In my work with our district and in consulting with several others over the years on the topics of professional learning communities and standards-based grading/reporting, the topic of aligning standards horizontally and vertically frequently comes up.  Before I share a sample process of this alignment work, I thought it might be helpful to answer two frequently asked questions:

Who should be involved in writing, creating, revising the standards we will report to students and parents?
My first response is almost always, "teachers!"  Teachers are the professionals closest to this work and I believe they should play a large role in this decision-making process.  While the district office can provide protocols and templates, we're not teaching these skills and concepts, so it doesn't make sense for us to mandate an arbitrary list without significant teacher input.

Wouldn't it be easier if we copied another district's report card or list of standards?
Sure, it might be easier in the short term.  When the standards are written in a way that doesn't make sense to those teaching them, it becomes easy to throw the standards under the bus.  When the reporting standards need revision and they were written locally, a solution becomes obvious: we can revise them!  It is also important to note that in all of the schools I have worked with, teachers report the most benefit from doing this work.  They learn more about the intent of the state/national standards.  Teachers dig deeper into the wording of the standards and pay closer attention to what a thorough understanding might look like as a result of the cognitive dissonance this process can create.

Now that we hopefully agree teachers should play a prominent role in drafting reporting standards, it only makes sense to share with you a process that seems to be gaining some traction.  It is far from perfect, but I hope it assists at least one person.  (If you find this literacy example beneficial, I'd love to hear from you in the comments).

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1. LOOK AT STATE STANDARDS
2. IDENTIFY "NEED TO KNOW' STANDARDS

A possible protocol that can be used to discern the "need to know" power standards that will appear on the report card.  

i) For each standard, individually complete the following template
ii) Reach consensus on the Yes and No's through horizontal (i.e. all of the 2nd grade teachers) discussion.

iii) If a standard has 3-4 "Yes," it should strongly be considered in the "Need to Know" (Power Standard) category to be included on the report card.

iv) Depending on the number of 4s and perhaps 3s, the team will need to determine a reasonable number of standards that can be assessed and reporting in each reporting period.

v) After horizontal agreement, meet with at least one grade level above (i.e. second grade teachers meet with third grade teachers) and at least one grade level below (i.e. fourth grade teachers meet with third grade teachers) to reach vertical consensus on the list of "need to know" power standards proposed for the report card.

[IF NEEDED, RE-WRITE THESE STANDARDS INTO PARENT/STUDENT-FRIENDLY LANGUAGE]
  • Example 6th grade reading parent/student-friendly language (from Waukee Middle School, Iowa)

3. IDENTIFY ASSESSMENTS THAT MATCH THE STANDARDS
  • Look at the assessments you are already giving to students.  
  • Match up prompts/questions that elicit students' understanding.
Sample rubric below (used with permission from Lori Davidson, Center Point - Urbana teacher)

You may find out your assessments are not as well aligned to the standards as you'd like.  This is an opportunity to revise assessments and/or create new ones that better align to the "need to know" standards. 

4. (TRY IT OUT!) GIVE STUDENTS SCORES BASED ON STANDARDS FOR ONE UNIT 
  • Administer and score at least one of the assessments you identified in Step #3 to discern the coarse or fine grain-ness of the standards (see note below).
By completing the steps above, each horizontal team of teachers will begin to figure out the appropriate number of "need to know" standards for each reporting period.  When it is challenging to score the assessments based on the standards, the standards may be too vague.  When it becomes challenging to keep up with scoring and reassessments (or if it is challenging to write reassessments), the standards may be too specific.  Finally, the number of "need to know" standards must be viable enough for the majority of students to learn them in a given year.  It is more important for students to learn...than it is to merely cover the content!