SUCCESS FOR ALL:

THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM

By

MEGAN MARGUERITE JENNINGS

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN EDUCATION

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Teaching and Leaning

MAY 2007

ii

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of

MEGAN MARGUERITE JENNINGS find it satisfactory and recommend that it

be accepted.

___________________________________ Chair

___________________________________

___________________________________

___________________________________

iii

SUCCESS FOR ALL:

THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM

Abstract

By Megan Marguerite Jennings M.A. Washington State University

May 2007

Chair: Dawn Shinew In the current climate of educational accountability, schools across the nation are

adopting school reform programs to help their students achieve passing scores on their state’s

standardized exams. Success for All is one such program that is being increasingly implemented

in Title I schools. Although there has been significant research that indicates the program’s

effectiveness in its explicit curriculum, there has been insufficient research into the program’s

implicit curriculum. This study aims to explore the types of teaching and learning experiences

occurring in Success for All classrooms across the nation. More specifically, this study aims to

investigate what teachers and students are learning about themselves as professionals and as

learners.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………….………………….iii

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………….…1

Success for All…………………………………………………………….…2

Literature Review…………………………………………………………….5

Theoretical Framework…………………………………………………..…12

2. METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………..14

3. RESULTS…………………………………………………………….…………23

Table 1…………………………………………………………….………...23

4. DISCUSSION…………………………………………………………………...51

5. CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………...…78

Limitations…………………………………………………………….……..83

Implications…………………………………………………………….……84

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………….………………...99

APPENDIX

A…………………………………………………………….……….………………85

B…………………………………………………………….……….………………88

C…………………………………………………………….……..…………...……90

D…………………………………………………………….……………….………98

v

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my mother and father and

their lives as educators.

1CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Schools’ accountability for preparing students to meet challenging national standards has

resulted in the development of a great number of reading programs. Some research on one such

program, Success for All (SFA), indicates the program is effective in increasing student

achievement as measured by standardized tests. However, while the program may show promise

in its explicit curriculum objectives, there has not yet been sufficient research on the program’s

implicit curriculum to understand the overall impact of the program on the educational

experiences of both teachers and students.

The typical Title I school is too often characterized by high rates of teacher attrition,

inappropriately large class sizes, inadequate funding and failing facilities. Among our nation’s

poorest communities, it is not hard to understand the low test scores and high drop out rates of

students in these challenging school environments. More complex is the issue of how to best

address the students’ unique learning needs and implement effective teaching strategies to

increase student success. Accountability, mandated curriculum, standards, and the demands of

high stakes tests are threatening teachers’ control of knowledge (Lipman, 2004) while also

redefining what it means for a student to be successful.

In 1994, studies indicating SFA’s positive effects on students’ test scores encouraged

Congress to reshape Title I policy to favor comprehensive school wide reform models and

approaches (Pogrow, 2000). The reform aligned the program with the accountability movement

by changing its focus from process and supplemental services towards school reform and

academic results (Wong & Wang, 2002). In 1997, the United States Congress appropriated $150

million to support schools’ adoption of research based reform programs (Wong & Wang, 2002).

2These funds, provided to schools by the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration, are

restricted in the sense that federal legislation identifies the criteria that models must satisfy in

order to be fiscally supported (ECS, 1998). In a review of 24 well-known programs, the

American Institutes of Research identified SFA as one of only two elementary school reform

models to be rated as “strong” (Herman, 1999). Additional studies showed positive effects of

SFA on students’ achievement with at least three studies demonstrating that the results were

statistically significant. In accordance with educational reform based on accountability, these

studies measured the effectiveness of the program’s explicit curriculum as it measured students’

performance on standardized tests. Identified as a school reform model that improves students’

standardized test scores, SFA is recommended to schools held accountable for their students’

failing scores (Slavin & Madden, 2001).

Absent from this research it would seem, is consideration of the program’s implicit

curriculum. To be confident in the overall benefit of the standards based reform model SFA, the

ancillary consequences must be examined as critical factors that shape students’ overall

experience and success with the program. This research investigates the implicit curriculum

embedded in the program in terms of what the students and teachers actually walk away from the

program knowing and understanding about themselves as individuals and as learners or

professionals.

