New Horizons for Learning: Observation Deck, April 1999

From the Observation Deck

What happens when we raise academic standards without equipping students and teachers with the skills to meet them? Would a good coach raise the bar several feet without making sure that athletes have developed the strengths and skills to hurdle higher? The answers are obvious. Unless we do more than raise expectations of higher achievement--unless we help students to develop their strengths and learn new skills--performance may become worse rather than improving.

Most educators agree that we need to assess not only how well students have learned the basic skills, but also whether they have truly understood what they have learned and can apply it in a variety of contexts. We need to assess whether they have learned how to learn and have developed thinking skills that can be applied to problem-solving--essential in today's world. If we are going to assess students for these skills, we must help them to learn them with the most effective old and new tools available. Schools all over our country are moving forward to meet these needs. In Washington State, new standards and assessments are already in place, and educators are being challenged in new ways.

What is the difference between schools whose students meet higher academic standards and those that do not? According to a recent study of Washington schools, it has to do with "schoolwide change in teaching methods with a focus on developing skills in core subjects of reading, writing, and mathematics." This is one answer from a study of the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education, directed by Dr. Paul Hill.

Clearly there is no one way to meet the needs of students from different communities or to develop the skills of teachers in different schools, but there are some general principles that have come out of the fore-mentioned study. All the schools that made significant improvement created a schoolwide plan and involved teachers working together. Other changes included:

Teaching focused on a few core skills, especially on reading as a foundation for other subjects.
Teachers united in tackling the problem under the leadership of the principal or a group of motivated teachers.
School leaders actively looked for ways to improve, and they sought outside help before the district or state recommended action.
Schools took control of teachers' professional development related to school goals rather than allowing teachers to take miscellaneous courses.
Schools involved parents by informing them of school goals and how they could help their children achieve.
When extra money was available it was used to further instructional goals.
Schools had as much control as possible over their own programs and budgets.

Along with these principles, you will find other insights and strategies for improving academic achievement in the Building, and we invite you to share others that work for you and your organization. Additional sources of useful information will come from the association of New Horizons for Learning with several "learning laboratories," whose directors have joined our Board of Directors. They include The Northwest Initiative for Teaching and Learning, Jill Mathies, director; The Alliance for Better Schools, Jonelle Adams, director; and ATLAS, a NASDC organization, Janet Hayakawa, site coordinator. We will also be following the progress of six schools and one school district with projects under the leadership of Mark Anderson and Kathy Bartlett, Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. These are new demonstration sites set up to improve the achievement of special education students in the general education curriculum. We will be posting descriptions of specific strategies that all of these projects are implementing to bring about positive change along with ongoing progress reports.

In Washington State, the annual conference on new standards and assessment sponsored by Seattle Pacific University, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, New Horizons for Learning, and other major educational organizations will be coming up again on September 22-24. Outstanding keynoters and workshop presenters will again offer practical resources that can be applied in classrooms at all levels.

We believe that sharing real-life stories about meeting challenges successfully is one way to empower others! Stories are also wonderful tools for learning. Read on.