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The heart of school reform is the improvement of student learning. If school-based reform does not affect classroom practices, all efforts will be for naught. Although this claim may seem obvious, according to the study, as many as 20 percent of the reform efforts nationwide do not appear to be changing students' classroom experiences. However, in the best examples of school reform, changes in goals, curricula, instruction and teaching, and assessment were significant. Teachers were questioning their traditional approaches to instruction and learning, and investing significant time and energy to design new methods for reaching their students.
Schools placed increased emphasis on students' acquisition of higher-order reasoning strategies and computer literacy. Students with these new curricula found that they were required to think in different ways about the subjects they studied. More was required of them than filling in the blanks on a mimeographed worksheet or answering the questions at the end of the chapter. Rather than regurgitate facts, students analyzed significant phenomena, made extensive comparisons, developed interpretations, drew conclusions, and evaluated issues. Newer curricula tended to emphasize the processes of solving problems and thinking critically rather than simply getting one right answer.
Schools replaced traditional subject-matter treatments with more integrated, engaging curricula. Thematic, interdisciplinary curricula and extended blocks of time were being designed to allow in-depth exploration of significant themes and content.
Manipulative mathematics, hands-on science, issues-centered history/social science, literature-based reading, and process writing have brought with them new classroom interactions. Instructional practices included all students in active, collaborative activities. Cooperative learning and clustering arrangements have revitalized the settings in which students learn and the ways they work with one another. Students in sites implementing these types of changes did not spend the entire school day working in isolation. Especially at the elementary level, students were seated, not in rows facing the teacher, but in clusters of four or five. Employing cooperative learning approaches, teachers in these classrooms assigned roles to individuals that would enable their group to accomplish a task. At some of the middle and high schools, groups of students shared four or five teachers, promoting closer relationships than were possible in the traditional setting.
The design of the study did not allow for definitive evaluation of the impact of specific classroom changes on students. Unfortunately, in most of these sites, assessment issues were still in flux, with staff at many schools skeptical about standardized tests but not yet wedded to alternative forms of assessment. There were indications, however, corroborating a growing body of literature from other research, that the major shifts these schools were struggling to implement have a high potential for positive effects on student learning. The most promising classroom practices focused on:
Changes implemented by particular schools are described below.
Schools were conveying their high expectations for all students in a variety of ways. Challenging performance standards were being set for what all students should be able to do. These performance standards emphasized strategic reasoning, rather than memorization of content knowledge. Rigid rules for silent, individual seatwork were being replaced by flexible guidelines for buzzing, interactive group work. Tracking was giving way to heterogeneous groups of high- and low-achieving students working together. Learning environments were becoming more developmentally appropriate by easing the transition from single-teacher, self-contained classrooms.
Setting high standards is one aspect of schools' high expectations for their students. Successful reforms were integrating lists of discrete objectives and minimum competencies into statements of what students should know and be able to do. No longer were these schools promoting breadth of coverage over depth of inquiry. Performance standards were being set that represented challenging, yet attainable, accomplishment rather than minimum competency.
A hallmark of reform efforts is an emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking. Goals have shifted from emphasis on facts to strategies for using information to solve problems and think critically. The call for addressing reasoning comes both from extensive test results indicating that students are not performing well on complex tasks and from extensive research that indicates that all students can learn strategies. In fact, relegating lower-achieving students to "drill and kill" denies those students opportunities to learn strategies for reasoning. Consequently, research supports teaching problem solving and critical thinking to all students, as well as integrating students of all achievement levels into challenging curricula.
Changes in school staff's beliefs were not limited to raising expectations about achievement. In some sites, flexible behavioral standards were revising standards for "proper" classroom behavior and the conditions necessary for learning. Along with more challenging learning goals, teachers were revising their perceptions of how students should behave. As one teacher noted, "There's more a sense now of making education more fun for kids. Teachers are more likely to feel that it is okay to be noisy in the classroom [when students are collaborating on a project]." Teachers were recognizing that behavioral expectations should be flexible enough to allow for students to interact as they learn.
School staff took seriously the research findings supporting the benefits of heterogeneous grouping. Teachers involved students of mixed achievement levels in collaborative learning and peer tutoring activities. Schools eliminated the long-used practice of placing high-achieving students in groups or classes separate from low-achieving students.
Another form of changing expectations is the developmental appropriateness of classroom content and organization. Particularly in middle schools, classroom environments and subjects were being reconfigured by combining subjects such as language arts and social studies into two-hour core subjects or by creating "schools within schools" to soften the often painful transition from elementary to secondary school and from childhood to early adolescence.