Success for All

Success for All is a school wide restructuring program for students in grades pre-

Kindergarten to eight (Slavin & Madden, 2001) that is commonly implemented in high need,

Title I schools (McKinney, 2005). SFA is built around a set of assumptions that challenge the

unspoken belief that students who slip through the cracks in school are defective in someway

3(Slavin & Madden, 2001). Of those assumptions, Slavin et al. (1996) contend that the most

important notion is that “every child can and must learn and in particular, learn to become a

successful reader”(p.4).

The goals of the program stem directly from its beliefs (McKinney, 2005) in (a) the

learning capability of every child, (b) the importance of success in the early grades to achieve

future success in school, (c) the potential of early intervention, improved curriculum and

instruction, individual attention, and support of families to prevent learning deficits, and (d) the

comprehensive and rigorous nature of effective school reform programs (Balkcom &

Himmelfarb, 1993). Based on these beliefs, SFA strives to ensure that every student will be able

to read at grade level by the end of the third grade (McKinney, 2005).

Recognizing the negative effect that the failure to read well can have on children’s

motivation and self expectation, Slavin and Madden (2001) identify the acquisition of reading

and language arts skills as the foundation of school success in the early grades. Failing students,

they contend, begin to lack motivation and self-esteem which leads to poor achievement and

continues a cycle that ultimately leads to delinquency, despair, and dropping out.

Addressing learning deficits at an early stage in students’ development, when motivation

and confidence are still high, is one component of SFA that its developers believe is required for

students to achieve long-term academic success (Slavin, et al., 1996). In addition to its

preventive role, the program claims to take a relentless stance on working with each individual

student until success is achieved (McKinney, 2005) and a sense of self-confidence instilled in the

learner. The characteristic of SFA that distinguishes it from other reform models is its

coordinated, school wide attempt to convert positive expectation into measurable academic

successes (Slavin & Madden, 2001).

4 Consequently, Slavin and Madden (2001) state that the first goal of SFA (as, they argue,

it should be with any educational reform model), is to “make certain that we do not squander the

greatest resource [teachers] have: the enthusiasm and positive self-expectations of young

children” (p. 5). The assumption here is that in order for educators to protect the resource and

achieve the goal of sustaining children’s enthusiasm, schools must make sure students learn to

read at grade level and that they experience measurable success. Any reform that does less than

this, they argue, is hollow and self-defeating.

As a standards based reform model, however, the tasks that SFA aims to help students

achieve are set by state’s particular curriculum guidelines (Wong & Wang, 2002) and tested by

the state’s standardized, high-stakes tests. It would seem therefore, that while SFA’s design is

based on the premise that motivation, enthusiasm and optimism for learning are essential for a

student’s academic success, these are desired effects of the program and not the goals; the ways

in which the program’s objectives are actually played out in the classroom setting is focused

solely on getting students to read at grade level and obtain a passing test score.

In the current climate of educational accountability and standardization of knowledge, the

emphasis is placed on preparing students for standardized tests. Success and what it means to be

a good student is redefined and conversation about kindness, differences, culture, joy, and

personal meaning in education (Lipman, 2004) are not considered relevant parts of the objectives

that Slavin and Madden (2001) assert are so important in students’ learning experiences.

The major components of the program are credited for its overall success in improving

students’ test scores. Characteristic of an aggressive approach to modifying a school’s current

teaching and its students’ learning, SFA is a highly scripted program (Datnow & Castellano,

2000). Nearly all of the materials, including reading booklets, additional text related materials,

5workbooks, activities and assessments, are prescribed and their use required of SFA schools.

Ninety minutes of every school day are dedicated to reading and reading instruction that

emphasizes oral reading and cooperative activities (King, 1994). During the reading periods,

students are grouped by ability level regardless of grade or age. Students identified as requiring

additional aide in reading are pulled out of non-core subject lessons for one-to-one tutoring.

Other major components of the program include regular eight-week assessments, cooperative

learning and family involvement (Datnow & Castellano, 2000).

Literature Review

The dominant policy agenda at the national level influences educational discourse

(Lipman, 2004) within schools where it is felt most acutely by teachers and students. Defined by

policy, micro-level meanings (Murnane & Levy, 1996) shape students’ and teachers’ school

experiences by legitimatising a certain set of knowledge, values, and behaviors. In addition,

educators and students alike receive messages concerning their roles and responsibilities both in

the classroom and as a member of the larger society (Lipman, 2004). As cited in High Stakes

Education: Inequality, Globalization and Urban School Reform, Foucault (1995/1997) explains

that policies are ways of talking and behaving that shape perceptions and construct social

identities by limiting possibilities for thinking and acting differently. Regardless of the

acknowledged connection between the system-wide dimensions of official policies and the moral

and intellectual lives of teachers and students, there has been insufficient research into the

implications of those meanings (Lipman, 2004; Murnane & Levy, 1996) as they relate to SFA.

