March/April 1998

Standards-Based Professional Development:
Getting Standards into the Classroom

This tool was developed by Education Trust staff, with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. It is meant to be used by teams of teachers who work together to revise their assignments to meet standards. Its guidelines stress the importance of keeping standards in mind when choosing or adapting an assignment. The Education Trust is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, that promotes educational success for all students from kindergarten through college.

(This process should take approximately 90 to 120 minutes.)

The following model is for teachers who are in a process of aligning classroom work with standards. Although it includes designing a scoring guide, the model is not primarily concerned with giving numbers to student work. It uses scoring as a tool to focus attention on the quality of classroom assignments and their direct connection with standards. If carefully followed through these steps, the model will result in rigorous assignments and scoring guides that will enable students to recognize and reach for high standards.

1. We all complete the assignment.
2. We identify the standards that apply to this assignment.
3. We generate a rough scoring guide from the standards and the assignment.
4. We score the student work, using the guide.
5. We ask: Will this work meet the standards? If not, what are we going to do about it?
6. What action can we plan at the classroom, school, district, and state levels so that all students meet the standards on assignments like this?

Reprinted with permission from the Education Trust.