Rigor
While much time goes into the development of a school budget, one should never let that work overshadow the primary mission of our schools – teaching and learning. Between meetings with the finance director and our school administrators, I’ve kept up with my visits to classrooms throughout the district.
An important area for focusing instructional observations and for discussions about instruction is rigor. In a controversial statement made just last month, Commissioner Ken Wagner shared his belief that there’s a “quality gap” between what the expectations of the state standards and what is being taught in Rhode Island classrooms. He stated, “In my three and a half years, I’ve only seen four classrooms that challenge kids at the levels the standards require. We are dramatically under-challenging our kids.”
While enumerating this issue may not have been a good idea nor an accurate depiction of the current situation, it may be true that teachers throughout the state, in general, are not exposing students to rigorous content to the degree necessary for success, both on state assessments and for learning after graduation.
Teachers can’t be expected to focus 100% of instruction on the most rigorous of standards, since it’s important to begin with where students are and that may require addressing learning gaps. On the other hand, if students are never exposed to rigorous expectations, they have little chance to meet these expectations.
Rigor is not how “hard” a particular course or subject may be. It may be “hard” to excel in a course that is devoid of clear expectations. It may be “hard” to succeed in a class without having mastered prerequisite skills. Rigor, however, may or may not be a descriptor for either situation. Rigor, instead, is the degree of sophistication and complexity applied to a learning experience. Learning experiences that are rigorous require us to think deeply and stretch our learning.
In order to understand the level of rigor expected from standards for a particular grade level, it is advantageous to understand the associated standards for the grade levels preceding and following the particular grade. Developing a deeper understanding of what the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) expects for student learning is far more important than simply assigning standards to particular lessons or units.
Politicizing of CCSS standards has resulted in misconceptions regarding their relative rigor to previous standards and expectations. Regardless of one’s political ideology, what a set of standards do for education is to stimulate conversations among educators about expectations for student learning. To really understand the standards one must focus rather than review all standards in a sitting. To this end, I thought I’d look at one particular standard through the grades to show the progression of skills expected of our students. The differences between grades, provided in brackets, are my interpretations of the difference between the standard and that from the previous grade level.
For kindergarten, the reading standard for informational texts, strand 9, reads: With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).
Here is how this standard changes from grade to grade:
GRADE 1 Identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures). [DIFFERENCE: prompting and support are eliminated.]
GRADE 2 Compare and contrast the most important points presented by two texts on the same topic. [DIFFERENCE: students are expected to pick out the most important points presented by texts before comparing and contrasting.]
GRADE 3 Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic. [DIFFERENCE: students focus on key details as well as points.]
GRADE 4 Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably. [DIFFERENCE: students must take the information and do something (write, speak) to show understanding of the subject.]
GRADE 5 Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably. [DIFFERENCE: the number of texts increases]
GRADE 6 Compare and contrast one author’s presentation of events with that of another (e.g., a memoir written by and a biography on the same person). [DIFFERENCE: students consider an author’s point of view when comparing and contrasting two texts.]
GRADE 7 Analyze how two or more authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations of facts. [DIFFERENCE: students must dig into the text to figure out what ideas were emphasized differently by two or more different authors.]
GRADE 8 Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation. [DIFFERENCE: in addition to differentiating between facts and interpretation, students must ascertain how two texts differ in a case where information is not simply different, but are in conflict.]
GRADES 9-10 Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington’s Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”), including how they address related themes and concepts. [DIFFERENCE: In addition to providing a specificity of the types of documents students are reading, their analysis must address themes and concepts identified by the teacher.]
GRADES 11-12 Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features. [DIFFERENCE: the standard identifies specific documents, has students considering purpose and acknowledging and analyzing rhetoric, as well as requires that students document originating across three centuries.]
From a look across grades we get a better idea of how the expectation deepens as well as builds upon skills practiced in each subsequent year. Analyzing this particular standard also provided me with a sense of how rigorous this will be for students. For this strand, students are not merely pulling out information from texts and reporting this information, they are thinking critically about what they read. Clearly, these standards and standards like them will require that teachers design curriculum that is grounded in important social studies themes and concepts while also addressing literacy standards.
I challenge our teachers to spend some time analyzing a strand across the grades to better understand the expectations of the standards for their particular grade and subject. As a district, we will continue both curriculum revision and classroom observations to ensure that Smithfield schools will be at the forefront of innovative instructional practices and rigorous instruction.
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