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District
13 was the first district to complete a district-wide implementation of the
Balanced Curriculum since Red Bank.
District 13 is in Brooklyn,
New York with 21 schools ranging
from K to eighth grade serving poor and minority students. District 13 was also in the process of taking
the School Development Program to all its schools.
Figure 7: Implementing and Non-Implementing
Schools Performance, District 13, NYC
In District 13 in Brooklyn, New York,
in a district-wide implementation of the balanced curriculum process, seven
schools, which implemented the process, improved. Seven percent more of the implementing
school’s students were above grade level in 1997 than in 1996. This contrasts with seven other schools in
the same district that did not implement; they had 6% fewer of their students
score above grade level as compared with the previous year. All schools reported above continued using
the School Development Program (Squires & Bullock, 1999).
We examined implementation in
much more depth and found that:
| 1. |
Improved
student achievement is associated with implementation of a balanced and aligned
curriculum. This finding links improved achievement with
curriculum development and implementation, an association not often found in
the educational literature about improving schools or dealing with
standards. The study clearly points out
that if the aligned and balanced curriculum is implemented, then student
achievement is likely to improve.
Implementation is the key aspect of curriculum. While staff development is important, staff
development, in and of itself, is not enough.
Staff development provides the information and begins building
commitment, but asking teachers to reorganize how they are using time through
implementing a curriculum takes more than staff development. That’s where our second major finding comes
into play.
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| 2. |
Improved
student achievement is associated with principals’ monitoring of the
implementation of the balanced and aligned curriculum. For the top seven improving schools, all had
high monitoring principals except two who fell into the medium monitoring
category. Principals need to be the
curriculum leaders of the school, and improved instruction is likely to follow.
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| 3. |
Curriculum
implementation is more likely to happen when teams work together. In District 13, the implementation of the
School Development Program (SDP)
where teams coming together provided necessary pre-requisite institutional
learning for building teams to implement the balanced and aligned
curriculum. Those schools who used teams succeeded more than those who did not use
teams. Principals need to recognize that
teams can help spread the responsibility.
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Initiatives
from the central office can assist schools in implementing a balanced and
aligned curriculum. District 13
decided on the importance of a balanced and aligned curriculum by allocating
resources for its development, and for staff development that continued over
the first year of implementation.
District 13 provided financial resources to help schools with materials
or the purchase of teacher time to implement the curriculum. Also, District 13 also placed schools in
Tier’s to help focus on achievement.
Through the Tier structure help could be obtained from the central
office and monitoring of the schools carried out. Those on Tier IV received the most help and
most made gains. All Tier I (self directed)
schools made achievement gains with much less support from central office. When help is appropriately structured from
central office, improved results may follow.
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