Tony Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It, provides us the following guiding questions in the area curriculum, instruction, and assessment:
Curriculum
What role should curriculum play in preparing students for their future?
What does rigor look like in a 21st-century curriculum?
What are the student competencies that should drive instruction?
Instruction
Is there a widely shared vision of teaching that is focused on rigorous expectations, the quality of student engagement, and effective strategies for personalizing learning for all students?
Do all adult meetings about instruction serve as models of good teaching?
How are the instructional strategies reflective of real world life experiences?
Assessment
Are there well defined standards and performance assessments for student work at all grade levels? Do teachers and students understand what quality work looks like? Is there consistency in standards of assessment?
Is supervision frequent, rigorous, and entirely focused on the of instruction? Is it done by people who know what good instruction looks like?
Do administrators, teacher teams, and schools use data diagnostically and at frequent intervals to assess each student's learning and to identify the most effective teaching practices?
Based on these questions and other data, our goals for the 2011-2012 school year are as follows:
Curriculum
Continue to implement new K-5 science curricula
Begin staff developing the K-5 ELA series, Treasures
Begin implementing revised mathematics curricula for grades K-8
Continue revising curriculum to meet the district's new curriculum format in grades 6-12
Embed test-preparation into weekly and monthly units
Instruction
Continue to develop and nurture professional learning communities
Provide staff development for new K-5 ELA program
Continue the district's WWRSD 1-2-3 program for non-tenured teachers
Provide staff development in CITW (Classroom Instruction that Works) strategies, developed by Dr. Robert Marzano
Collect district data on teaching practices via the Power Walk-through software, which will in turn continue to inform professional development for staff members
Assessment
Revise and implement new NJASK and HSPA action-plans based on most recent district standardized test results
Use math pre, mid, and end-of-the-year assessments in grades K-6, common timed writing prompts in grades K-5, and common mid-year and final assessments in grades 6-12
Use student work to guide the assessment process and create exemplars to model what outstanding student work by grade-level should look like
Begin to truly utilize multiple assessments to gauge student learning - we must now create our own definition of student achievement that mirrors what we as a district value
