Standards vary by state and by school. For example, while Texas’ state standards for education only included passing a state exam at the end of certain years in high school, my high school required all students to pass at least one AP course in order to graduate and had very specific requirements per grade level. Thus, standards can feel random and arbitrary based on factors outside the direct influence of the classroom. In most cases, standards are often thought of as a list of learning objectives or particular assessments that students must pass in order to show achievement. In this regard, standards based off of state or national standards for teaching can often be either too big or too small (Tomlinson & McTighe, 25). In either respects, it is up to educators to use from the standards what they believe is best in their classroom. This was really prevalent in my placement at the Friends School Haverford because the broad standards and the limited oversight of classrooms allowed the science teacher with good control of what she wanted to teach her middle school students. While she incorporated aspects of what other middle school teachers were teaching their students, many of the activities and projects that she utilizes are very loosely based around what students have to learn at that age. Furthermore, in the STEAM class, which isn’t a class that would have standards, the science and art teachers have more free reign on what they want students to learn and thus have a greater variety of activities and projects for students to learn from.

 

In order to address the lack of transparency in standards outside of the teacher’s control, it is important to have your own standards as an educator that exist outside of those that must be fulfilled so that students can pass a test. The curriculum should be meaningful to students and should not completely draw from the ideas of those who exist outside of the classroom (See Image). “When the curriculum, instruction, and assessment focus on such ‘big ideas’ and essential questions, they signal to students and parents that the underlying goal for all school efforts is to improve student learning of important content, not merely to traverse a textbook or practice for standardized tests” (Tomlinson & Mctighe, 27). Based on my earlier discussion of the pedagogy of liberation, many of the skills and knowledge that would be brought into the classroom would not be directly tied to national or state standards, especially since They™ don’t want people to be free and think for themselves. Furthermore, standards have to change to accommodate the needs of the time, just like other factors of the classroom like knowledge and technology in the classroom have to adjust to changing times. “Children and young people not only hold standards but also need to work toward the next level of standards. In the best of learning environments, standards have an active, dynamic quality” (Perrone, 133). Incorporating this into the classroom means understanding the standards that are given but changing the ways in which students learn information or the surrounding conversation around more specific concepts in order for student learning to remain relevant as times change.

 

Because of the variety and range of standards and their arbitrary nature, it is better to use standards as building blocks to get to an overarching theme/big idea/generative topic and then work forward to incorporate specific knowledge into the lesson plans. While students will still be able to cover the necessary information, standards should not be the driving force of the curriculum or pedagogy, and it should just act as a framework for what information should be uncovered throughout the semester. Standards are a good way for teachers to gain a sense of what should be understood at a certain grade level and can be helpful in improving teaching by making sure newer teachers are on the right track as they go through the semester.