WEBVTT

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I'm Joe Johnson.

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I am the Executive Director of the National Center

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for Urban School Transformation at San Diego State University.

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There are many things that educators do to try to improve achievement

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in a low-performing school, but perhaps the most important is focusing on improving instruction.

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Bottom line is even though there's all these various ways that people can address the needs

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of schools, ultimately if instruction

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in classrooms stays the same, achievement will stay the same.

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So improving instruction is the core work of generating better results for children.

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When it comes to the issue of curriculum alignment,

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there are two central issues that schools ought to be concerned about.

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One is just the general notion that if we don't teach it,

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our students are probably not going to learn it.

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And so if there are elements of the curriculum that we never get to, that we never address,

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then we shouldn't be surprised if when students take State Assessments at the end of the year,

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they show that they haven't learned those things.

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And so it's important to look at that issue, not simply in terms of the curriculum guides

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that we might have within our school or district,

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but in terms of the enacted curriculum-the curriculum that people are actually using

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within their classrooms, what students are actually getting the opportunity to learn.

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But there's also a balance here, because there certainly are schools

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and districts where leaders have understood the importance of curriculum alignment,

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and they've taken their state standards, and they have created pacing charts where they said,

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"Okay if we are going to cover all of this,

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then we need to make sure that we spend two days on this particular concept.

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And we have to spend a day and a half on this

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and maybe just a half a day on this particular skill."

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And so they map out the school year in a way to cover everything.

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Well the problem with that is that in many schools,

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especially many of our schools that are struggling,

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it's resulted in what I call a Drive-By Curriculum...

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focused on, "Are they covering the material?"

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not focusing on, "Are students learning the material?"