Texas Adult Education Content Standards and Benchmarks
Spring 2006 Field Test
TAESP Writing Team Meeting
May 16 & 17, 2006
What You Said
- Experience of teaching with benchmarks
- Benefits/problems of using benchmarks
- Strategies used
- Ideas for professional development
- Implementation questions
- Assessment issues
- Suggestions
Your Experience
Positive
- Amazing feedback
- Feeling comfortable after a while
- Feeling of freedom
- Provides organization
- Helps to stay on task
- Helps in multi-level classrooms
Negative
- Confusing; Difficult
- Frustrating; Overwhelming
- Time consuming
Your Experience: A Continuum
- Changed how you teach
- Teaching multi-level classrooms
- Helpful to new teachers
Problems
Benchmarks
- Too many to cover/ 6 weeks too short
- Ambiguous, complicated terms
- Written in imperative ~ read by students, not by teachers
- Need consistency in definitions
- Harder to implement with new group of students
Evaluation forms
- Distraction
- Difficult to fill out
Lack of clear-cut assessment
Benefits
Good guide for teaching
- Helped to find student proficiency level
- Helped determine student progress
- Clear vision of path: where to, how to, and to go back
Helpful features of benchmarks
- Math benchmarks concise and easy to manage
- Overviews/level descriptors in Speaking and Listening
Strategies Used
Standards/benchmarks
- Reviewed and covered lower levels first
- Focused on 2-3 benchmarks each time
- Looked at benchmarks before and during teaching
- Re-typed benchmarks to be used and put them up in classroom
- Created a checklist reflecting benchmarks
Strategies Used
Lesson plan
- Developed lesson plan first then looked at benchmarks
Resources
- Relied on learning activities more than on benchmarks
- Consulted writing team member
Recommendation
- Use standards as foundations for objectives; books as resources
for learning activities
Ideas for Professional Development
Show relative advantages
- Provide relevance of teaching with standards
Show compatibility with current ways
- Acknowledge different teaching styles
- Student-centered---teacher-centered
- How to use test results to assess student needs
Ideas for Professional Development
Allow observability
- Learn and share successful methods, examples
- Need testimonials from teachers who’ve used benchmarks
- Led by experts knowledgeable about relative advantages
Allow trial-ability
- Modeled teaching (videotape teachers)
- Small group work and much discussion needed
Ideas for Professional Development
Reduce complexity on
- Terms, objectives, implementing benchmarks
- How to implement
- How to plan lessons (how to align with benchmarks)
- How to develop learning activities
- How to assess
- Assessment-learning cycle/teaching-learning cycle
- Adult learning theories and needs
Ideas for Professional Development
Suggested length: a continuum
- Twice, 2-3 hours each time
- 6 hours
- 2 days
Ongoing
Modes of Delivery
- Face-to-face
- Conference calls
- Online
- Videotape
Implementation Questions
Accountability?
Assessment?
Resource availability?
Documentation required?
- Evidence of use of benchmarks by teachers?
- Student progress stored on
Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) ?
Implementation Questions
Statewide implementation?
- Vision?
- Start date?
- Mandatory?
- Final product availability?
- Training for administrators?
- Burden too large on part-time teachers?
Assessment Issues
- Need to know how aligned with assessment instruments
- Need to know how to tie instruction and assessment
Suggestions
Benchmarks
- Cross reference similar benchmarks
- Need cohesiveness across benchmarks of 5 standards
- Place activities right under benchmarks
Alignment/assessment
- Tie benchmarks to textbooks
- Align benchmarks to BEST+/TABE and document
- Need assessments
Suggestions
Implementation
- Share experience of 1st field testers with next
- Provide consistent, clear message about standards implementation
Language
Format
- Landscape format better than portrait
- Need same format for all standards
- Color-code system
- Don’t provide a thick packet: will be shelved
Suggestions
Resources needed
- Learning activities
- Checklist
- Expanded glossary
- Online, hyperlinked glossary
- Complete appendix
- Implementation guide
- Communication hubs: conference calls, listservs
- Use the Web: direct questions to certain person, FAQ list
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