers in 41 countries. In science, they score below the eighth-graders in such countries as Hungary, Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Singapore.^l7 How can we improve our performance?

To improve student learning, we must begin by strengthening curriculum, instruction, and assessment. These fields of education have generated distinct bodies of research, couched in the different idioms of the content areas, psychology, and statistics. Only by bringing together these languages can we work together effectively to improve achievement. If schools are to motivate and educate all students, research efforts in all three fields must be aimed at helping students pose, address, and solve important, complex problems.

At the elementary, middle, and high school levels, there is increasing emphasis on the development of higher order thinking--thinking that is complex, involves multiple issues, and tends to yield multiple solutions. Higher order thinking involves dealing with uncertainty and gaps in information, applying multiple, sometimes conflicting criteria, and exerting considerable mental effort.^l8

And at all three levels, interest is growing in the kinds of assessment that can measure higher order thinking. Today's educators are beginning to take advantage of a wide range of new tests, often called performance or alternative assessments. These tests challenge students to carry out a task as they might be asked to do in the real world of work rather than fill in blanks or answer true-false questions. The task might involve posing and solving a problem, carrying out an experiment, or making a presentation on a particular topic. Experienced raters, either teachers or other trained individuals, then judge the quality of the students' work based on an agreed upon set of criteria. A related strategy is portfolio assessment, which judges students' progress based on the evaluation of a collection of work completed during a specified period.

My students come to school from a variety of different and sometimes difficult family and neighborhood circumstances, and I need to be able to engage all of them in every aspect of learning--from technology-aided research to journal writing. I need access to good research in a forum where I can examine my instructional methods and answer the question: What is it that good urban teachers do to make their students more successful?

Linda C Wharton
Maryland Writing Project

All of these approaches have clear benefits and, if we take seriously the overarching goal of preparing students for the challenges of the next century, they make sense. However, they are confusing for many parents (and students) who are accustomed to having a simple scorecard of their children's achievement in school. They raise complex questions about teacher and school accountability, as well as about the fairness of teachers' judgments.

Many approaches to revising curriculum and instruction to improve achievement are now being tested. Many schools are adopting complete instructional programs designed by a variety of developers, ranging from university-based research teams to private companies. These programs usually focus on a particular area of curriculum, such as reading, and they typically include curricula and materials, concrete instructional strategies, professional development, and parental involvement.

Studies are also in progress that test different ways of organizing schools and grouping students. Some, such as reducing class size in the primary grades, have proved to help children get a good start in school. Research has shown that the benefits of small class size in grades K-3 persist through grade 5, even when children have larger 4th- and 5th-grade classes.¹⁹ Other strategies, such as mixed-age classes and inclusion classes, seek to meet diverse students' needs more appropriately. Most schools are moving away from policies that "track" students according to ability. And most are embracing strategies that ensure that every student is well known by at least some of the adults in the school. In the lower grades, some schools are trying policies that keep the same children and teacher together for more than one year. In the upper grades, some are trying approaches that overcome the anonymity of large middle and high schools, such as smaller "houses" within large schools, alternative schools, or homeroom classes that stay together with the same teacher for several years.²⁰

Challenging Standards for All One important role of research is to help all Americans weigh the costs and benefits of the large-scale reform movements that sweep the nation from time to time. The great majority of Americans today, including three out of four parents and teachers, favor the development of challenging standards for public schools that are intended to raise achievement by defining what children should know and be able to do at key milestones in their education At last count, 48 states and the District of Columbia had instituted, or were in the process of developing, academic standards in core subjects. There is concern, however, that these standards are not rigorous enough and are not changing classroom teaching. Standards do not consist of grade point averages or minimum scores on tests. Rather, they constitute a set of detailed explanations and examples of the kinds of knowledge and skills that students at various grade levels can be expected to master in specific content areas. Content standards are a work in progress: many groups at the national, state, and local level are engaged in the process of establishing or adapting standards in a wide range of disciplines, including, reading, writing, history, social studies, mathematics, and the arts. There is lively debate about who should be setting standards and what they should require. At this point, there is little agreement about how different sets of standards developed by different groups, at different levels, should relate to one another. Nevertheless, great deal of enthusiasm exists across the nation for this school reform strategy. The many proponents of standards believe that they establish, for all students, a way to learn to high levels, and in this way chart a course toward greater educational equity. In the past, equity meant that all students would receive the same educational "inputs"--the same or equivalent hours or instruction, subjects, textbooks, and other educational products and services. Content standards turn this formula on its head. They create a framework in which all students are challenged to achieve. Students may receive different kinds of instruction or services that build on their particular strengths or meet their specific needs, but they are all expected to perform at the highest levels measured by reliable and valid assessments. How can we fairly gauge children's progress toward meeting challenging standards? How can second language learners and special education students be fairly and appropriately held to the standards and included in high-stakes assessments? What impact will the failure to reach high standards have some on students and schools? Research has a role to play in addressing these and many other issues raised by the nation's movement toward implementing high standards for all students.

