Evaluating Middle Grades Curricula


Lynn T. Goldsmith
Ilene Kantrov

Education Development Center, Inc.
55 Chapel Street
Newton, Ma. 02458

Over the past fifteen years educators have been taking a cold, hard look at American students' academic performance, and the picture is not always pretty. In the realms of mathematics and science in particular, we have learned that American students are outperformed by peers in many other countries (TIMSS, 1996), and teachers and employers alike frequently bemoan the lack of literacy in America's youth. Within the last decade each major subject area has developed academic standards which raise the bar for student achievement and performance. In order to meet these standards, teachers are faced with new academic and pedagogical challenges. They must teach more challenging and extensive subject area content, they must develop different instructional strategies, and they must reach a wider range of students. Having a high quality curriculum to guide instruction is part of meeting these challenges.

Until relatively recently, however, few curriculum materials were commercially available to help teachers provide an academically rigorous education for all the students in their classes. Teachers committed to standards-based instruction have often found themselves at odds with district-mandated curricula that emphasize learning isolated skills and with textbooks that promote skill mastery through memorization and practice. These teachers have spent enormous amounts of time searching for resources, planning engaging units that address important concepts, and developing lessons and activities of their own. This is no easy task. Many teachers are only reluctant curriculum developers and are aching for good materials. Others take satisfaction from creating their own curriculum, but still find it a labor-intensive process that reduces their time for classroom planning. And, too, the results of home-grown curricula vary considerably. As one state-level science staff developer recently observed,

Teachers are not curriculum developers. We find that what they do might be fun, but it doesn't necessarily lead to student learning. It's really difficult because many teachers think that to be a good teacher you have to be creative and develop your own materials. There's a prejudice that you're not a creative, innovative teacher if you rely on a piece of commercial material. I have to dispel that idea. You can still be creative and innovative, but published materials give you a structure, a sequence, and they guide you in the right direction. But there is a misconception among some teachers that just developing their own stuff automatically means their lessons are better, or that the kids will be more engaged. (P.K., personal communication, February 12, 1999)

Happily, there are now good published materials for middle grades educators, particularly for mathematics and science, which can relieve teachers of the burden of inventing their own. These materials have been designed from the outset around the principles of standards-based reform. Their development has included review by content area experts and a significant amount of pilot- and field-testing to ensure that they are effective in classroom settings. These carefully constructed and tested materials offer teachers an effective alternative to constructing an entire curriculum from scratch. When teachers have quality curriculum materials available, they can invest their time in adapting fundamentally sound materials to the particulars of their own students and situations rather than trying to invent the curriculum out of whole cloth. The challenge now is to help teachers and administrators choose wisely from the wide array of available materials.

Publishing curriculum materials is a big business, and many programs are advertising themselves as standards-based. This may mean little more than that the publisher has given the materials a face-lift, for example, adding some open-ended exercises or journal writing to a curriculum that is otherwise virtually unchanged. Teachers, school principals, and district administrators can wade through a vast number of choices -- some very good and others rather poor -- trying to find programs and materials that best fit their students' needs. Educators seeking curricula that will move students to high standards of learning and performance need help thinking about their evaluation criteria, winnowing through the options, and identifying the important implementation issues.

Within the past few years several evaluations of middle school mathematics and science materials have been published (National Research Council; 1998; Project 2061, 1999a, 1999b; U.S. Department of Education, 1999). These reports are valuable resources for educators considering materials for their own districts. However, because the eligibility requirements and submission procedures for review, as well as the review criteria themselves, vary among the different evaluation efforts, the sets of recommended materials also vary. Moreover, the recommendations about specific materials will become obsolete as new programs are developed and old ones modified. Potentially more useful over the long run are the evaluation criteria themselves, which educators can use to review materials they are considering. However, the most rigorous criteria are also extensive and detailed, making their use is quite labor-intensive. What is currently not available are practical guides for teachers, principals, and districts to use when making decisions about middle grades curriculum materials.

In an effort to address this need, a team of language arts, mathematics, and science education specialists at Education Development Center, Inc., is developing a series of guides for middle grades educators. These guides include:

Academic rigor: Meeting high standards

In one sense, setting standards for student performance is an effort to define academic rigor. At the heart of reform-based standards is the question, "What is the essential knowledge of the discipline?" The answer has involved placing greater emphasis on students' understanding the major concepts of a subject area (the "big ideas"), acquiring characteristic ways of thinking within the discipline (habits of mind), and learning its particular methods of investigation and argumentation. This increased attention to conceptual understanding does not mean that skill mastery is unnecessary or unimportant. However, it does reframe the acquisition of skills as part of a larger intellectual enterprise rather than as the primary goal of curriculum and instruction.

