Читать книгу Giving Students a Say - Myron Dueck - Страница 18

In most jurisdictions, the learning standards or objectives are mandated for teachers by the state, province, international school, or country. Generally speaking, the teacher has a list of learning standards that must be covered at a particular grade in each subject area. An internet search that includes the name of the jurisdiction and the term learning standards will usually lead to an organizational structure of the objectives for grades K through 12. In Texas, learning standards are referred to as TEKS, or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Wisconsin simply calls them Wisconsin Academic Standards and indicates they are to "specify what students should know and be able to do in the classroom. They serve as goals for teaching and learning" (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, n.d.). If your future includes living in Switzerland, you may be interested to know that the 26 cantons, or states, in that nation each manage the learning standards up to postsecondary school; and similar to the intent of the Common Core State Standards in the United States, they've sought to align the learning standards of each jurisdiction. The Swiss use the term performance standards, which "describe subject-related skill levels to be achieved by the pupils. They are measurable and testable" (Swiss Education, n.d.).

Many schools and districts are somewhere between exploring and incorporating standards-based grading or standards-referenced grading, and one of the seemingly obvious steps would be to list the standards and have teachers assess the extent to which students have met them. If only it were that simple. In their book Making Standards Useful in the Classroom, Marzano and Haystead (2008) list two main issues with simply using state or national standards as they are published:

 Too much material. It's often unrealistic for a teacher to cover the stifling number of items embedded in the standards. By some estimates, teachers would need about 70 percent more time with students to meet all the established learning outcomes.

 Lack of unidimensionality. Many standards include a number of dimensions in a single statement, making accurate assessment difficult. How is a teacher to accurately assess and provide feedback on one dimension if it's packaged with another? For instance, imagine a standard that read, "Students should know the locations of the 13 American colonies and the main concerns each had with British rule." Clearly, there are two different outcomes embedded in this standard—geographic locations and colonial issues.

It should be noted that sometimes a state, provincial, or national standard is suited for use as a learning target (Marzano & Haystead, 2008) and makes sense as stated. Consider the following examples:

 Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world. (National Science Teaching Association, Next Generation Science Standards, Grade 3)

 Understands key ideals and principles of the United States, including those in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and other foundational documents. (Washington State Learning Standards, 2019)

Even these, however, are a bit of stretch to be given to students as is. When reading them, one is reminded that standards are almost always written for their intended audience—teachers. Our objective is to examine how standards can be transformed, written, and used for and by students.