Vail School District's online curriculum resources and assessment strategies

¶ … Vail (AZ) School District's Online Curriculum Resources

Founded in 1903 as a one-room school house, the Vail School district now serves over 9,000 students. Last year 9 of 10 schools received the highest label "Excelling" offered by the Arizona Department of Education. (the last was labeled "Highly-Performing.) Why is this little district just south-east of Tucson, AZ performing so well?

A quick search on the district website (www.vail.k12.az.us) offers some insight into the programs and curriculum they use so successfully. First the "Mission" and "Guiding Principles" (www.vail.k12.az.us/aboutUs/mission.htm) of the district highlight the districts charge to provide quality education. The district values small class size, small schools, continuous improvement and "community," defined both within the school and in cooperation with outside members including parents, neighbors, local businesses and community leaders.

Another page provides information on the STEEP program (www.vail.k12.az.us/steep2004/district/STEP1.PHP). This four-step program evaluates every child in reading, writing and math several times a year. Hour-long assessments help teachers determine where additional help is needed. In addition the website claims the program help teachers know the most efficient way to deliver any additional, individual assistance. Additional the program enables teachers to track each student's progress.

STEEP stands for "Screening to Enhance Equitable Placement." The site includes links to video clips showing each of the four steps in the program:

1. Universal Screening

2. Classroom Intervention

3. Can't Do/Won't Do Assessment

4. Individual Intervention

The programs incorporates assessments to rule out extraneous factors (such as motivation and socio-economic disadvantage) when looking at student performance (www.vail.k12.az.us/steep2004/district/SteepPrintableBrochure / SteepPamphlet2004.pdf). After assessments are given (using grade level curriculum,) problems are identified into one of four areas: math, writing, reading or behavior. Then teachers determine if motivation (or lack thereof) is a contributing factor. Lastly teachers develop and intervention strategy.

The Vail District site includes links to all of Arizona's State Standards (www.vail.k12.az.us/curriculum/azstatestandards.htm). Each grade-level's standards may include more than a hundred specific performance objectives. To help teachers focus their efforts, district committees identified "Formatives" or "Essential Standards," broken down into grade levels (www.vail.k12.az.us / curriculum/formatives.htm). Benchmark assessments are given three times throughout the year and are made available online, by grade-level, on the district website in Parent Curriculum Handbooks. Specific examples of what students are expected to do as they progress through each grade are available to parents online.

The district site includes a.I.M.S. (Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards) test data showing continued improvement in test scores over the past five years (www.vail.k12.az.us/newcurriculum/aimsgraphs.php). It is clear the district's emphasis is on learning. Another page on the site (www.vail.k12.az.us/aboutUs / goals.htm) shares the 2007/2008 District Goals which expects every school in the district to be functioning at the "Highly Performing" or "Excelling" level. Specifically the district developed a plan to realize high levels of student achievement by focusing on these strategies.

1. Analyzing test data

2. Determine site-specific targets

3. Determine teaching strategies using best-practice research

4. Implement staff development plan

5. Evaluate the impact on student learning

The Vail School District's increasingly steady improvement in student test scores shows the pin-pointed focus to their mission of continuous improvement -- not only in student achievement, but in the professionalism and results expected from their staff.

Part Three: Quality Curriculum

A quality curriculum is one that takes into account various learner styles. The basic idea of the learning style approach to teaching is that every student has a specific style of learning. In other words, some students learn a concept better through group work while other prefer visuals while still others prefer individual work. Added to this is the fact that each student's learning style is influenced by their particular backgrounds and culture. According to the learning style approach of learning, in order to best teach students a teacher must cater his or her teaching to each of these unique learning styles. To do this, the teacher needs to adopt a diverse, personalized teaching style and curriculum.

To accomplish this, a teacher's learning style must show respect for the students' individual and different learning styles, be responsive to students' different learning styles by utilizing different levels of tasks and activities, utilize a range of teaching strategies, and teach thinking skills that stretch across the curriculum. One of the most significant challenges that a teacher using a learning style centered approach to teaching is the growing pressure to "teach to the test." Teaching to the test refers to the practice of utilizing standardized test to assess the learning of students. Since such things as funding and raises are often tied directly to how well a student performs on the standardized test, many teachers and schools have adopted a curriculum that essentially teaches to the test, or in away that ensures high rates of test performance. The problem with this approach to teaching is that it takes a narrow approach to teaching to a wide array of learning styles

References:

Alaska Department of Education and Early Development: Mathematics and Science, http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/mathsci/ms4inst.htm# mathematicsandscienceinstructionalpracticestoreachallstudents, Retrieved 12/01/2007

EDAS 7776: Curriculum Design Qualifying Exam Notebook. (2006) http://pirate.shu.edu/~sorrelri/Curriculum/Curriculum.pdf Retrieved 12/01/2007.

Madeus, G.F., & Stufflebeam, D.L. (1989). Educational Evaluation: the Works of Ralph Tyler. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Press.

Prideaux, D. (2005). Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. ABC of Learning and Teaching in Medicine: Curriculum Design, http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7383/268. Retrieved 12/01/2007.

Smith, M.K. (1996, 2000) 'Curriculum theory and practice' the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm. Retrieved 12/01/2007

Smith, P.L. And Ragan, T.J. The Impact of R.M. Gagne's Work on Instructional Theory. University of Oklahoma. www.ibstpi.org/Products/pdf/chapter_6.pdf Retrieved 12/02/2007.

Tyler, R.W. (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Chicago: University of Chicago Presss