Designing a Standards-directed School System: Concepts @ Work

DESIGNING A STANDARDS-DIRECTED SCHOOL SYSTEM

Four Concepts @ Work

It is the first week of August and you are beginning your new job as a school principal. To have an understanding of where your new district is with respect to standards and benchmarks documents and implementation, research to find answers to the following:

Do content areas have standards and benchmarks?
Do teachers use their standards and benchmarks to design units?
Are parents aware of the standards and benchmarks being used in their child's classrooms?
How are students/parents informed of standards and benchmarks?

Make a plan of how you will answer each of these questions.

You have found that there are documents for content standards and benchmarks, but there is no additional work on developing a system to support the implementation for improved student achievement. Use the 8 Tenets of a Standards-based system and develop a one hour in-service with your building staff to begin a dialogue around these structures.

You have successfully completed a year as an administrator with several professional dialogues around implementation of standards, but you are unsure of the level of full implementation. Examine the self-inventory for a standards-based classroom (make sure your dialogue has covered the four aspects of this survey) and write comments you would use to introduce and instruct your staff to complete.

You are interested in grading and reporting in a standards-based system. It will be advantageous to have a small group of your staff pilot the ideas expressed in the grading policy. What type of criteria will you use to select the piloting staff? Develop a series of meetings will agendas to support their work.

Designing a Standards-directed School System