Flygare also has a strong theatrical background, working first as an actor and then as a director at a major regional theater company in Colorado. He directed many high school productions, both traditional and Shakespearean, as well. As a Marzano Research associate, Flygare travels around the world to work with educators on topics involving curriculum, instruction, and assessment. He is the author of Close Reading in the Secondary Classroom.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York–Buffalo, a master’s degree in English from the University of Colorado–Denver, and a master’s degree in education with an endorsement in gifted education from the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs.
About Marzano Research
Marzano Research is a joint venture between Solution Tree and Dr. Robert J. Marzano. Marzano Research combines Dr. Marzano’s fifty years of educational research with continuous action research in all major areas of schooling in order to provide effective and accessible instructional strategies, leadership strategies, and classroom assessment strategies that are always at the forefront of best practice. By providing such an all-inclusive research-into-practice resource center, Marzano Research provides teachers and principals the tools they need to effect profound and immediate improvement in student achievement.
Foreword
by Robert J. Marzano
For decades, educators have been discussing standards-based assessment and grading. Indeed, as far back as the early 1990s, I and others were writing quite extensively about the impact the standards movement was likely to have on K–12 schooling. In this new book, Heflebower, Hoegh, Warrick, and Flygare revisit some of those topics but add the perspective of how standards should affect both teaching and learning. At the core of their discussions and recommendations are proficiency scales.
While the term proficiency scales is used in many different ways and has many different manifestations, the type of scale used by the authors goes back to my early work in the 1990s and is currently being used in every U.S. state, and a number of countries, to one degree or another. Such proficiency scales have been well vetted regarding their utility with assessment, grading, curriculum, and instruction.
To design this particular type of proficiency scale, educators must identify those topics from state or local standards that are essential for students’ academic success. The authors refer to this process as prioritizing the standards. The content within each of the essential topics derived from prioritized standards is then organized into a progression of knowledge embedded within the proficiency scale, which becomes the guaranteed curriculum within a school or district.
After establishing a firm foundation regarding the nature of and need for proficiency scales, the authors address how the scales can and should be used. First, and perhaps foremost, proficiency scales should be highly visible. Teachers should make students aware of the essential topics that they will address throughout the year and the content in the proficiency scales for each topic. This renders the curriculum completely transparent for students and parents. They know what will be taught throughout year, when it will be taught, and precisely what proficiency looks like for each topic.
Each proficiency scale also governs assessment. In fact, it is ideal if cooperative teams within the professional learning communities (PLC) process generate common pretests and posttests using the proficiency scales. Better yet, teachers in a collaborative team can score students’ pretests and posttests to determine individual student needs and calibrate the manner in which teachers design and score assessments based on proficiency scales.
Teachers should ask students to set goals regarding their learning of the content in specific proficiency scales. A powerful addendum to this process is encouraging students to track their progress over time on specific proficiency scales. In this way, both their current status and their growth can be the subject of celebration.
Classroom instruction and the planning of that instruction should be based on the proficiency scales addressed within a unit. The authors demonstrate that proficiency scales can serve this need regardless of the specific instructional model that a school or district uses. Grading and reporting should also revolve around scores on proficiency scales. The authors illustrate how teachers can translate standards-based student scores into traditional letter grades and percentage scores.
These are only a few of the issues the authors address in A Teacher’s Guide to Standards-Based Learning. Those readers familiar with standards-based education will recognize many topics but will surely find a fresh perspective on each. Those new to standards-based education will receive a clear picture of what it might look at the classroom level and from the perspective of the student.
Introduction
Schools changing instructional and assessment practices to accommodate new standards means many teachers are required to make what they often consider a major transition in their teaching. For many teachers, this transition comes after years of successful teaching in a familiar, comfortable format, with content they know well. It may feel as though they’re shifting over to the latest hot topic in education, and the last thing in the world they want to do is move away from teaching methods, policies, and practices that have served them well for their entire careers.
Some teachers may have a substantial philosophical issue with the whole notion of teaching to standards. They may have entered the teaching profession because of their love of the content and with a strong desire to share that passion with their students. In fact, they’ve been doing just that for many years, and their students light up when their teacher “does her thing”! Now, with this new concept of teaching, they face the need to change. Will it be a positive change? Will it be stressful? Will they be successful?
Yes to all three.
It may appear that the only obvious outcome of this transition is the associated stress for teachers. Change is never easy, and shifting to standards-based learning won’t be either. So, if teachers are going to go through the stress of these changes, it ought to be for very good reasons. Let’s start by examining some of these reasons.
One of our authors, Jeff Flygare, taught in a traditional classroom for over twenty years before transitioning to standards-based learning. The following is his message to teachers facing the change to standards-based learning.
First, understand that I know how you feel. Before changing to standards-based learning, I had taught as a traditional English language arts teacher, using traditional instruction and grading practices, for twenty-one years. I was very successful. My students learned the content, and they returned to my classroom to take additional classes from me often. It was working for me, yet I took on standards-based learning without anyone telling me I had to. Why? Because, as good as I was, I knew I wasn’t reaching all my students. When I looked at changing my instruction, assessment, and grading practice, I knew that my best students would still learn under the new system, but I thought perhaps with standards-based learning, which promised more student involvement with and commitment to their own learning, I might reach more of my students. And that was exactly what I found to be true.
I shifted to standards-based learning over one weekend in August just before the new school year started. I figured out the basics of standards-based learning, found a way to make our very traditional online gradebook report standards-based scores, and rolled it out with my new students on the first day of school. They had no idea what standards-based learning was, so I committed as much time as they wanted to take during the first thirty days of the school year to explain how this new instruction and assessment system worked. They had lots of questions. I covered the same ground with them many times in that thirty days, but eventually they began to get the idea that I would have standards in the classroom, that instruction would focus on those standards, and that they would be expected to gradually reach proficiency on those standards.
I was sure I could explain the system to them given enough time. But