Early August Curriculum & Instruction Committee "white paper"

[jmpewitt]

This draft "whose stated purpose is to 'clarify terms' used in
discussing the curriculum alignment process" was presentend at a
Curriculum and Instruction committee meeting in early August.

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Seattle Public High Schools
Curriculum Alignment

Our Commitment

Seattle Public Schools is committed to ensuring high expectations and
high quality schools - for every student. As part of a system-wide
effort to increase the number of Seattle Public Schools students who
graduate from high school prepared for college and the 21st century
work force. Seattle Public High schools has committed to a curriculum
alignment in core academic subjects across SPS high schools.

We will provide all SPS students with equal access to high-performing
high schools and ensure every student is held to the same high
expectations. Here, our mission is essential - our district moves from
saying all students will experience a highly rigorous academic
experience, to guaranteeing, through our aligned curriculum, that
administrators, principals, coaches and teachers will ensure that they
do.

What is Curriculum Alignment?

An aligned curriculum is a coherent and consistent progression of
content, instruction
and assessment within and across a course of study. In an aligned
system, minimum rigorous expectations for student learning in any one
grade level are consistent across
the district, grade level expectations build on the prior year’s work
and feed into the next year, and teachers have material and training
to teach the content to their students. Furthermore, the curriculum
alignment ensures the consistent determination of minimum rigorous
expectations so that every teacher, regardless of experience and good
intentions may account for student variance at the district wide level
and knowledge of college-ready standards.

What is NOT Curriculum Alignment?

Curriculum alignment guides teachers in what to teach but not how to
teach. Indeed,
curriculum alignment places a high value on teacher creativity and
passion, and should
encourage appropriate acceleration, differentiation and curriculum
integration.
Curriculum alignment does not reduce the classroom experience to a
standardization of activity for teachers or students; the district has
no intention of dictating direct instruction at the daily level.

Why is Curriculum Alignment Necessary?

Presently, core academic high school courses with the same name do not
adhere to the same content, standards or expectations even in the same
school building. One could argue that students currently are subjected
to a lottery of sorts, in which the quality of their academic
experience is, in part, attributed to the accident of scheduling. As a
result, some students have the regrettable experience of learning the
same content in courses that are designed to participate in a
sequence. And some students complete courses with gaps in their
learning.
What is the Curriculum Alignment Work?

All SPS core high school courses in Math, Language Arts, Science,
Social Studies and World Languages will align to:

• common state or national content standards that prepare students for
college level work
• essential content knowledge and skills necessary to being successful
in the next course in the sequence and/pr college work
• textual materials and supporting instructional documents selected
and/or designed by Seattle Public Schools

Alignment Among and Across Courses

Each course in the core curriculum will be aligned horizontally with
identified course outcomes so that courses with the same name across
SPS high Schools reach the same minimum goals and expectations.
Content courses will be aligned vertically to ensure students possess
the knowledge and skills to be successful in the next course in the
sequence. Not only will the high school curriculum be aligned to the
college ready standards, but also to the middle school curriculum that
precedes the high school educational experience.

Developing Common Assessments

SPS will develop common course assessments. Teachers across our high
schools will collaboratively create formative and summative grade
level assessments aligned to college-ready standards. The common
course assessments will provide information about students’ grasp on
the course content and will reveal the degree to which students have
mastered the skills necessary to be prepared for the next course in
the system,

Providing Professional Development

SPS recognizes that the quality of teaching and learning is our most
important measure of success. In order to implement the curriculum
alignment, high quality professional development will be provided for
all teachers responsible for delivering the aligned curriculum.
Teachers will receive training in the new standards and adopted
materials, so that they can effectively teach to the aligned
curriculum, measure student progress and performance, and
differentiate instruction to adjust teaching to meet the needs of all
students, including Special Education, Bilingual and Advanced
Learning.

The Desired Results

An aligned curriculum will allow the district to provide targeted
support for teachers and schools, improving the quality of teaching
for all students including the highest performing to the lowest
performing. The result of these curricular efforts will be:
eliminating gaps in students’ learning; increased access for students
to courses that prepare students for college success; and more
students graduating prepared for college and career.