ELA Standards Review

It's day two of a five day assignment to be part of the English Language Arts Standards review for the South Dakota Department of Education. The review is conducted every 5-7 years of the standards. The current ELA standards for K-12 education were adopted in 2010. The standards that were adopted were the Common Core State Standards and South Dakota, subsequently, became one of 46 states and the District of Columbia that originally adopted the CCSS.  

When South Dakota adopted the CCSS, I was teaching Middle and High School ELA in a small school in South Dakota. My colleagues and I were part of many groups that adopted the "Common Core" with Curriculum Mapping, Disaggregating, and any other buzz word you can find on CCSS. My current staff at my Elementary School are on year three of a "Common Core Aligned" curriculum that was produced by a textbook company. There are supplemental posters, leveled readers, and online guides to assist in the teaching of these standards. We use an online program called IXL to help assess these standards as well as Moby Max to reteach or reinforce concepts. Our districts are very committed to the CCSS with our professional development time and district funds that have already been spent.

All of this being the case, when the email went out to be part of a standards review, I thought it was important to be at the table. The way we organize our professional development time as well as allocate funds over the next couple of years is dependent upon the standards that we adopt.

We started yesterday being sorted into tables by grade level. I was the administrator assigned ot the 5th grade ELA standards table. Each grade (K-8) was assigned it's own table and grades 9-10 and 11-12 were combined. As our task is to review all of our grade level's assigned standard or reinforces and then make sure the standards properly align with both the grade level above and below, we were given a document that explained why we should make changes as well as Key Features of a quality standards.

The document is very well written and our discussions on standards vs. curriculum were very good. My table is composed of four teachers, a curriculum specialist and myself. Our experience levels are diverse and we are critically analyzing every 5th grade standard during the review process. We have access to examples from other states all around the U.S. to look at as well. Eventually, I think I will use a chart like this to present some of the changes to our staff at the local level. I think it is important to remember that "standards" are not curriculum and "standards" are not textbooks, rather guidelines of the expected competencies teachers must help students meet through the use of educational materials such as textbooks, multimedia, primary sources, etc. This chart helps to explain that difficult concept. 

Right now, we are just in the early stages of reviewing standards. There will be more days that our educator group will meet this year, a time for open comments by all stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, administrators, public, etc.) as well as hearings in front of the State Board of Education prior to adoption of the new new standards. It is a lengthy process, but it will be worth it for all of South Dakota. We have tried the standards as they were written and now we will amend them after they have been implemented for five school years. 

I look forward to working with the team that I have been assigned today and over the next meetings. We definitely take our work seriously and understand the long-standing implications of every "and" "or" "explain" and "describe" as it is written in the standards. The days are very rewarding when discussions about every educational implication are reviewed during a standards review. 

Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium and Chromebooks

In South Dakota today, there was a conference call with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) in regard to the technology standards and recommendations for the future SBAC testing. For our school district, this is particularly important as we are almost finished with our decision on new computers for the next year. We do not know what we are going to do, yet, and are looking at all options. While making this decision, there were a lot of considerations, but testing compatibility is paramount.

They have said that for the 2014- 15 and 2015- 16 school year (the first two years of the SBAC/ CCSS tests) that the Chromebook will be compatible. I'm excited for the implications that this may bring across the country and what Google may do to help with SBAC testing. As the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not going away, I am sure that the Google Chrome browser and, subsequently, the Chromebook will have to follow.

There was also talk of the iPad being used for testing. SBAC said that they did a beta test with 800 students (no word on the age of these students) testing on the iPad and students did not like using the virtual (on-screen) keyboard. These were iPad 2s using iOS 6 and the iTester App. The discussion from SBAC about iPad minis was solidly a "no" for testing purposes as the screen was too small. (On a bit of a tangent, I was unsure how I would like the iPad mini, but once it was in my hand... I am a believer that the iPad mini has a place in our schools.) Our district had 4th graders and 5th graders testing on the iPad 2 during a Benchmark testing pilot and had no troubles with the keyboard. I think that testing on the iPad with a virtual keyboard would only be an issue with students that do not use the iPad on a regular basis.

Also, I think that it also matters what age the students were that were in the pilot. If it was 800 Juniors testing that have only had access to iPads for an hour a week or only one class a day, as opposed to students in a 1:1 iPad environment, it may be a more serious impediment to the validity of the test. I think that we will find this a question of testing validity as other testing goes online in districts that do not currently have a 1:1 environment.

I am glad that the SBAC is looking into all types of operating systems and hardware options. I hope that no matter what, students are able to test on what they currently feel comfortable using regularly.