High expectations for all students, then, are evident in a variety of reforms. These include emphasizing critical thinking, strategies for raising students' expectations for themselves, and mechanisms for eliminating segregated and diluted instruction for lower achievers. At South Mission High School, teachers eliminated tracking after studying theory and research, then observing in schools where heterogeneous grouping was being used. Teachers also reflect high expectations by applying flexible behavioral standards to fit the learning activity and using appropriate teaching methods to support students' developmental needs.
The Cobblestone Elementary student population shifted over the past 10 years from mostly white to 25 percent minority. The school is now a Chapter 1 site where most families, although not on welfare, are "eking out a living." Although the district had a long history of teaching "the three R's," it was rocked out of complacency by poor showings on the new state mastery tests. These test results stimulated the staff to take a hard look at how they were teaching. Despite their initial suspicion of any ideas promoted by the state, Cobblestone staff responded so positively to a presentation of the Effective Schools reform by state educators that the decision to adopt the initiative was unanimous --bolstered by the low cost to the school and the provision of technical assistance from the state. |
Curriculum reforms tended to emphasize depth over breadth, often through interdisciplinary, integrated thematic units. These curricula also presented authentic activities in which students applied concepts in meaningful contexts. In a unit on local rivers and streams, for example, students interweaved their study of science, mathematics, and social science as they measured pollutants; considered economic, environmental, and social costs of alternative solutions; and prepared recommendations for the water commission. These challenging curricula emphasized problem solving and critical thinking, often having students synthesize their inquiries in oral or written presentations. In some schools, technology both presented engaging activities and supported collaboration and writing.
At Bridge Middle School, interdisciplinary teaching teams and integrated curriculum are two major components of the school's vision. The formation of teaching teams with common preparation times facilitated the development of successful integrated curriculum units. While considering how to reformulate existing units, the social studies teachers recognized the potential of the seventh-grade Renaissance unit for interdisciplinary teaching. One of the teams, consisting of math, science, language arts, and social studies teachers, chose to develop the unit. Each teacher took the lead in deciding how curriculum goals for his or her subject could apply to the Renaissance period. History text information was augmented with a computer simulation of the Black Death, filmstrips on the Middle Ages, and videos on Newscasts from the Past and Castles and Cathedrals. Language arts goals were addressed by reading and performing plays and skits, researching and writing reports, developing timelines, and making crafts. Students might read "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver" or "The Door in the Wall," ballads, and other poetry and short stories of the times. In math, the major project was the construction of castles to scale, requiring calculations such as perimeters, areas, and volumes. In science, students studied health and hygiene, including information on contagious diseases then and now, and compared epidemics like AIDS and the Black Death. Teachers from physical education, music, and art also participated by presenting activities in their subject areas related to the Renaissance.
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Along with new curricular approaches have come new ideas about organizing students' and teachers' days. For example, block scheduling was implemented in several of the schools. Rather than allocating 40 minutes per day to a subject, block scheduling reserves more time (usually about two hours) for students to investigate topics in greater depth. This approach is in concert with the Coalition of Essential Schools' philosophy that "less is more": the school experience for students becomes less fragmented if they concentrate on learning a few things well. The extended time periods require students to approach the curriculum in a different manner. According to teachers at some of the case study sites, block scheduling had worked well in science, where they now had time to do more than set up the lab equipment before the lesson was over. It had also worked well in language arts, where students could read literature, discuss their reactions and interpretations in depth, and engage in thoughtful writing.
In most of the instances of block scheduling, teachers engaged in team teaching, working together in interdisciplinary teams. Often, students from two grades worked together. Cicely Elementary, for example, divided its students into multiage "quads," where four teachers designated two rooms for integrated thematic science curriculum, reserving the other two rooms for technology and science labs.
Collaborative learning and cross-age and peer tutoring--key instructional strategies that integrate students previously relegated to pull-out programs such as Chapter 1 or special education into the "regular" classrooms--provided another reconfiguration of students stimulated by schools' commitment to challenging curriculum for all students.
Cubberley Elementary has become a district demonstration site for a new Learning Center designed to serve mainstreamed students with special needs. The Learning Center started as a district response to a state compliance review requirement to mainstream special education students. The school was chosen as the pilot site partly because the principal and a number of the staff were special education certified personnel. As the major spark for the change effort, the principal arranged two days of in-service training for all staff on the concept. The Learning Center has four full-time special education and unassigned regular teachers known as the Teacher Assistance Team (TAT). These teachers teach cooperatively with 11 of the 16 regular classroom teachers, making it possible to reduce dramatically the number of student pull-outs. The TAT, which previously had a pro forma function in referrals to special education, now serves as a quick turnaround mechanism for observing students with learning problems and recommending interventions. Teachers and administrators at Cubberley emphasize that the Learning Center is available to, and used by, all teachers and students as a learning resource. After some initial resistance and uncertainty, the faculty now seems to support the new program. The program serves as a prototype for the district. Two more schools were scheduled to adopt the program in 1992-93; all schools in the district were scheduled to have learning centers by 1993-94.
