Next Wednesday's board meeting will be held on Tuesday 9/22 and will feature a presentation of the "Aligned by Design" Curriculum Model by Dr. Charles Venengoni of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, IL.
"Aligned by Design" seeks to align the high school core curriculum with college readiness standards to improve student outcomes. The program has been brought forward by Bill Breisch and the administration who have been working on it for several months and are proposing implementation in the MG schools. It fits in well with the assesment model we have been developing in our district.
You can read more about Aligned by Design here, I'll post more references when I can.
http://www.act.org/activity/spring2005/standards.html
Friday, September 18, 2009
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9 comments:
Peter:
Dr. Venegoni has done a good job of reverse engineering the ACT and developing a curriculum to support his work. Any curriculum detailed to the standards (or in this case assessment) will provide the same benefits. Given the poor alignment between state standards, curriculum an assessments in Wisconsin and other states, Dr. Venegoni's work is considered a breakthough. It is not, and whenever the ACT is revised, it will have to be readjusted using the same highlighters and PostIts technology that resulted in his initial result. If your interest is in making your schools more student learning-centric and creating truly aligned instructional systems, you need to expand you thinking and focus on longer-term objectives. The real aligned by design strategy is to be found at alignedbydesign.org and sundryeducation.com. Take a look, and then consider if the Hershey High School achievement strategy will provide more than another incremental step for your schools, teachers and students.
Sincerely,
Steve Kussmann
is this really want we want aligning are curriculum to the act test like it is the holy grail? Perhaps, it is, but I need to give it some more thought.
I think the argument that you need a common metric ( a measurable goal or outcome) is a given. The argument Dr. Venegoni gives is that the ACT is flawed, but it is the best thing out there, from what I know I tend to agree with him. I asked him specifically if the ACT was good, or if it was just the best available - his answer was that it fell between those two. His opinion was also that creating a better metric would take 15 years! To the extent that the metric is flawed, the results will be flawed, but that doesn't mean it can't be a significant improvement.
I think it is a mistake to focus the debate too closely on the metric, the real principle is much bigger than that. The idea is that the schools need a "systematic structure" to focus all aspects of the curriculum into an interrelated whole that produces a desired outcome
"I think it is a mistake to focus the debate too closely on the metric, the real principle is much bigger than that. The idea is that the schools need a "systematic structure" to focus all aspects of the curriculum into an interrelated whole that produces a desired outcome"
I agree with the last part of your statement, but the first part is a little troublesome. In short, what you are saying is that when I do home repair my foot is OK to use instead of a tape measure.
But thanks for responding.
Of course the foot was a universal metric long before the tape measure, and despite its flaws it was an immense improvement over nothing at all. The question is whether or not a foot is the best available AND good enough for the job in the absence of the tape measure. Can we at least start with the foot while looking to improve on it?
The ACT is not an especially good predictor of success in post secondary education.
Have you asked Dr. Venegoni if the school(s) who use this system track higher ed outcomes of their graduates? Does MG? How many MG kids end up in remedial college courses?
Those are good questions. Of course concerns about the appropriateness of the metric need to be thought through, but they are secondary to the principle: identify measureable goals, and then build a structure to coordinate efforts towards that goal, while using your measurements to provide feedback on the success of your efforts.
The research is a bit ambiguous, but my best estimate of the consensus is that the ACT is a good but not great measure of college success; I’ve seen studies with correlation coefficients of .65 or so. GPA tends to do a moderately better job, but it is a factor of many variables. We have to come up with a measure for preparedness and capacity, which are related to, but not sole measures of, success.
But you avoid the question of actual outcomes, rather focusing on these "metrics" that we hope to use to predict outcomes. Why do we not seek to find out what actually happens to our grads?
"I’ve seen studies with correlation coefficients of .65 or so. GPA tends to do a moderately better job, but it is a factor of many variables."
I have never seen the coefficient that high with ACT-class rank and successfully completing gateway courses in HS are a better predictor of college success.
IMHO, you have to know the outcome BEFORE you pick the metric. As a I recall the scientific method....unless that all has changed since junior high.
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