Despite efforts across the country to raise standards and close achievement gaps, middle and high school students’ reading scores have been largely stagnant for 30 years.
Only 35% of 12th graders possess the knowledge and skills in reading to prepare them for first-year college coursework. Employers also say entry-level job candidates lack practical skills in reading, writing, speaking and digital literacy.
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts were created to ensure all students graduate with the skills and knowledge to succeed in college, career and life, regardless of where they live. Yet, 15 years after the Common Core’s release, there is still a disconnect between the demands described by the standards and what students are asked to do in the classroom.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this disconnect has worsened. To address unfinished learning, even more teachers are assigning texts based on independent reading levels rather than grade level. This means students have even less access to grade-appropriate content than they did before.
The benefits of grade-level benchmarks
Through our work with the national nonprofit Literacy Design Collaborative supporting more than 100,000 educators and 2.4 million students across 940 districts, we have seen first-hand that when schools insist on grade-level standards as their benchmark, students and teachers rise to the occasion.
As part of a five-year Investing in Innovation (i3) validation grant, the LDC partnered with schools in the New York City Department of Education and Los Angeles Unified School District. Using the LDC’s instructional design framework, tools, and professional learning, teachers created standards-driven learning environments in their classrooms through assignments that asked students to write in response to complex, grade-level texts.
What was the impact for students who received two to four of these two-week assignments? An independent evaluation by UCLA’s Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing found that students in both cities gained between four and nine additional months of learning compared to their peers.
Here are four takeaways from this research that can be used to improve instruction in any middle or high school.
Give students grade-level work as the norm, not the goal
The evaluation results are supported by research that shows that task predicts performance. The problem is that most ELA assignments don’t give students the chance to do grade-level listening, thinking, reading, speaking, and writing work.
In “The Opportunity Myth,” TNTP reported that while students met the demands of their assignments 71% of the time, they demonstrated mastery of grade-level standards on those same assignments only 17% of the time. Further, while more than 80% of teachers supported college readiness standards, less than half expected their students could reach them.
Low expectations harm students because they lead to weaker learning experiences that aren’t rigorous or engaging. For low-income students, children of color, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities, the prevalence of low-level tasks with no opportunities to do actual grade-level work further exacerbates inequities. Students can’t show their teachers what they’re capable of if they aren’t given equitable access to grade-appropriate assignments.
All students can experience engagement and joy in rigorous, complex thinking
While rigorous standards can present challenges for teachers whose students are behind academically, the answer is not to level down texts or instruction. The demands of grade-level thinking must come first. No matter their starting point, all students need grade-level assignments that require engagement with grade-level texts. This demonstrates that students are respected as learners.
It is also important that students have the support to navigate these complex texts, whether they need access to content in their home language, accessibility tools, or reading comprehension support. When teachers have a standards-driven ELA curriculum that provides multiple options for targeted support for students, they can remove the barrier of access to grade-level texts. They can keep high expectations for all while adjusting for individuals based on assessment and observational data.
Read with the purpose of building and communicating knowledge
To increase engagement, students need to see the relationship between the texts they read and the tasks they will complete. For example, in a grade 6-12 curriculum called Lenses on Literature, which is built from the LDC’s framework for instruction and formative assessment, students progress through six reading, speaking, listening, and writing stages in each instructional unit. They culminate each unit by crafting an original writing product. This can range from traditional pieces such as literary analyses, argument essays, and short stories to real-world products such as problem-solution proposals and multimodal research presentations.
When students get regular opportunities to write in a variety of formats about the texts that they read, their writing fluency and comprehension increase. They also get to see different models for organizing and communicating knowledge and information, which they can transfer to other settings.
Teachers need just as much support in their growth as students do
Although the Common Core has been adopted by more than 40 states, most teachers haven’t had the professional development necessary to effectively enact the standards. The answer, however, isn’t more professional development; it’s better professional development.
To build real professional capacity in a district, professional development needs to connect to a measurable impact on student outcomes. To respect teachers’ time, it needs to happen in regular practice during the school day rather than by adding hours to their schedules. Further, any feedback teachers receive needs to focus on building content-specific knowledge and skills that directly tie to evidence of student learning.
All students deserve to build knowledge from complex, grade-level content, and all teachers deserve ongoing, job-embedded professional development to ensure high-quality learning for their students. By starting with the standards, schools can drive equity of instruction and better outcomes for all.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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