Aligning Assessments With State Curriculum Standards and Teaching Strategies

Abstract

C urriculum standards and annual assessments required by state education agencies have been touted in the general press as a means to improve teaching and learning for students. The intent behind these efforts is to increase student achievement. However, in order for student achievement to improve, standards must be matched with formative assessments and with teaching strategies designed to achieve the desired outcome. In this article, we describe how to move from one state's curriculum standards and annual summative assessment requirements to selected instructional strategies to formative assessments.We selected information about state standards and assessments from the Kansas Department of Education to illustrate the concepts we present. In addition, the Powerful Writing (Treat, 2001) strategy is used to illustrate the alignment of assessment and instruction with standards and end-of-the-year testing. The Powerful Writing strategy is one example of an effective teaching strategy educators use to build the required skills that their students are expected to demonstrate.The first part of the article presents an overview of curriculum standards, summative and formative assessments, teaching strategies for writing, how to select a strategy, and a description of the writing strategy. The second part describes how to align assessments and the teaching strategy with the curriculum standards. Curriculum Standards and Assessments Curriculum StandardsThurlow (2000) described content and performance standards as the nucleus of standards-based reform in the United States in recent times. Content standards define the knowledge and skills of students or what students This article describes the steps of moving from state curriculum standards for writing to selecting and teaching a writing strategy to designing curriculum-based assessments in writing. The relationship between assessment and instruction is strengthened as educators monitor student progress in the state curriculum standards, make sound instructional decisions, and prepare students for annual assessments required by state education agencies.