Teaching Profession

AFT Presses Need for Curriculum Linked to Standards

Union worries about lack of content during assessment design
By Catherine Gewertz — February 24, 2011 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Includes updates and/or revisions.

Keenly aware that the common academic standards and assessments have the potential to reshape American education, the American Federation of Teachers is pressing a key question: What sort of curriculum should lie between the standards and the tests?

That question was front-and-center on Feb. 23 as the AFT’s committee on implementation of the common standards met at the 1.4 million-member union’s Capitol Hill headquarters. The committee is exploring what it can do to ensure that the common standards are translated with fidelity into classroom teaching. By late spring, the committee plans to recommend to the union ways it should position itself to influence professional development, curriculum, common assessments, and other aspects related to the new standards.

All but seven states have adopted the new set of common academic standards, and all but five states are involved in designing new tests for those learning goals. The standards were developed by experts and state officials.

The curriculum question is a sensitive one, since the tradition of local control over what students learn is zealously guarded in many states and contributed to the collapse of an attempt to create national standards in the 1990s. The new standards effort has reignited that debate, along with questions of who sets expectations for students and who defines the routes by which they reach those goals.

During the meeting of about three dozen local, state, and national union representatives, the AFT committee heard presentations by experts on the English/language arts and mathematics standards and from representatives of the two state consortia that are designing the common assessments.

‘Something in Between’

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Antonia Cortese was the first to broach the curriculum question. “You’ve been talking about building skills,” she said to David Coleman, who co-led the writing of the English/language arts standards. “What knowledge is a kid supposed to be building? I’m having trouble when I look at this, finding that element.”

Mr. Coleman said the standards are deliberately written in such a way that it “lies to others” to create content, but the document “strongly signals” the importance of “building a coherent progression of knowledge” and offers other key guidance, such as specifying the portion of students’ reading that should be drawn from informational texts and from literary ones as they progress through their education.

Ms. Cortese revisited the issue after a representative of one of the two state test-design collaboratives, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, had outlined the group’s vision of its testing system.

“Isn’t the ‘no content’ of the common standards a detriment to developing good assessments if there isn’t a curriculum in place for those standards?” she asked Susan A. Gendron, the former commissioner of education in Maine, who now serves as the consortium’s policy director. “I don’t know how you proceed too far down the line based just on standards. There has to be something in between.”

Ms. Gendron noted that SMARTER Balanced is working on model curriculum frameworks and other instructional materials as part of its library of resources for teachers. The other consortium, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is working on similar instructional and curricular materials. (“Common-Assessment Consortia Expand Plans,” Feb. 23, 2011.)

Maria Neira, the first vice president of the New York State United Teachers, expressed concern that there is no broad, collective work being done on a shared curriculum, as there was on the standards and is now on the assessments. “I would love to see a consortium around curriculum,” she said, sparking chuckles around the room.

Responding to Ms. Neira, Colleen A. Callahan, the director of professional issues for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, touched on the tension between curriculum and testing. “Some vision of assessment can help drive curriculum, too,” she said. “But I agree with you that [curriculum] is the big, gaping hole.”

Review Process

AFT President Randi Weingarten told the group that the union has a potent role to play in guiding the field as it puts the new standards and tests into practice. “Someone has to be out there saying, ‘In order to do this, these are the things we need to do,’ ” she said. Unless the union helps shape “the core, the substance, the content,” the standards risk being poorly implemented, she said.

The union laid out its views on a “common-core curriculum” in the winter issue of its quarterly journal, The American Educator.

After the meeting, Ms. Weingarten said the field needs “common, sequential curriculum” so teachers “are not making it up every day.” That is different, she said, from “a lockstep, inflexible script.” Teachers need some kind of roadmap for the journey ahead, she said, because “right now we got nothin’.”

Review Process

Part of the AFT common-core committee’s work is to grapple with just how that curriculum should take shape, said David B. Sherman, an aide to Ms. Weingarten who is overseeing the committee. The union doesn’t favor one mandatory curriculum, he said, but beyond that, questions hover: Should there be one voluntary curriculum? Should there be multiple curricula or curricular pieces that the union and its members assemble and adapt from place to place to meet local needs?

Like many others in education, the AFT is working on materials and resources, such as model lesson plans, for the common standards. Aware that educators could face a marketplace crammed with instructional materials, all of which will purport to be “aligned” to the common core, the union is also designing a curriculum-review process to help officials evaluate how well they embody the standards.

To help guide curriculum developers and the publishing industry as they create materials, the lead writers of the English/language arts standards, Mr. Coleman and Susan Pimentel, are refining a document that highlights the key ideas. Consultants Beth Cocuzza and Sandra Alberti, who walked the AFT committee through the math standards, said they are working with the lead writers of those standards to produce some form of guidance for educators in evaluating how well materials reflect the standards.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the March 02, 2011 edition of Education Week as AFT Presses Need to Tie Curriculum to Common Standards

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Teaching Profession Opinion What My Professors Never Told Me About Teaching
In graduate school, I learned how to set up a classroom—but not how to survive one.
4 min read
Illustration of a black female on the side of a steep terrain pushing an oversized apple uphill. The sky is stormy and there are papers flying through the air. The terrain shows an old school desk, a chalkboard with math equations and a clock, both stuck in the side of the steep hill.
Jess Suttner for Education Week
Teaching Profession 'Here’s a Room. Here’s a Book. Good Luck': Veteran Teachers Reflect on How Their Careers Began
A little bit of support in the first year of teaching can go a long way, and older teachers are willing to mentor their new colleagues.
5 min read
Two female teachers in a school hallway having a discussion.
E+
Teaching Profession The State of Teaching It's 'a Passion, It’s Not Just a Paycheck': Teachers' Advice on Joining the Profession
If you go into the job with open eyes, it's worth it, say five teachers featured in EdWeek's The State of Teaching project.
Fourth grade students have fun interacting in a math class taught by Helen Chan at South Loop Elementary School on Nov. 15, 2023, in Chicago, Ill.
Fourth grade students have fun interacting in a math class taught by Helen Chan at South Loop Elementary School on Nov. 15, 2023, in Chicago.
Jamie Kelter Davis for Education Week
Teaching Profession The Finalists for National Teacher of the Year Have Ideas for Boosting Teacher Morale
The four award-winning teachers also met with U.S. lawmakers to advocate for their education causes of choice.
5 min read
Illustration of hands holding speech bubbles.
iStock / Getty Images Plus