Policies to Improve Instruction and Learning in High Schools

November 18, 2008

High school students in the United States have been taking more challenging courses in recent years, but academic achievement has been stagnant. At the heart of the matter is the quality of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Some courses tend to be more challenging in name than in practice. High schools also have a history of autonomy that inhibits the coordination of curriculum and the development of a common knowledge base for teachers.

To improve the consistency and rigor of high school instruction, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) partnered with ACT, Inc. on a pilot project in three states: Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.2 ACT trained 98 teachers in 18 high schools on how to use state-of-the-art curriculum units and new instructional methods that were integrated with a system of assessments. The project focused on 10th grade courses—English language arts, geometry, and biology—and aimed to prepare more high school graduates for the demands of higher education and the workplace.

The pilot project found strong indication that when high school courses are well-aligned to academic standards, growth in achievement occurs. Geometry teachers who participated in the project moved into tighter alignment with the ACT standards and with each other. As a result, their geometry students gained almost half a point on the ACT math tests, which is better than 75 percent of schools in a given year.

Full Report: http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0810IMPROVEINSTRUCTION.PDF