Motivation

In 2001, the Commission on Instructionally Supporting Assessment suggested that

summative testing practices negatively impact the experiences of those involved in teaching and

6learning. Reforms such as No Child Left Behind, which rely on high-stakes testing and systems

of rewards and sanctions, ignore established scientific theories of motivation and instead appeal

to market-oriented goals of competition (Hickey & Zuiker, 2005). The theories of motivation

take into account the importance of personal interest and value in education (Stanchfield, 1977;

Newmann & Gamoran, 1996), students’ self perception (Rueda et al., 2001), and teacher effects

on learners (Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004).

As early as 1968 in the school reform movement, researchers called for increased

attention to student motivation. As cited in Stanchfield (1977), Percival Symonds states, "we

learn only when we are motivated to learn” (p.14). Stanchfield (1977) extends the discussion to

involve a cycle in which interest is necessary to establish motivation and generate new interests

which in turn motivates future learning. Recent school reform movements based on

accountability measures have been criticized for neglecting to develop students’ intrinsic

motivation to learn based on personal interests. Furthermore, extrinsic motivation associated

with the accountability movement may weaken academic performance because students will do

the least amount of work possible to ensure rewards (Porter, 1989). Students will in turn be

unmotivated to use those skills in the future to become more knowledgeable and educated

(Stanchfield, 1977). As cited in Porter (1989) Ryan argues that the absence of rewards for, or

constraints on, learning and the presence of choice can induce in students a sense of increased

intrinsic motivation.

Newmann, Marks, and Gamoran (1996) argue that in addition to creating opportunities

for students to explore areas of personal interest as they relate to their studies, students must also

perceive that their knowledge has value apart from its contribution to their record of success.

Students, they argue, continuously attempt to make sense of what they encounter in school by

7evaluating the social context of values, expectations, rewards, and sanctions that surround new

information. Students who experience learning in the school setting as a means of reproducing

meaning and knowledge solely to pass tests “will likely consider school to be only a restricted

and insignificant arena of personal experience” (p.286).

As students attempt to make sense of the authenticity of the academic information in their

lives, they are simultaneously evaluating their own positions within the knowledge community.

As cited in Hickey and Zuiker (2005), Rueda, Macgillvray, Munzo, and Arzubiaga (2001)

contend that a child’s motivation to learn is equally dependent on how the student sees him or

herself as a learner. Students negotiate their identities as learners based on their participation or

non-participation in the values and standards set in the school environment. Hickey and Zuiker

(2005) explain how the ways in which a child conforms to or is alienated from the learning

community, its standards and values, may contribute to our understanding of the non-

participation of at-risk students in the school setting.

The discussion surrounding motivation also extends to teacher experience. Findings of a

study conducted by Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges (2004) suggest that teacher effects on

students are larger than school effects especially in low socio-economic status schools. In other

words, it matters more what teacher students have in under served school systems than it does in

high socio-economic school systems. These findings may have significant value in decisions

concerning school reform models. If teacher effects are larger than school effects, policies

focusing on teacher effects as a larger source of variation in students’ achievement may be more

promising than focusing on school-wide reform programs.

The question remains however, of how to minimize variation in student achievement by

improving and balancing teacher effect. Recently, high stakes testing has restricted teachers’

8choice in what they teach, how they teach, and what criteria are used for assessing teaching and

learning (Porter, 1989). As a result of the demands placed on teachers by standardized tests,

instruction overemphasizes areas that are easy to specify and evaluate while neglecting to

develop students’ conceptual understanding and problem solving skills (Porter, 1989). In other

words, teachers focus on those areas that are most likely to be tested (Hess & Brigham, 2000;

Abrams, Pedulla & Madaus, 2003) rather than on material they believe is appropriate and

important.

The reduced ability of teachers to explore students’ interests, personal talents and

strengths in effect, leads to a de-professionalization of teachers (Abrams, Pedulla & Madaus,

2003). As cited in Abrams, Pedulla and Madaus (2003), Jones et al. found that more than 77% of

teachers indicated decreases in morale and 76% indicated that teaching was more stressful as a

result of statewide testing programs. The motivation of teachers and students for teaching and

learning is diminished when they are forced to cover material neither party is convinced is

appropriate (Porter, 1989).

