Teaching with Fidelity
Moving from program fidelity to standards-driven instruction
Our series on standards got me thinking about my former colleague, Paula, and another formative experience I had as an elementary principal in Maine.
Like many districts often do in an attempt to improve achievement, we had bought a new math program. We paid for the platinum plan: Teachers got three district trainings and two follow-up coaching visits. Although we knew a portion of our students were working below grade level, success was predicated on teachers using the program “with fidelity,” or covering all the material on a certain schedule.
At that time, Paula was a second grade math teacher and one of my strongest math teachers. But I dare say, this new program managed to make Paula into a less effective teacher. The program created a situation where she had to forgo her "inner teacher voice" to follow the scripts and pacing set out by this regimented program.
I’m dating myself here, but one day I watched her teach a lesson with an overhead projector. She was doing a lesson on counting bears and grouping them as an introduction to multiplication. One of her students raised his hand and asked a question. It was clearly important to him for how he was constructing his knowledge of math, but it deviated from the script. Instead of having him explore his thinking (metacognition), Paula said: “I can't answer that question right now.”
She was focused on teaching the program, not the kids in front of her — and she struggled.
I told her after that observation, “You teach kids. I'm not going to sit here and say it's Day 37, why aren't you on unit seven, lesson two? I'm not going to do that. Your kids have always shown great growth.” (I knew this because we were collecting both student formative and diagnostic data to inform the impact of instruction. )
In most districts that I work with, teachers have a familiarity with standards in that they’ve either taken the units of study they use and clicked off the standards addressed in that unit. Or if they’re completely program-based, they can point to where the publisher has listed a reference to the standards covered by that part of the curriculum program. I call this standards-referenced instruction.
But all these conversations around standards-referenced programs still fall short on what I think the power of a standard is. If you can unpack a standard and identify the knowledge, the skill, and the context called for to create a learning goal, and target instruction around that goal or skill, and generate feedback, now that's what I would call standards-driven instruction, and that's what we need to get to.
When teachers ‘marinate’ in standards, they are organizing them, thinking about scope and sequence, thinking about how does this skill build into this skill? Because of her experience and knowledge, for example, Paula knew this progression instinctively and could respond in real time to misunderstandings.
As I mentioned above, districts are happy to have these standards-referenced programs, which in order to have impact need to be implemented with fidelity; meaning teaching lessons five days a week in 90-minute blocks. You have to get through all the lessons and the goals and chapters.
But if you look at their program diagnostics, a percentage of their students are typically one or two grade levels behind. How are you providing fidelity then? You're really not.
I am not saying that districts should not purchase programs. Programs are needed to provide content and context for learning, whether that is project-based curriculum materials or something else.
But if districts adopt a ready-made curriculum and think the job is done, they are shorting their teachers on the process. The process is the product; really marinating, getting in there, rolling up their sleeves, looking at the standards and how they fit together, understanding what's prior, what's leading up to that.
All of those things are going to enhance a teacher’s practice and prevent learning gaps if the teachers design a scaffold of learning by unpacking the standards, creating a progression of learning targets and pairing them with program resources and common assessments.
If somebody's behind, you know how to go back a grade level and find resources to teach that skill. Every time we've done this, we've found student engagement goes up and scores go up.
But you can’t do this if you have to execute a program with fidelity or if you haven’t unpacked the standards.
What I'm saying is, let's really organize our standards. Let's understand them so we can give the students what they need at a pace that moves them and identifies and closes gaps. To me, that's teaching with fidelity.
On a final note: We are really excited by the response to Part 1 and 2 of our Marinating in Standards series. Stay tuned for two more parts: on creating common assessments and the role of ‘true’ professional learning communities in leveraging standards-driven instruction.