Academic Task Demand in the 21st-Century, High-Stakes-Accountability School: Mapping the Journey From Poor [to Fair to Good to Great] to Excellent?

What real high performance looks like

“…Which of these skills do schools regularly teach? Just three, as we found in a recent study (Szczesiul, Nehring, & Carey, 2015). And that was in nine of the highest-rated secondary schools in Massachusetts.…”

Redefining Excellence: Teaching in Transition, From Test Performance to 21st Century Skills

“…Our hunch was borne out by findings of published research: the demand for test performance incentivizes instruction focused on a shallow and narrow skill set while the call for 21st century skills demands instruction for a skill set that is deep and broad (Wilder, Jacobsen, & Rothstein, 2008). We found in the earlier study we conducted that among schools noted for test performance serving high needs communities, evidence of instruction in 21st century skills was scant at best (Szczesiul, et al, 2015). In this present study, we sought to uncover the nature of instruction in a subset of those schools, which, by their own account, were at the early stage of adapting instruction to meet the second policy demand for 21st century skills.…”

“…We used an original taxonomy of 21st century skills developed for our earlier study (Szczesiul, et al, 2015), based on a review of relevant scholarship (Brookhart, 2010;Doyle, 1983;Hattie, 2009;Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). Our taxonomy draws heavily on the work of Pellegrino and Hilton 2012, but differs from it in the cognitive domain where we chose to retain a hierarchy of cognitive skills, a la Bloom (1956) and as revised by Anderson et al (2001).…”

“…Schools serving populations of students who are overwhelmingly poor, students of color, immigrants, English learners, and so on, are more beholden to test-based accountabilities due to historical trends of underfunding and opportunity gaps. Thus, the test-driven policies affect these schools and communities in a disproportionate manner (Au, 2007;Hinde, 2003;McMurrer, 2007;Moon, Brighton, Jarvis, & Hall, 2007;Schoen & Fusarelli, 2008;Szczesiul, et al, 2015). By focusing on tests, schools diminish their capacity to foster deeper learning and intensify a learning gap between their students and students of privilege with an increasingly important skill set that goes largely unmeasured.…”

“…As previously mentioned, the three schools for this study were chosen based on outcomes of our earlier study (Szczesiul et al, 2015). The three selected school sites were among the highest performing schools in Massachusetts, based on test results, that served a high needs population.…”