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In Learning Targets, Moss and Brookhart (2012) define a learning target in terms of both students and teachers. On one hand, it's "a student-friendly description—via words, pictures, actions, or some combination of the three—of what you intend students to learn or accomplish in a given lesson" (p. 9). On the other hand, learning targets help teachers "plan, monitor, assess, and improve the quality of the learning opportunities" (p. 9). Although I agree that, historically, this second component is largely intended for adults, perhaps we can more broadly consider learning targets as elements that assist "those who are planning the learning experience"—whether that be teachers or students.

From a teacher's point of view, whether using them for instruction, grading, or reporting purposes, I've become so accustomed to clear learning targets that I'd feel lost without them. A few years ago, I was asked to teach a leadership course at our high school. I looked for the learning targets, only to discover they didn't exist. My first step was to establish them in a clear, student-friendly unit plan (see Figure 2.1). Although in the past I may have considered a lack of learning targets quite freeing—the license to do whatever I pleased—over the last decade, things have certainly changed. Clear targets derived from the learning standards are the essential starting point for everything I do. The bottom line is that our evaluation, assessments, and grades should be based on the extent to which the student has mastered the learning targets.