DISTRICT 161 POLICY NO. 6:10
INSTRUCTION
BOARD OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY & OBJECTIVES
Instructional Philosophy
District 161 will provide each student with a rigorous academic education in all traditional subject areas. A rigorous academic education provides each student with a broad-based foundation of facts, knowledge and skills and with the ability to use these tools to address a wide range of problems. Mastery of the District 161 curriculum will provide each graduate of Parker Junior High the educational base required to excel in high school and beyond.
Programs in the core areas of mathematics, reading and writing (language arts) focus on the development of skills and the transmission of a solid core of academic knowledge. Skills will be developed to the level of automaticity. Programs in science, social studies and other applied fields focus on the transmission of a core body of academic knowledge and the application of basic skills. Academic rigor is demanded in all subject areas. It is essential that each student develop the ability to synthesize and analyze information and communicate his or her ideas in clear and concise written and oral forms. The achievement of these objectives is a goal for each student and we will be tireless in our efforts to provide opportunities to achieve them. Although we may establish affective goals for our students as well, academic (cognitive) goals have the higher priority in our overall program. Simply put, academics come first.
Basic Skills
Facility with the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics to the point of automaticity and the ability to organize and systematize information provide the foundation on which all higher order thinking skills are based. The educational program of District 161 focuses on building this 
basic foundation first. The academic standards which underlie our curriculum lay out a sequential set of skills and competencies that must be mastered. The educational program enables students to meet these standards through a process of instruction in the basic skills together with extensive drill and practice with skills and their application. Through all areas of the curriculum students will to develop and hone the basic skills. Instruction and practice are key. Students must be explicitly taught the skills of reading, writing, mathematics and communication. The successful application of these skills requires practice. Students must write to be good writers; they must read to be effective readers; they must do math to learn math; and they must practice organizing and systematizing information in order to be effective at applying their skills. The educational program of District 161 strives to provide each student with the opportunity to practice and improve these skills wherever and whenever possible.
Core Knowledge
Academic skills and the ability to apply these skills provide the framework for a solid academic education. A core of academic knowledge is required to cement this framework in place and provide a complete academic foundation. The most powerful tool for learning is not an abstract set of procedures (such as "problem solving") but a broad base of knowledge in many fields. District 161 will provide all students with a common core of knowledge in each of the traditional separate areas of art, geography, health, history, language arts, literature, mathematics, music, and science as well as the lexicon required for effective communication. Familiarity with and the ability to effectively use information technology (computers, library resources, and the Internet) is an essential component of this knowledge base. The content of the common core of knowledge is laid out in the detailed set of academic standards which underlie our curriculum. The content of this knowledge base is adopted and used
District-wide and provides the broad base of knowledge required for success in high school. While "deep" knowledge is valuable, broad knowledge is our primary goal.
Applications
Applications represent an extension of and not a substitute for 
basic skills. Academic applications in the areas of science, social studies, health and other areas represent an excellent opportunity to both teach area specific knowledge and hone the basic skills. The development of skills should generally precede the application of skills; using applications to "back into" skills is generally discouraged. Requiring students to gather, synthesize and analyze information and convey this information in written and/or oral form provides essential practice with the basic skills. The use of real world or real life applications is not nearly as important as the rigor that is required of students and the range of skills and knowledge required to complete the analysis. Written exercises are stressed for both in-class and out-of-class assignments and exams.
Academic Standards
Our curriculum is based on a detailed sequential set of academic standards. Calling something a "standard" is not enough. There are many so-called standards being promoted by various national organizations that are not "standards" as described in this document. Our standards lay out, grade by grade, the individual skills, elements of knowledge and levels of competence we expect students to achieve in order to meet basic, high and advanced levels of accomplishment. Our standards are set well above national norms. While the actual standards should be detailed and outline specific skills and content, the choice of the overall level of these standards and the rate at which they must be achieved can be addressed at a more aggregate level (see attachment A).
Our system of standards provides:
* A minimal standard of children performing at national grade level.
* A high local standard (where we target our central curriculum) set significantly above national norms.
* An advanced standard set at a level that measures the success of individual students and our program as a whole at achieving outstanding educational progress.
While our standards provide for multiple levels of educational progress, all students are working toward mastery of the same set of educational goals (a common core curriculum of knowledge and skills).
Local assessments are used to measure our success at meeting each element of these standards. Appropriately chosen nationally normed assessments are used to insure that our standards remain at the chosen levels.
Assessments
A high quality academic program requires an integrated system of assessments. Our assessment process serves several roles and is addressed at several levels. At the individual level, assessment is used to measure individual performance and monitor progress (to see what has 
been mastered and what has not) and as a diagnostic tool to guide instruction. At the school and
District-wide level assessment is used to monitor our overall educational progress and to evaluate particular elements of our instructional program (find out what we are doing well and what we are not). Nationally normed achievement and diagnostic tests, State tests (IGAP) and local assessments each fill an essential role. Nationally normed tests provide a barometer of our overall performance relative to the nation, the IGAP tests measure our success at meeting State level goals, and local assessments allow us to measure individual and District-wide success at meeting our District's goals and standards. Local assessments provide the most appropriate instrument for student placement.
Assessment is important but what we do with assessment is what really matters. A well designed assessment program has a well chosen set of assessments combined with a mechanism to make those assessments useful and informative to parents, teachers, administrators and the Board in discharging its policy-setting responsibilities. The results of assessments are used to guide the instruction of individual students and improve the quality of our educational program.
