Implementing the Comprehensive Aligned Instructional System
Comprehensive Instructional Alignment is essential for student achievement
progress. Learning is education’s core mission; teaching its core practice.
Teaching (instruction) and the advancement of student learning are the primary
mission and central focus of every process and activity in a comprehensive
aligned instructional system.
A Briefing Paper on implementation of the comprehensive aligned instructional
system discusses why a truly aligned system is critical as states and school
districts prepare to adopt the new common core state standards.
It discusses how an aligned system will ensure that every student has access to
a strong academic program regardless of their classroom or school location and
every teacher is supported and enabled by the entire system to make effective
instructional decisions for each and every student they teach.
The reality today is that no state has in place the aligned instructional system
infrastructure its education agency, school districts and teachers require to
effectively implement the new standards. State and district systems are not
vertically aligned, nor do they have a meaningful degree of horizontal alignment
of classroom curriculum with content standards and assessments.
The lack of a truly aligned and integrated instructional model constrains state
and school district efforts to raise student achievement, close learning gaps
and reduce dropout rates. The consequences of these systemic limitations are
compounded by the academic success of our competitor nations whose teachers and
students benefit from their highly-effective aligned instructional systems.
The highest-performing nations have a common and well-aligned set of structural
elements, including a clear and unified set of explicit standards for all
students, examinations that mirror the standards, curriculum frameworks that
clearly specify the topics to be studied at each grade, and instruction and
curriculum materials precisely matched to the standards.
Alignment between educational process elements is essential for outcomes to meet
or exceed process objectives, i.e. high-level student achievement. Achieving
student learning objectives requires that system alignment be done at a discrete
and natural level which respects, supports and advances education core mission -
student learning and teaching. The common denominator for all teaching
(instruction) and student achievement is the progressive, sequential and
coherent transfer of knowledge and skills items to individual students.
Instructional alignment today is a difficult and mostly manual exercise. Where
it has been performed, the resulting ‘alignment’ generally was found to be only
“fair” or “related,” but far from perfect, and the relationships between
elements was seldom double-checked for accuracy. In these cases, ‘alignment’ is
at a high level with no credible unit of measure for validation and no process
for replication or revision.
As education’s unifying factor, content knowledge supports and aligns all of the
elements involved in teaching and learning, including policy, standards,
curriculum, assessments, materials and processes. Systemically, they can be
linked and sequenced to their respective knowledge and skill item details. The
Aligned·By·Design Model systemically and accurately applies education’s common
denominator. It uses discrete units of knowledge and skills to measure alignment
precisely and quickly and provides tools for achieving perfect instructional
alignment.
It allows teaching and learning to be articulated vertically from state policy
to classroom practice and horizontally across the numerous district- and
school-level instructional tiers. For U.S. educators, specifically linking
everything in the instructional process back to content knowledge and skills and
using their transfer to students as the quality measure is a pioneering
innovation that transcends the limitations of historical reform options and
approaches.
At this granular level, the Aligned·By·Design Model ensures that content
standards unambiguously identify and reference the precise knowledge and skills
intended to be taught and assessed in the classroom. For education materials,
the Model removes the opportunity for ambiguity. Districts can be confident that
the curriculum is precisely aligned to the standard, teachers know the
sequential content knowledge and skills students need to taught, parents know
what their children need to learn and states what to assess.
Aligned·By·Design integrates and aligns the entire education enterprise,
including every component that impacts the success of the instructional program.
It inherently links the state agency, school district, school and classroom
processes and tasks to teaching and learning, as it delineates and aligns the
respective roles and responsibilities of everyone, including those responsible
for the system operations and support services.
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To learn more about how the Aligned·By·Design Comprehensive Aligned Instructional System can transform teaching and instruction in your community,
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