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Standards-Based Learning

The Purpose of a Standards-Based Learning System is to maximize the academic achievement and personal growth of each student by focusing on prioritized standards that ensure students develop skills necessary to live a life of infinite possibilities.

The students in a Standards-Based Learning System enhance their agency when they:

  • Articulate/explain the purpose of their learning
  • Identify what they are learning
  • Know what success looks like
  • Prioritize strategy and effort to demonstrate evidence of acquired knowledge and skills
  • Respond to feedback, self-assess their work, and reflect on their strategy and effort to inform or affirm next steps for learning
  • Engage in, and be responsive to, opportunities to learn

The teachers in a Standards-Based Learning System accelerate learning for each student and enhance their agency when they:

  • Establish a shared purpose for learning
  • Align learning targets & success criteria to the priority standard
  • Communicate the scale for success criteria
  • Develop tasks to gather evidence aligned to learning targets & success criteria
  • Provide feedback to students to inform or affirm next steps for learning
  • Plan engaging lessons aligned to priority standards that are differentiated & responsive to student learning needs

The administrators and specialists in a Standards-Based Learning System accelerate teacher engagement when they:

  • Engage teachers in operationalizing the standards-based learning system
  • Empower teachers to design high-quality instruction and assessment rooted in priority standards
  • Articulate building-wide goals that advance the implementation of standards-based learning
  • Design and facilitate professional learning opportunities to build teacher capacity
  • Establish and support a culture of high expectations and rigorous opportunities to learn for each student

Common Language Used in Standards-Based Learning

    • The most important standards in each discipline 
    • Locally identified as the most essential to a particular content area, grade level, or course 
    • Drivers for instruction, assessment, and feedback

    • Remaining academic standards for a specific course
    • Could be taught in conjunction with priority standards
    • Not taught at the same level of depth or complexity as priority standards
      • Mastery not expected
      • Assessment not expected

    • Broadly transferable skills of a discipline 
    • Underpinning for the knowledge of academic content in a grade level and/or course

    • Articulates a valid and reliable sequence from more basic to more complex levels of skill and understanding
    • Explains levels of thinking &  learning at various degrees of depth and complexity

    • Tool that displays a collection of related learning targets & scores for determining a student’s current level of performance
    • Articulated learning progression for a given topic (i.e., priority standard)
    • Proficiency is described at the target level of 3.0
    • Simpler content is described at level 2.0
    • More complex content at 4.0 level

    • Statements describing what students should know and be able to do (‘I can’ statements)
    • The knowledge and skills required for students to achieve proficiency in a standard