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School Board Journal
November / December 1995
January / February 1996

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What should children learn?
State standards define benchmarks

School reform has gone through many phases since the 1985 School Reform Bill emerged from Springfield, and school districts have undertaken many activities designed to achieve the elusive goal of quality education.

This year, school reform will move to a new stage with the release of state standards for learning. About 200 education, business and community leaders have been involved over the past year in developing a set of standards describing exactly what children in Illinois public schools should know and be able to do at various stages of their schooling.

The standards are specific in describing expected performance at various levels of learning, but do not prescribe programs or curriculum to get students there. That is left up to local schools.

"The learning standards will fill a real need for local school boards, their administrators, and their teachers," said Merv Roberts, president of the Board of Education of Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125. Roberts, who represents the Lake Division on the Illinois Association of School Boards Board of Directors, is IASB's representative on the Illinois State Board of Education's Academic Standards Project.

"School boards setting goals and standards for their local schools will have better-defined benchmarks by which to measure student learning. Districts will no longer need to guess at what is required to satisfy the state goals at different student developmental levels." He noted that school districts will not be required to adopt the standards as such, but will continue to have local objectives to meet or exceed the state standards.

Statewide assessment, such as the IGAP, will reflect the standards, Roberts said. "There will be fewer questions about developing a curriculum that can be appropriately assessed by IGAP."

Curriculum, methods not prescribed

Roberts said the standards will `raise the bar' for student achievement in Illinois and also will increase the value of an Illinois education in the marketplace. "Uniform statewide standards will give new meaning to an Illinois high school diploma," he said. "It will allow us to tell employers and institutions of higher education exactly what it means to graduate from an Illinois public school. We have never been able to do that. Common standards will also benefit children as they move through the schools within a district or transfer between districts."

As this magazine went to press, a date had not been set for distributing the draft standards document to local school districts, but the date is expected to be early this year. When it is distributed, the document will include survey materials allowing each local district to comment on the draft. The committee also plans to provide explanatory materials to help local recipients thoroughly understand the context of the standards and how they will be used.

Lofty goals

• reflects contemporary knowledge about teaching and learning;

• promotes maximal opportunity to learn for each student;

• prepares students to assess and apply their knowledge in new situations; and

• prepares students for lifelong learning, productive citizenship, and economic security in a technological society.

Comments from those attending a panel session on the standards project suggest that there are real misgivings to be addressed. The session took place at the recent Joint Annual Conference of the Illinois Association of School Boards, Illinois Association of School Administrators and Illinois Association of School Business Officials.

"Why hide the fact? IT IS A STATE CURRICULUM PERIOD," wrote one participant.

"I firmly believe that this could be a journey to nowhere," commented another.

Local review

Lynne Haeffele, project manager for ISBE, hopes that the standards document will help clear up some of the existing confusion about school reform programs.

Education reform has been developed piecemeal, she observed. As a result, sometimes the connections between the pieces are strong; in other cases, they are weak and tenuous. "It's not that the individual pieces were wrong, but perhaps just a little out of kilter here and there. It seems that a core standard setting process can be part of the solution of fitting in these disparate pieces. We want one seamless path for kids to get from point A to point B."

The standards will inevitably affect assessment, Haeffele said. Currently, assessments such as IGAP are being used without a base of agreed-upon standards, leaving educators unsure about how to improve their assessments. "We started with the cart instead of the horse," she said. Local school leaders and teachers, she said, "would rather know what the state values than not know, or have to guess or have to make up their own interpretation from very broad goal statements. Someone has to come up with something that helps people make decisions about what's valuable."

Future projects

• Realignment of state and local assessment tools with the standards.

• Professional development for teachers, based on what students are expected to know.

• Student credentials. "What do students get to show for it if they achieve world class standards? The current high school diploma is not a credible credential right now. College admissions are based on standards and employment is based on standards," said Haeffele.

Consensus

The work of the standards teams has been reviewed by MCREL, the Mid-Continent Regional Education Laboratory in Colorado, and compared with a data-base of standards from all states. A MCREL team has noted where the work of the Illinois teams is aligned with national documents and where it is not. MCREL also examined the documents for structural coherence, to make sure the standards developed in seven curriculum areas work together.

In addition, the coordinating committee examined the work of 48 other states that have standards, some new, some in effect for a long time. Some are extremely specific and prescriptive, such as California and Texas. California, for example, includes specific reading passages, book lists, dates, people and events that must be taught. At the other extreme is Oregon, with eleven very general and broad outcomes.

Decade of experience

And, the teams have a decade of experience in school reform initiatives to build upon. "People are saying, this is great, we should have had this in 1985," said Michael Palmisano. "Well, we're in a different place than we were in 1985. We have a foundation to build upon. We have the work done in the 1985 goals, have listing of knowledge and skills, we have a decade of learning and experience, things that work and things that do not work," he said.

The project was described in a "Superintendent's Bulletin" from the State Board of Education (dated November 17, 1995), that included the five most commonly asked questions about standards. Those are reprinted on page 17. For more information, contact Ray Schaljo, Strategic Planning and Budget Management, 217/782-0541.

Commonly asked questions

While districts will not be required to "adopt" the state's academic standards, they will continue to have local objectives which must "meet or exceed" these standards. The Illinois Goal Assessment Program will continue to assess the state's progress in meeting its standards for learning.

Will learning goals be discarded?

The standards will NOT replace the state's 34 learning goals. They will build upon, enhance and update those goals written 10 years ago.

Will standards replace the school improvement process?

No. The local school improvement process and the progress that teachers and administrators have made will not be abandoned. The standards will affirm the local school improvement process by providing a more clearly focused definition of the essential knowledge and skills the state expects children to acquire in their public education.

How will IGAP change?

The standards will be used to refine IGAP so that it will continue to serve as one assessment of the state's progress in meeting state goals.

Will the standards lead to a state curriculum?

No. The standards will NOT lead to a state curriculum. Their purpose is to clearly define the state's perspective of the minimum level of essential knowledge and skills all students should have as a result of their schooling. The methods used to teach the knowledge and skills must remain the sole responsibility of local schools.

From "Superintendent's Bulletin," published by the State Board of Education.