oklahoma academic standards

oklahoma academic standards

Analyzing the Impact and Implementation of Oklahoma Academic Standards

1. Introduction to Oklahoma Academic Standards

In 2008, the Oklahoma State Department of Education updated the PASS Standards to the Priority Academic Student Skills, designed to be college and career ready by 2016. However, the process of implementing standards on a larger or full-scale level is new. In 2010, Oklahoma began full professional development on the standards and assessment process.

The current study seeks to fill this gap in the literature by collecting non-survey data from teachers and stakeholders at the state and district levels in schools or areas that regularly exceed, regularly meet, or regularly fall below state-mandated performance on standardized tests and how they implement the Oklahoma Academic Standards.

The discussion in this paper is the result of three interviews with the Director of Instruction and Assessment for the State Department of Education for Oklahoma, the Director of Whole Child Oklahoma for the Oklahoma Association of School Administrators, and the Supervisor of Language Arts for a school district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as three interviews with members of their respective groups. In addition, observations were made in the classrooms of the same large school district and in both the English classrooms and state offices of the interviewees. This educational work took place in May 2010. Every effort has been made to ensure their comments are correctly documented.

2. Development and Components of Oklahoma Academic Standards

One of the requirements for developing Oklahoma Academic Standards is to ensure that stakeholders who are involved represent the demographics, regions, and communities of the state. Stakeholders are appointed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The primary responsibility of the committee is to ensure that the standards are the best and highest expectations that allow Oklahomans to compete here in Oklahoma and around the world. Before a standard is recommended to be presented to the SBE for first reading, the respective committee considers and reviews the following areas to ensure the use of best practices: Reading/literacy, Math, Writing, Assimilation and Implementation, Research, Standards Structure, Content Development, Standards Format, Feedback and Review, Career Technology, Media, Parental Involvement, and Visual/Performing Arts. Finally, the committee evaluates the apps of the standards that were revised or edited for the future to minimize the need for updates or revisions.

It can be overwhelming when the question of what academic standards are is raised. They should be the foundational platform that identifies advanced content with critical skills necessary to succeed in college or career. Oklahoma Academic Standards are not just a curriculum; they are a shared understanding for what children are expected to be taught and gain knowledge through their teaching and experiences in the learning process. Issued and mandated by the SBE, the standards identify what students need to learn through loopholes of End of Instruction exams, accountability, and federal funding. These curricular perspectives have been designed to provide examples for understanding and successful proficiency among the many dimensions for each student, adult participants in the learning process, and community collaborators that have high expectations and communicate clear understandings of the curriculum. There should not be surprises and ambiguity built into the interactions of any of the learning complexes in the environments of America’s public schools.

3. Assessment and Evaluation of Oklahoma Academic Standards

Normative theoretical frameworks are important for assessments. How do we know that students are learning? Contemporary normative criteria may include a focus of standards on accountability, which entails high expectations and common curriculum and assessment experiences. High stakes: Performance standards (setting cut scores to measure proficiency) are important for accountability. Common experience assessments use aligned assessments to measure student learning experiences and level the playing field. Common experience assessments reduce disparities and help to establish equity in assessments. Alignment between curriculum, instruction, and assessments is strengthened by standards-aligned assessments. Assessments that are not aligned may muddy the waters, inhibit or skew instructional focus for students, not cover all standards, and fail to ensure that all students have equal access to experiences.

An authentic and model assessment of skills, including required field tests, scales, and measurement evaluations, are seen as evaluation criteria. State assessments have specific purposes. Assessment benchmarks can be compared annually to report, evaluate, and compare school district, school, and student performance. The results from state assessments can be used to determine promotion or retention of the student, placement or exclusion of the student in the programs. Promotions and graduation measures are often based on these assessments. Financial intervention can impact revenue based on assessment results, and interventions could be major change events. Growth measures can be used to gauge progress over time and to compare groups. Information for school and parental planning, as well as choice and accountability, are provided by student results.

4. Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing Oklahoma Academic Standards

Understanding how these teachers prepared themselves for implementation also underscores the importance in understanding the challenges and opportunities they will experience. Research examining teacher perspectives on standards-based education has provided rich insights into the extent to which teachers find the implementation of standards-based work achievable in practice and where those challenges lie. Another line of research has focused on the obstacles to implementation, identifying how these limitations can hinder an understanding of student core content knowledge. Teacher perspectives on what happens when steering implementation of standards-based lessons provide similar rationale, and highlight the intent and content of resources that work to improve teaching and learning.

Lack of preparation appears to be the biggest challenge, with teachers worried about lack of resources, confusion over the standards, and no or minimal professional learning opportunities. The structural changes in the K-12 education system alone appear unworkable without effective organizational, curricular, and professional learning included across the system. Few researchers have reviewed or examined if or how teachers feel ready to use the standards and have sufficient preparation on them to tailor their instruction to the goals within them. Instead, policy has focused on mandates promulgating implementation, with a substantial focus on professional development to follow. Yet these emphases tend not to probe deeper into what the professional development looks like and, importantly, what teachers should then be prepared to deliver in schools and classrooms.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations for Future Directions

Overall, this study showed that while teachers reported Annenberg-supported impacts of the OAS such as increased depth of student learning, student engagement, student abilities to explain or justify, student application of problem-solving skills, and student abilities to ask and answer their own questions, their opportunities to support planning for the OAS and implement those teaching strategies were limited. Additionally, though professional development and collaborative work were identified as important for implementation, teachers reported limited time to engage in these opportunities. Participating teachers recommended that further professional development support be offered in problem-based learning and differentiated instruction, general OAS training, and integration of technology. As the state continues to search for ways to support teachers in their efforts to implement the OAS, they should consider these recommendations. Furthermore, the development of standards and state assessments dictate the type of teaching strategies that teachers use in their classrooms, and the OAS represent a positive opportunity for meaningful change in teaching and learning in Oklahoma while we work to address the barriers to change.

Throughout the implementation of the OAS, and shifts in instructional strategies associated with those standards, there will continuously be questions regarding the potential impact of those standards and students’ performances on more traditional assessments. Teachers expressed concerns regarding the impacts of standards on state assessments since they have experienced prior educational policy implementation where the focus was on basic skills rather than higher-level skills as required by the OAS. These concerns were furthered as the implementation of the OAS was questioned and the flaws in the OAS were debated by participants over a four-month period through an active link through social media. Data indicated teachers believe that state legislature, the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and test development/assessment teams’ academic content knowledge and collaborative input beyond what occurred during the OAS drafting phase would be beneficial. All owe it to the total stakeholders of the educational system to work collaboratively as the accountability aspect of the standards will now be placed on the teachers and ultimately students. As Dr. William McCallum, the mathematics standards architect, stated in a presentation of Oklahoma City Public Schools on May 15, 2016, Oklahoma can find friends and answer the criticisms associated with the implementation of the OAS by focusing on supporting implementation with research-based lessons, long-term investments in professional development, and collaboration in the professional development efforts to name a few.