An academically rigorous curriculum articulates a clear set of goals for learning that reflect both deep, conceptual understanding of the subject area and mastery of those skills needed for increasingly expert performance. It gives teachers and students a reasonable picture of the nature of the discipline and connects them with the same kinds of work that engage professional practitioners, for example, making and testing mathematical conjectures; designing science experiments to test hypotheses; researching and writing persuasive essays. Students build their knowledge and understanding of a discipline through the exercise of its characteristic reasoning processes, work methods, and collegial interactions. A rigorous curriculum helps students develop ways of thinking that are particular to the subject area and an understanding of the methods for establishing and evaluating knowledge. For example, the criteria by which we judge a well-reasoned essay are different from those we use when evaluating a convincing mathematical argument.

A rigorous curriculum offers students (and teachers) a coherent view of the subject area by making connections among important ideas within the discipline. These connections have an effect similar to that of viewing an Impressionist painting from across a room. From up close, the painting looks like little more than isolated patches of color floating on the surface of the canvas. From a distance, these colors coalesce into the rendering of a three-dimensional scene. A rigorous curriculum should offer connections that help students to see and appreciate the recurring themes, ideas, and methodologies of the discipline instead of only small, isolated pieces of the picture. A rigorous curriculum also emphasizes connections between classroom study and real world applications, helping students to recognize the practical utility of their developing knowledge. Finally, a rigorous curriculum also uses a variety of strategies for assessing students' understanding and ability to apply their knowledge to new problems or in different contexts.

In the particular case of the middle grades, it's important that curricula not underestimate the intellectual capabilities of students. Early adolescence is a time of significant growth in reasoning capacity, and coursework should reflect students' increasing ability to think hypothetically and systematically. In the past, middle grades curriculum has often been criticized as a rehash of previous material, a time for review in order to make sure that students are prepared for their work in high school. The result has often been that middle grades students encounter relatively little that is genuinely new or challenging. As one district mathematics supervisor recently observed,
In reviewing curricula we found some books had hardly anything new from year to year. Those books presented the same activities, the same concepts, year after year. There was just no depth. If you looked at only one year in isolation you might say 'Oh, this is really good,' but then when you looked across the three years of the program, you found that it was the same stuff. Kids would go through those books each year and they wouldn't learn anything new. We need a curriculum that will make sure we're not teaching the same material over and over again." (D.D., personal communication, April 2, 1999)
Middle grades students are ready for greater intellectual, social, and emotional challenges, not simply a reworking of the upper elementary school curriculum.


Equity: Holding all students to high standards

An equitable curriculum promotes high levels of achievement among a wide range of students. It includes approaches and activities that accommodate a variety of learning styles and provides different kinds of opportunities for students to gain understanding of the subject area content and demonstrate their mastery. For example, in language arts classes, students might read aloud as well as silently; create story webs to help them follow the plot and structure of their reading selections; view video versions of the literature they are using in class; act out parts of the stories themselves; and express their ideas in formal essays, journal responses, artistic renderings or performances, oral presentations, and other projects. By embodying a variety of approaches, equitable curricula make it possible for students with different cognitive strengths and preferred ways of accessing information to grapple with the curriculum's ideas. However, because students have different "ways in" to the material does not mean that they can stop working to strengthen areas of weakness. The chance to view the video of Island of the Blue Dolphins may make it possible for a struggling reader to follow the plot of the story and participate in discussions about issues of loss and self-reliance. It does not mean that a teacher should stop providing the assistance the student needs to become a more fluent and competent reader.

An equitable curriculum offers content that is rich and deep enough that students with different levels of understanding can all extend their learning. Both the kinds of topics that are addressed and the kinds of work students are asked to do must be sufficiently broad to allow everyone room to learn. In science class, for example, exploratory activities can offer less advanced students the opportunity to make observations, organize data, and seek explanations, while more sophisticated students can extend the activity by posing additional questions, doing further research, and designing follow-up investigations.

Among the ways in which students differ are their culture, language, and gender. As a reflection of the diverse world in which we live, curricula should be sensitive to such differences, representing a variety of perspectives and experiences as contexts for students' studies. The work and lives of those "dead, white, European males" is only part of the picture. An equitable curriculum makes sure that other parts of the picture are developed, too.

Early adolescence is a time of intellectual growth spurts as well as physical ones. Among the intellectual changes accompanying early adolescence is the development of more abstract, systematic, and complex reasoning. Students become more adept at taking a variety of perspectives and considering contingencies and possibilities. They develop "metacognitive skills" -- the cognitive capacity of reflect on their own thinking -- which permits them to monitor and guide their own learning more effectively. Because middle grades students experience these spurts at different times and at different rates, and they herald qualitative changes in some areas of cognitive abilities, a typical classroom is likely to contain students with an especially wide variety of cognitive resources and capabilities. This intensifies the challenge of creating curricula that can promote learning for students who bring a range of skills, prior knowledge, and reasoning abilities into the classroom. Quality curricula for the middle grades provide access to important ideas for students who cover a wide range of skill and sophistication, and can help all of these students to deepen and extend their learning.


