I am a sucker for alignment. As much as I try to keep the human element in mind, and as much as I love creative and divergent lessons, I am deeply attracted to rational alignment. Good policy that actually supports good practice, and practice that aligns with policy? Man, I love that! I want the right hand to know what the left hand is doing, not to be working at cross purposes and even both hands working to support each other.
Educational standards are an attempt to create alignment. We want all students to be working towards the same learning goals, regardless of what district they live in or what teacher they were assigned to. We want the combat the soft bigotry of low expectations. And we want to bring the best thinking about what is possible and what is advisable to inform what our schools do for all of our students. We write and adopt standards to guide instruction.
We also look to standards to guide assessment. We want our assessments to be aligned to instruction and we accomplish that by aligning assessment to the same standards as instruction.
The thing is, as much as I like rational alignment, when standards inform instruction they should be understood quite differently than than they inform assessment. Instruction should is guided by standards, but not hamstrung. There are many other factors that inform instruction. On the other hand, assessment really should be much more constrained by standards.
In the next few posts, I will explore those differences. I will explain how the best instruction is tied to and grounded in the standards, but also builds beyond them. And I will explore how and why standardized assessments must focus more narrowly on more limited conceptions of the standards.