Educational Strategies
The choice of educational techniques is based on reliable and valid empirical research on what works in the classroom. (For example, our reading program includes explicit, systematic, progressive phonics instruction.) While demonstrably effective alternative strategies may be employed where appropriate, traditional strategies of direct instruction form the core of our educational program. We see the teacher as central to the learning process, as the one who imparts knowledge and skills to students, and not as a mere facilitator on the side. The choice of delivery methods and the choice between individual and group work will be driven by the educational bottom line -- which method is the most effective at building a student's knowledge base and skills. The use of educational techniques will be coordinated across classrooms. Coordination will facilitate learning, effective articulation across grades and movement between schools. Assessments should be based on individual rather than group work to the greatest extent possible. Grouping and instructional strategies that encourage maximum individual progress toward achieving cognitive goals are encouraged; grouping and instructional strategies that do not are not. Strategies that deflect students from pursuing their own progress by employing them to teach other students are discouraged.
Educational Environment
The educational environment of District 161 must support learning. An excellent educational program requires a first-rate motivated staff. We set high expectations for our teachers and staff; we strive to identify and hire teachers that meet and exceed our expectations; we provide them with quality opportunities for professional development; and we are prepared to reward those who consistently exceed our expectations.
Students must be active participants in their own education. Our system fosters the belief that success and failure are closely linked to the amount of effort one exerts; students are not encouraged to attribute their success or failure to external circumstances such as luck or inherent ability. We hold students individually responsible for taking advantage of the educational opportunities we provide them. Hard work is rewarded. We reward the behaviors we want to encourage and do not reward behaviors we wish to discourage. The consequences of both good and bad behaviors are clear and definite. We foster an environment where self-esteem is enhanced by genuine success and not elevated artificially in the hope of thereby generating success. It is our District's fundamental obligation to provide all students with the opportunity to succeed, not to redefine success so that all students achieve it. We also recognize that failure can be a powerful learning experience on the way to success; we do not set out to create schools as "failure free" zones. Our goal is to create equal and equitable opportunities, not artificially-created equal outcomes.
The active involvement of parents in our educational program is essential. Parents, teachers and students must work together if we are going to maximize our success. We offer a wide range of support to our students such as: regular classroom instruction, consistent systematic homework, school based tutorial programs, extra time programs such as summer school, and a resource base of supplementary materials for remediation, on level enrichment and acceleration.
Implications
The educational philosophy laid out herein would accurately be characterized as "traditional." From this philosophy one could deduce a healthy skepticism for many pedagogical off-shoots of the so-called "learner-centered" or "constructivist" educational philosophy. It would be accurate to say that extreme manifestations of those off-shoots will find it difficult to meet the requirement that our strategies be based upon "reliable and valid empirical research" and be designed to meet the cognitive goals discussed herein. However, it is not the purpose of this document to make any particular strategy presumptively invalid. Rather, all that is required is that each educational strategy be demonstrably consistent with the other elements of the District's educational philosophy as stated in this document.
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Author: Board of Education
Adopted: 2/23/98
Legal Review: None
FLOSSMOOR SCHOOL DISTRICT 161 POLICY NO. 6000
ATTACHMENT A: ACADEMIC STANDARDS
Our system of standards sets basic standards at national grade levels, our local (high) standards at a level equivalent to the 75th percentile of national norms and our advanced standards at the 90th percentile level. Setting local standards at the 75th percentile means setting standards for individual curriculum elements at a sufficiently high level, that students meeting these standards would be expected to achieve at the 75th percentile nationally. Our performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in Fall 1997 provides a useful guide for evaluating the appropriateness of these levels. Table 1 gives the percentage of students in District 161 that would achieve each of these levels in the broad areas of mathematics, reading and language arts based on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills administered in October 1997.
Table 1: ITBS National Percentile Rank Distributions for Grades 3-7 (Oct. 1997)
Skill Area
% Meeting Basic
Standard (50th NPR)
% Meeting High
Standard (75th NPR)
% Meeting Adv.
Standard (90th NPR)
Language Arts 70% 41% 18%
Reading
Comprehension 71% 38% 16%
Mathematics 65% 40% 21%
Given our desire to improve performance, tentative short-term goals are to increase the percentage of students achieving the basic, high and advanced standards to 80%, 50% and 30%, respectively, as shown in Table 2. For subject areas without differentiated curriculum we set a single set of standards at the high, 75th percentile, level.
It is important to understand that these aggregate goals are intended to provide a yardstick for measuring our overall progress and a guideline for setting the levels of our specific standards. At the individual level, our goal is to challenge each student to reach the highest possible of these standards and our curriculum must provide them with the opportunities to do so.
Table 2: Goals for Meeting Local Standards
District 161
Performance Goals
% Meeting Basic
Standard (50th NPR)
% Meeting High
Standard (75th NPR)
% Meeting Adv.
Standard (90th NPR)
80% 50% 30%
Our academic standards represent a set of specific skills and content together with a timetable for when each element would be mastered (calibrated to the overall levels laid out in Table 2). Table 3 provides a simple hypothetical example.
Table 3: Simple Examples of Academic Standards
Specific Skill Basic (National)
Standard High (local)
Standard Advanced
Standard Multiplication Facts:
Student will have committed to memory the multiplication facts from 0 to 10.
3rd Grade Qtr 3
3rd Grade Qtr 1
2nd Grade Qtr 3 State Capitals:
Student will have committed to memory the names and spellings of all 50 States and State Capitals.
