The Mississippi
State Board of Education academic achievement goals for
all students are to: 1) reach
the national average on the NAEP by 2013, and 2) exit
the 3rd grade reading at grade level by 2020.
The state
is not on track to achieve these objectives.
The lack of concise,
knowledge-centric standards was identified as the
underlying “system” issue blocking goal achievement and
an accurate alignment between Mississippi Department of
Education (MDE) objectives and classroom instruction.
The state standards were neither teachable nor
measurable, leaving teachers are unclear about what
knowledge and skills their students needed to learn for
proficiency.
Student achievement performance gaps were the result.
To resolve the problem and raise student achievement levels, MDE is
committed to use
the
Aligned·By·Design
system to:
-
Define the knowledge and
skills to be taught in each grade and course as
concise, sequenced knowledge-referenced content
standards
-
Clearly communicate
those definitions to their teachers, parents,
students and districts
-
Enable the detailed alignment of the new
knowledge-centric standards to instructional
curriculum and assessments
The
solution eliminates a critical roadblock to
Mississippi’s standards-based reform progress by
ensuring that the state’s teachers will know what they
are expected to teach and that curriculum and tests are
aligned perfectly to the standards.
The Mississippi
solution creates a unified and detailed knowledge
infrastructure for the education community.
MDE’s
approach is teacher-focused.
It applies flexibly to current instructional
practices while enabling advanced concepts such as
managed individual instruction.
MDE understands
that to be effective and durable, its system
improvements must reach and impact the classroom.
Mississippi students need to be reached, and
the state’s teachers are the primary conduit.
Using
Aligned·By·Design’s integrated communications technology, MDE will be able to clearly and
effectively communicate its desired learning objectives
to teachers as concise, knowledge-centric standards.