Students are still expected to work hard, and their families are expected to support their learning at home; but increasingly schools are being held responsible not only for providing instruction and textbooks, but also for achieving measurable results. Today, the public is demanding to know how its investments in education are paying off in terms of student achievement. Some states and cities have instituted systems for holding schools accountable by demanding a certain level of achievement on standardized tests. Other states such as New York and California have begun to conduct school quality reviews. In some states and communities, responsibility for operating floundering schools or school districts is being wrested from principals, superintendents, and elected school boards and assumed by other authorities such as mayors, state officials, or control boards, and radical remedies are being imposed.

These kinds of issues, concerns, and promising practices have currency beyond the mainstream regular class setting. In the fields of bilingual education, gifted education, special education, and in vocational and advanced placement programs, many of the same concerns about curriculum, instruction, and assessment prevail. Today, 1 in every 10 students between the ages of 6 and 17 receives special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or Chapter I of the Improving America's Schools Act.²¹ In recent years, special educators have stressed that special education is a spectrum of services, not a place. That is a conceptual and legal shift that has immense implications for large numbers of students and schools. Legislation and recent judicial decisions related to the intent of that legislation have emphasized serving eligible students within the regular education system. This approach requires significant adjustments in regular and special education policy and practice; changes in classroom instruction, supported by intensive professional development; and enough local participation to allow it to work.²²

These concerns extend to assessment as well. Educators note that students with disabilities or language barriers have frequently been excluded from large-scale assessments. They are now grappling with how content standards and accompanying performance assessments may best be applied. Many are coming to the conclusion that the same content standards should be applied to all students whenever possible, and that many more children can be measured by the same or equivalent assessments as those without disabilities or language barriers.²³

To build on what we know and to promote high academic achievement, problem-solving abilities, creativity, and the motivation for higher achievement, we need research on such topics as:

How can teachers educate using challenging curricula and instructional practices?

How can we improve student learning in reading, writing, mathematics, the arts and sciences, and other core subjects? How can we build on recent advances in our understanding of thinking and learning? How effective are instructional methods such as "direct instruction" and "mastery learning" when compared to commonly used alternatives? How can action research--in which teachers are key participants-- result in the development and dissemination of effective practices? How can we align practice with research findings in the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience, developmental psychology, and related disciplines?

How can we set high expectations for all children?

How can schools and communities set or adapt content standards that make sense? What impact do content standards have on existing curricula, instructional approaches, and assessments? How can schools be organized to use challenging curricula?

What lessons can we learn from rich, in-depth case studies of local efforts to introduce new curricula, teaching strategies, and assessments?

How can we ensure that learning in school is supported by relationships that have been shown to inspire and foster learning? What kinds of interdisciplinary curricula have proven to be effective? How can parents and community members be engaged in this process?

How can we ensure that no student falls through the cracks between different levels of schooling or between organizational units, including regular education and special education?

What risks and opportunities are present when students cross over from one educational entity to another? How can schools be organized to make sure that transitions are supportive of student achievement? How can parents be involved in easing these transitions?

How can we align assessment more closely with the goal of fostering learning, while meeting the need for accountability and clear communications with parents and the public?

How can we best measure what students know and can do? How does a shift toward new forms of assessment affect curricular and instructional decision making? How can results be reported to parents and the public? How can the achievement of students receiving special education be accurately assessed?

How can schools and school systems strengthen accountability systems?

Which accountability mechanisms lead to ongoing school improvement? What kinds of incentives or sanctions lead to school improvement? How can taxpayers be better informed of educational investments and results?

How can new technologies be infused into curricula that help students learn and make sense of their world?

How can computers and other technologies be used to help all students learn more and perform better? How can interactive technologies be used to extend learning opportunities beyond the walls of the classroom?
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