Curriculum Concepts and Issues – Aligning Written, Taught, and Tested Curriculum: A change in understanding based on reading Deciding What to Teach and Test: Developing, Aligning, and Leading the Curriculum, and 50 Ways to Close the Achievement Gap.
BEFORE: Curriculum is limiting.
Curriculum followed with fidelity takes away creativity. Every teacher is responsible for his/her own grade level and classroom.
Utilizing “best practices” will narrow the achievement gap in schools.
The curriculum consists of material covered in the state standards.
Teaching to the test is bad for students and teachers.
If I teach it, it is worth assessing.
Kelly Walitt
[email protected]
AFTER: Curriculum, when dynamic and wellthought-out, is freeing, allowing teachers to focus their energy on instructional methods rather than on content (Downey, Steffy, Poston, & English, p. 39). Good curriculum followed with fidelity helps ensure student achievement (Downey, Steffy, Poston, & English, p. 42-43). Articulation (common focus vertically; spiraling content/standards) and coordination (common focus laterally) are critical to students’ overall education (English, p.12). “Best practice” is not enough, because curriculum is filled with culturally-specific expectations and norms that will always put subcultures at a disadvantage academically (English, p. 9). There is, in addition to the textbook- and standards-based academic (aka written) curriculum, a hidden curriculum (learning behaviors and social expectations), a taught curriculum (what is actually addressed in the classroom), and a tested curriculum (that which is tested through formal measures) (English, p. 18). Embedding the tested objectives within the written and taught curriculum increases the probability that students will score well, but is certainly not the only curriculum (Downey, Steffy, Poston, & English, p. 18). Everything that is tested must be taught, but not everything that is taught must be (nor should it be) tested.
November, 2010
Downey, C.J., Steffy, B.E., Poston, W.K., Jr., English, F.W. (2009). 50 ways to close the achievement gap (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. English, F.W. (2010). Deciding what to teach and test: Developing, aligning, and leading the curriculum (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Kelly Walitt
[email protected]
November, 2010