Teachers however, have the potential to be the greatest motivational factor in the

classroom (Stanchfield, 1977). Unlike a top-down approach that uses rewards and sanctions to

improve teaching and learning, teacher commitment, productivity and success is associated with

teacher empowerment. Good teaching occurs when teachers themselves accept responsibility for

student outcomes (Porter, 1989). Teachers may come to accept less responsibility for student

success (Porter, 1989) when they are not empowered to make professional decisions in the best

interests of their students. In response teachers often “perform” or do what they are told to do but

in uninspired and lifeless ways. A teacher, Schmidt and Prawat (1999) argue, “who goes through

9the motions presenting a lesson will produce students who go through the motions in learning

those lessons” (p.90).

School Reform at the School and System Wide Level

At the macro-level, the school reform rhetoric of any given time involves varied

discourses with wide ranging values and practices. School reform has different meanings for

different people. For example, school reform in the past may have emphasized creating equitable

schools and responsible citizens, whereas today’s emphasis is on increasing schools’

accountability and academic achievement (Pink & Noblit (Eds.), 2005). Thus, involved in

today’s rhetoric is a shift in curriculum toward competence-based skills (Morrow & Torres,

2000). At the expense of developing more fundamental forms of critical thinking required for

independent learning and active citizenship, standards based reform programs focus on

functional literacy. As cited in High Stakes Education: Inequality, globalization and urban

school reform (Lipman, 2004), Murnane and Levy (1996) include working collaboratively,

solving problems and improving reading and math ability in the “new” basic skills emphasized

by reform programs.

Rather than promote higher level, critical thinking skills necessary for participation in

democracy, development of the “new” basic skills prepare students for the workforce through

what Morrow and Torres (2000) refer to as human capital development. For those students who

achieve the preparatory skills, the work opportunities available to them remain limited to low-

skill, low-wage service jobs. Lipman (2004) suggests that the low level of the “new” basic skills

and the emphasis on test-driven practices do not develop students’ critical literacy but instead

promote educational tracking and the production of a new labor force.

10 At the micro-level, Lipman (2004) suggests that policies supporting the shift in

curriculum also undermine efforts to develop students’ culturally centered identities and the

skills necessary to critically assess and challenge societal inequalities. Social inequity therefore,

is perpetuated when students of a specific grouping are prepared for life choices differently than

those in other ethnic, racial or gender groupings. No middle-class school district Lipman

contends, would likely accept the pedagogical structure of a scripted reform model as an

acceptable substitute for thoughtful teaching decisions; “pedagogical judgment, socio-political

knowledge, and cultural sensitivity” (p.175) she contends, are recognized as too important an

element of effective teaching for schools to accept a one-size-fits-all model.

There is a trend among the nation’s Title I schools however, to either voluntarily or under

state mandate, implement scripted reform models to ameliorate the deficits that poor children

bring with them to school (Wong & Wang, 2002). For example, as cited in Wong and Wang

(2002), the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the thorough and efficient education described

in the state’s constitution must include a supplemental reform program such as SFA. In other

literature, shifts in students’ socio-economic backgrounds have been cited as creating the

imperative for certain districts to adopt whole school reform models (Datnow & Castellano,

2000). As a result of district policy on standards based school reform, SFA has experienced

exponential growth in recent years (Slavin & Madden, 2001) and the teaching, learning, and

daily life that occur in the nation’s lowest scoring schools is dominated by test preparation

(Lipman, 2004).

Simultaneously, however, state’s efforts to answer calls for academic accountability by

adopting school reform programs and policies based not on research, but on the interests of the

politically powerful (Petrovich, 2005) are being criticized. Pogrow (2000) has expressed

11concerns related to the potential conflict of interest in research related to SFA and its apparent

lack of independent third party examination. Additionally, Pogrow calls attention to the fact that

funds provided to the SFA foundation support the generation and concentration of new

knowledge around the one program while limiting the development and dissemination of new

models.

Also documented in research on SFA has been its limiting effect on the choices schools

and teachers are able to make in educating their students (Pogrow, 2000). Teachers have

expressed concerns relating to the lack of teacher autonomy in SFA schools as well as the

program’s stifling effects on teachers’ and students’ creativity (Datnow & Castellano, 2000).

Teachers have also expressed reservations concerning the extent to which the program de-

contextualizes knowledge in order to successfully prepare students for the state’s standardized

tests (Lipman, 2004).