Developmental appropriateness: Attending to characteristics of young adolescents

To be effective, curricula must be geared to the students it is designed to reach. Content must be presented at a level of complexity that builds on students' current knowledge and encourages them to push toward deeper and more extensive understanding. Curriculum materials and activities should be based on knowledge of how students' thinking evolves. This ensures that the curriculum develops central ideas and skills in ways that address students' typical questions and evolving understandings. The curriculum should take advantage of the young adolescent's growing cognitive capacities, structuring ways to move from more informal and intuitive ways of understanding toward more formal and systematic approaches to the ideas of the discipline. Developmentally appropriate curricula are also tested and revised through pilot- and field-tests in classrooms to make sure they are effective learning tools for students.

Developmentally appropriate curricula are designed to engage students. Unless students are motivated to connect to the ideas in the materials or to express their own thoughts and ideas, students will just mark time with studies that they don't "own." Many students moving to middle school leave their tractability behind as a souvenir for their elementary school teachers. As they become more autonomous, they are less willing to work hard simply because a teacher requests it. Students are more likely to put effort into their schoolwork when they perceive the contexts for lessons and activities to be interesting, important, and relevant to their lives. A developmentally appropriate middle grades curriculum capitalizes on students' growing interest in their own communities, other cultures, and other eras to motivates their studies.

The curriculum should provide opportunities for students to work in ways that promote social skills and allow them to use peers as resources for learning. Creating occasions for students to work with each other, for example, is one way to encourage collaboration while also engaging young adolescents' capacity to compare and critique ideas from different perspectives. Because middle grades students are particularly oriented toward their peer group, providing them opportunities to work together offers a way to harness their keen interest in each other toward productive educational ends.

However, we do need to offer a caution here. A common misinterpretation of standards-based reform is that it is first and foremost about offering students motivating and engaging activities. The effort to make lessons appealing and engaging may lead to trivial intellectual work -- in an effort to hook students on learning, students may be let off the hook of mastering content.

Choosing fun classroom activities, using concrete, "hands-on" lessons, or having students work in cooperative groupings do not by themselves guarantee student learning. Without clear academic goals and an understanding of how to reach them, efforts to provide engaging and interesting activities are simply form without substance. Yet, because subject area standards all stress the importance of student involvement, it's not unusual for teachers to assume that active and engaged students provide adequate evidence that substantial learning is taking place.

There is no question that it is better for students to find work engaging and interesting than to be bored and unconvinced of the value of their efforts. However, activities may prove engaging for reasons that have little to do with stretching students' understanding, and when this is the case, the criterion for academic rigor is not being met. Quality education isn't simply about having students busy and happy in the classroom -- it's about having them engaged in work that has intellectual teeth.

Integrating the three components

Only when all three components described above are present can a curriculum offer the intellectual depth and pedagogical approaches that create powerful learning opportunities for a wide range of students. Academic excellence lies at the intersection of academic rigor, equity, and developmental appropriateness.

Because the components work in concert to support learning, when one or another is missing or weak the curriculum cannot promote academic excellence. If academic rigor is missing, the curriculum will have no edge as a tool for intellectual growth and students will be without the resources for building knowledge and understanding. Yet even an admirably rigorous curriculum will fail to promote learning if it does not address students' typical patterns of developing concepts and skills, or if it fails to capture students' interest or attention. And if the curriculum is successful at promoting learning in only a narrow segment of the student population, it runs the risk of shortchanging students who have interesting minds and the potential to make significant contributions, but whose modes of learning do not match the limited approaches promoted in the curriculum. In curriculum, as in other aspects of life, a balance among important components is the key.


References

Lipsitz, J., Mizell, H., Jackson, A., & Austin, L.M. (1997). Speaking with one voice. Phi Delta Kappan. 78(7), 553.

National Sciences Resources Center. (1998). Resources for teaching middle school science. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Project 2061. (1999). Middle grades mathematics textbooks: A benchmarks-based evaluation. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Project 2061. (1999). Middle grades science textbooks: A benchmarks-based evaluation. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Third International Mathematics and Science Study. (1996). Attaining Excellence: A TIMSS Resource Kit. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Education.

U. S. Department of Education's mathematics and science expert panel. (1999) Exemplary and Promising Mathematics Programs. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Education.


Websites for professional organizations:

American Association for Advancement of Science: http://www.aaas.org

National Council for Teachers of Mathematics: http://www.nctm.org

National Council for Teachers of Social Studies: http://www.socialstudies.org

National Research Council: http://www.nationalacademies.org

Project 2061: http://www.aaas.org/project2061


[EDITOR'S NOTE: In the summer of 2000, MiddleWeb will publish several standards-based curriculum guides for the middle grades produced by EDC, Inc.]