Standards and benchmarks can help educators revitalize both teaching and assessment, said Janet Hughes, a 4th grade teacher and unit writing coach in the Howard-Suamico School District in Green Bay, Wisc. "Using benchmarks will create a curriculum of high academic standards for all students," she asserted.
Six years ago, Hughes said, her district began developing benchmarks for what students should learn in science, language arts, social studies, and math. The "benchmark summary" for 4th grade science, for example, specifies units on electricity, motion, animals, astronomy, and the human body. The benchmarks are linked to rubrics, Hughes noted. "Every one of our benchmarks has a rubric that teachers can access."
Students in grades K–4 are no longer assigned letter grades, she explained. Instead, their progress on each benchmark is rated on a four-point scale: 4 for "advanced," 3 for "proficient" (the expected level of understanding and ability), 2 for "basic," and 1 for "minimal" achievement.
Teachers have found the benchmarks to be "a great instructional aid" for clarifying expectations and motivating students, Hughes said. Before teaching a lesson, teachers review the benchmarks with students and show them samples of student work from past years. "I might show my class a piece of student work and ask them what to score it," she said. "Students like to see what other 4th graders have done." When students know what they need to do to score well, they are motivated by the challenge, she has found. "They all try working for those 4s."
The benchmarks also help teachers monitor students' yearly progress, Hughes said. "Every year I can [check] where the students on my class list were on some of these benchmarks." If several students were having trouble last year understanding "story elements," for example, she might target them for small-group instruction.
Assessment has also been transformed by the benchmarks, Hughes said. She compiles files of student work, so at conferences she can show parents why their child has earned certain ratings on the benchmarks. Then she suggests steps that she and the parents can take together to work toward the child's goals.
Assessing by the benchmarks also provides an alternative to standardized tests, Hughes said. Next year, Wisconsin is mandating tests at 4th, 7th, and 10th grade that will determine whether a child moves on to the next grade, she noted. If a district wants to receive state funding, it must use the tests.
"This summer, as a district, we created promotion criteria, so that if children aren't meeting the test scores, we can show through our standards and benchmarks—our body of evidence we've kept on students—that they are meeting [expectations] and they can pass," she said. "We as educators know that one test doesn't show what a child knows."