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ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT FEATURES
TYPES OF ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT
In a few of the sites, school-level staff were moving ahead with alternative curricula without having developed appropriate alternative test instruments, thereby creating difficulties. Teachers were becoming conscious of the limits, uses, and impacts of traditional testing.
In particular, teachers appeared concerned that limitations of standardized tests did not allow students to fully demonstrate their knowledge. The complex, authentic, integrated tasks in which students use inquiry and critical thinking tend to pose problems that allow multiple interpretations, not one right answer. Furthermore, the thinking processes students use have become assessment targets that are not measured well by traditional tests. In many of the new curricula, students collaborate and make group presentations of what they have learned. Consequently, collaboration and presentation skills represent additional assessment targets not measured by traditional tests.
To measure the expanded outcomes of the new curricula, teachers are seeing the need for the inclusion of performance or alternative assessments as well as frequent tracking of progress. Although the majority of the sites had not yet obtained, designed, or implemented these new assessments, some sites did have in place student assessments that differed from the traditional, standardized multiple-choice tests. Building on the lead of large-scale writing assessments, writing portfolios were becoming more common as a method of assessing performance in language arts. The portfolios allow ongoing assessment of student progress on a range of projects and investigations throughout the year, rather than an annual, brief look.
In two of the case study states, statewide performance assessments in mathematics, science, and social science were also under development. Portfolios of classroom assignments were components of both of these assessment efforts. In some of these sites, it was difficult to ascertain whether the curricula led to the assessment instruments or whether the assessment drove the curricula. Some local-level staff were revamping curricula to align them with the new tests. When interviewed, teachers and principals praised the tests and stated that "teaching to the test" was clearly desirable because the tests measured the most significant elements of the curriculum.
Other forms of student assessment were seen in some areas. Some teacher teams developed more traditional forms of tests but tailored them to their curricula. Teachers using mastery learning and outcome-based education programs might take this approach. Qualitative forms of assessment that call for more teacher judgment were also being tried. Narrative evaluations rather than typical report cards were being developed in the elementary grades. In these narrative report cards, teachers might write comments about a student's progress in reading more challenging books as well as check off proficiency levels that described the student's reading along a continuum of categories ranging from emergent to developing, competent, and independent reader.
Looking carefully at test results for various groups of students was another tack taken by some of the schools in the study. In particular, progress of lower-income, special-needs, and limited-English-speaking populations was being examined to determine the impact of detracking and in-class service models. The case studies identified schools at three stages of assessment reform. In one set of schools, evaluation and a focus on student outcomes were virtually nonexistent. Their reforms were often just getting off the ground, and school staff had not yet focused their efforts on evaluations. In a second set of schools, teachers were conscious of the need to assess student outcomes, but they believed that the tests being used in the schools--typically standardized, multiple-choice instruments--were inappropriate to measure the effects of their new approaches to instruction. Even when schools and districts were experimenting with alternative forms of assessment--including portfolios of student work and performance-based assessment--teachers were struggling to understand and interpret these new measures. In these cases, the focus on student outcomes was often mired in discussions about appropriate measures. In a third set of schools, regular and critical analysis of student progress was built into the reform effort. Many of these schools had begun by following the Effective Schools model, with its clear outcome focus and regular cycle of needs assessment, planning, and evaluation. They were beginning to use new forms of assessment as additional evidence of their students' achievement, as the following examples illustrate.
At Ross Primary, approximately 110 children were randomly selected to participate in a nongraded, multiage, developmentally appropriate primary program. Five staff members volunteered to teach the pilot program. The team is developing integrated thematic units, whole language units, and a curriculum monitoring/student assessment tool, the narrative or continuous progress record. The new report cards focus on students' developmental progress. Students are assessed on component areas within each subject. Language arts includes reading and writing, listening (following oral directions and comprehending oral language), and speaking (expressing ideas in complete sentences and contributing to discussions). Social studies includes comprehension of the significance of selected events in history, identification of geographical concepts and facts, and demonstrated understanding of the individual's role in the family and community. Rather than receiving letter grades based on an average of test scores, students are rated "E" for emerging, "P" for progressing, or "M" for mastering. Also noted on the report card are active participation in art, media, music, and physical education, coupled with various indicators of social and emotional development, such as a positive self-image, interaction with peers and adults, and adaptation to changes in school routine. There are sections for handwritten comments from the classroom teachers and other special area teachers. The principal sent a draft of the narrative report card home to parents and held a meeting, which 25 to 30 parents attended. Currently, the school is instituting a longitudinal portfolio that will gather a student's work over the course of three years. |
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