These concerns, however, are diminished by both policy makers and teachers (Datnow &

Castellano, 2000) who extol the program’s positive effect on student test scores. While the

program continues to be increasingly favored for its potential to improve student test scores, little

research has considered how the concerns may be related to larger issues with the program’s

implicit curriculum.

Given that SFA was designed to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed

both socially and academically (Slavin et al., 1996) the program focuses on curriculum rather

than on teaching strategies. The program’s explicit curriculum emphasizes increasing students’

knowledge of and preparation for standards based information and assessment. Past research,

however, has not explored how the program’s explicit curriculum including the development of

students’ social and self-help skills, as well as their self-confidence, (Success for All Foundation,

122004) is implemented in the current climate of school reform and accountability. Furthermore,

there has been insufficient research on the ancillary consequences of the program’s curriculum.

This study aims to uncover the program’s implicit curriculum and what SFA students and their

teachers are learning about themselves as individuals, learners, and professionals.

Theoretical Framework

This study is built on the idea that policy discourses teach individuals to become certain

kinds of people (Foucault (1995/1977). Current standards and accountability based school reform

initiatives shape students’ social identities by creating programs established on a set of values

and practices. Furthermore, the study is developed around the belief that the how and what of

teaching and learning are intimately intertwined if not altogether inseparable (Turner, 1995). The

school reform model, Success for All, provides a highly scripted setting in which state

curriculum guidelines direct the lessons students are taught and the academic goals they are

expected to achieve.

This study also takes into account the fact that individuals attempt to construct multiple

meanings from their educational experiences and are not limited in exposure to the program’s

explicit curriculum. Rather, teachers and students derive additional meaning from the

presentation, content, and expectations of the explicit curriculum. In other words, individuals

who experience and are exposed to a program’s curriculum attempt to make sense of the values

and beliefs on which the program is developed.

In Ideology and Curriculum, the connection Apple (2004) draws between aspects of

school life and the distribution, quality, and control of work, power, and cultural knowledge

outside of educational institutions is of particular interest in the course of this study. Apple

13presents a set of questions aimed at determining why and how meanings associated with the

dominant culture are presented in schools as knowledge that is both objective and factual.

The first of these questions refers to schools’ hidden curriculum or that which is implicit

in the routines and expectations experienced and acknowledged by students. What norms, values,

and dispositions, Apple asks, are prescribed to students by educational institutions simply

through schools’ day-to-day basic regularities? The second question shifts the focus on

curriculum away from how to increase student knowledge acquisition toward questions of what

Apple refers to as the “stuff” of curriculum. In other words, whose knowledge becomes schools’

official knowledge, who selected it, why is it organized to be taught as it is and why particular

groups of students are targeted for this form of instruction? Finally, the last question examines

educators’ awareness of the ideological and epistemological commitments that they tacitly

accept and promote by using certain models and traditions.

While the SFA sample lesson plans could be analyzed for many different research

purposes, Apple’s questions concentrate the researcher’s interpretation of data in this study on

the program’s implicit curriculum. Apple’s theoretical framework informs this study by focusing

the researcher’s lens on the ancillary consequences of the program’s trends and characteristics.

14CHAPTER TWO

Methodology

In this study, sample lesson plans from the Success For All reform model constituted the

empirical materials used to explore the program’s implicit curriculum. See Appendix A for a

sample lesson. Although empirical data could have been generated qualitatively through

interviews with individuals who had first hand experience with and knowledge of the program’s

attributes, a critical discourse analysis was chosen for two reasons. First, due to the nature of the

research question, analysis of naturally occurring data rather than researcher-instigated data

allowed the researcher to be in more direct contact with the material (Peräkylä, 2005). Second,

the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis were appropriate to the study’s

research questions. As a form of critical social research, critical discourse analysis is interested in

the ways in which texts of different kinds reproduce power and inequalities in society

(Fairclough, 1989). In this study, the tacit curriculum of SFA as it relates to power relationships

was examined on two dimensions: (a) the messages that are sent to teachers and (b) the messages

that are communicated to students.

Sample lesson plans, rather than actual lessons created for the SFA program, were used

due to the prohibitive cost of purchasing the program in its entirety. However, the sample lesson

plans were retrieved from the SFA Foundation website and the book Every Child Every School

Success for All (Slavin et al., 1996). The 46 sample lesson plans provided by the Success for All

Foundation for public display, presented the researcher with a set of data acknowledged by the

Foundation to be representative of those lessons that are implemented regularly in SFA schools.

