Some policymakers and pundits have suggested that student performance will improve only when national standards are agreed upon and national tests hold students accountable. Education consultant Richard Strong has another view: School faculties need to create their own "contracts" about what they'll teach students.
For example, a faculty at a school Strong works with agreed that in language arts, each teacher would assign at least one retelling or summarizing activity a week, one literary analysis a month, one multiple-document essay a month, and two community-based interdisciplinary projects each year. Although teachers continue to have a great deal of latitude about their curriculum, the contract ensures that they'll share some common understandings about the type of work students should be doing. After all, said Strong, "If you're doing posters and I'm doing five-paragraph essays, we've got nothing to talk about." Contracts should yield "controlled variety," he said.
Once students begin to complete such assignments, teachers should come together and sort samples of student work into four categories: high, high-average, low-average, and low. Then, "you diagnose," said Strong. What skills and understandings did students exhibit? What were they weak on? What specific kinds of instruction do students need to improve their work? Finally, you teach and assess again, Strong said.
Throughout his presentation, Strong emphasized the importance of analyzing student work. Staff development, he said, "should emerge from an analysis of kids' work, and teachers ought to be fighting for it." If students' work shows that they are weak on writing lab reports, that skill should be the focus of staff development, he said. Principals should drive home the importance of looking at student work, he added, by asking teachers four things: show me the work, what are you learning from the kids' work, what do you think you need to learn from the kids' work, and how can I help.