National standards and school science and mathematics

School Science and Mathematics, Oct 1997 by Bybee, Rodger W, Ferrini-Mundy, Joan, Loucks-Horsley, Susan

The Challenge of Aligning Assessment Strategies with Standards

For decades, educators have perceived the routes to improvement as changing instructional materials, modifying teaching strategies, increasing the time devoted to science or mathematics, or implementing better assessments. Using a technological metaphor, we equated reform with changing inputs to the education of students. Many individuals responsible for contemporary reform perceive national or state standards as just another input that can be used to upgrade content or change instruction. We have observed, for example, a subtle but important perception that influences reform. A school or district's current course or curriculum framework is seen as basic; selected ideas from the national science or mathematics standards are modified or incorporated so that they fit the basic course or framework in an add-on fashion. The TIMSS findings (Schmidt et al., 1996) document this clearly; teachers respond to standards by trying to add them on to an already full and incoherent curriculum. This is the reverse of the intentions of those who developed the NRC and NCTM standards; the idea is for the standards to serve as guides.

Reform will not be substantial or lasting if it is viewed mainly as a process of tinkering with inputs to the current educational system. Standards define the valued outcomes of the system, and an outcome orientation is needed. This orientation is clearly expressed by the constant use of the phrase, around standards, "what students should know and be able to do." What follows from this view is a need to modify the current system in an effort to achieve those outcomes. The standards describe a national response to the question, "What should all students know, understand, and be able to do?" The challenge includes the difficult task of adapting inputs (such as length of the school day or year, number of courses required for graduation, time-on task, textbooks, use of technologies, and teaching strategies) in ways that are clearly intended to affect outcomes.

An important instance of this is aligning assessment practices with the valued outcomes of science and mathematics education and ensuring that assessments at the classroom, district, state, and national level are consistent with the standards. Assessment standards from both the NRC Standards and the NCTM Assessment Standards directly apply to this discussion (see Figure 4).

Educators might be inclined to concentrate on the content standards and change, for example, instructional materials to "meet the standards," without fully realizing that the ultimate definition of meeting content standards lies in assessment and in determining what counts as evidence that students have adequate understanding of the content described in the standards. The science and mathematics standards described in Figure 4, from the respective assessment standards, place the concept of "opportunity to learn" in the domain of assessment and require equal attention to this aspect of the standards. Identifying opportunity to learn as an essential component of assessment has to be one of the most significant, but latent, features of the national standards for science education. Acting on this standard has the potential of bringing greater congruence within various components of the educational system. Note that the science standard holds content standards as constant and suggests the alignment of other components of the system (for instance, classroom practices, national policies, and curriculum frameworks) within those standards.