Lessons in the program are divided up into sub lessons and completed over a series of

days. For example, one reading lesson may take four reading periods on four different days to

15complete. In order to create consistency in the data analysis, the sub lessons were analyzed by

day as they were implemented in the classroom. Each of the sub lessons was analyzed separately

in order to look at the program as a whole.

With only one source of empirical data included in this study, a predefined protocol for

analysis was necessary to preserve the reliability of the study. However, as an iterative process

(Goldman & Wiley, 2004), the analysis of the text is driven by the researcher’s theoretical

inferences concerning its cultural and social context (Peräkylä, 2005) as well as the actual

content of the text (Goldman & Wiley, 2004). Therefore, while the researcher entered into data

analysis with some idea of the themes that might be of importance, unanticipated themes that

became evident throughout the data were also recorded and analyzed.

Based on a set of questions related to the SFA program and this study’s research

question, the researcher attempted to “capture regularities” (Goldman & Wiley, 2004) in the

lesson plans as they related specifically to lessons on power relations. A Likert scale focused on

content was used to code the program’s curriculum within four domains: (1) the teacher’s

relationship with the curriculum, (2) the teacher’s authority to establish instructional strategies,

(3) the teacher’s relationship with individual students and, (4) the student’s relationship to his or

her own learning. Within each sphere, sets of questions related to teacher and student

empowerment or disempowerment were coded based on a Likert scale (Appendix B).

The scale of one to three was set in an effort to clearly define the criteria used to measure

the curriculum. Due to the range of material measured, the researcher felt that the data could be

most accurately and consistently measured on a smaller, more concise scale. In contrast, a larger

scale would have increased the opportunity for material to be measured inconsistently and thus

subjectively. In addition, rather than attempt to record and rate the lesson every time evidence

16surfaced, the researcher elected to review and rate the lessons holistically. To do this

effectively, the researcher examined each day’s lesson within the context of each domain and

identified evidence of the types of teaching and learning experiences present in the curriculum.

Once lessons were rated individually, the researcher was able to consider the curriculum as a

whole as it related to each of the four domains.

Among the domains, the criterion used to measure the curriculum differed based on its

content. Within each domain however, the Likert scale was used to quantify the kinds of

classroom teaching and learning experiences provided by the curriculum as either (1) prescribed

with no variation, (2) prescribed with variation or adaptation allowed or (3) not prescribed. As a

part of a critical discourse analysis, these ratings reflect the messages that the SFA curriculum

sends to both teachers and students in terms of their power to choose how to most effectively and

enjoyably teach and learn in the classroom.

A prescriptive curriculum that does not permit the teacher to vary or modify lessons as

they are written eliminates the teacher’s authority to run his or her classroom. In this setting, the

teacher becomes less significant as an individual with a set of skills and more valuable as an

instrument used to employ the lesson and transmit knowledge. In contrast, a non-prescriptive

curriculum relies on the teacher’s training and expertise as an educator to implement effective

lessons and encourage essential learning. The disparity between teachers’ roles in the

prescriptive and non-prescriptive educational setting translates directly into an issue of teacher

empowerment and disempowerment.

The curriculum, as it is written and implemented in classrooms, also sends empowering

or disempowering messages to students concerning their roles as learners. A prescriptive

curriculum does not allow the child to form an intimate relationship with his or her educational

17experience. Without the opportunity to direct one’s own learning, the child is less likely to

achieve a sense of ownership over new knowledge or a sense that he or she has the authority to

explore new and worthwhile interests. On the other hand, a curriculum that is not prescribed but

open to variation depending on students’ needs and interests conveys a different message to

learners. In the less restricted educational setting, the child, rather than the goal of achieving the

pursued knowledge, shapes the curriculum’s lessons, activities and objectives. Inequity created

by a curriculum that identifies and promotes certain pieces of knowledge while neglecting others

is replaced in an educational setting that validates and confirms all students’ strengths, interests

and goals.

Domains for Data Collection

Domain 1: The Teacher's Relationship with the Curriculum

Within the first domain, the teacher’s relationship with the curriculum was analyzed

based on how much autonomy he or she had in (1) selecting instructional materials, (2) adapting

or modifying prescribed instructional materials, (3) setting the pace of instruction, and (4)

determining appropriate assessment tools. In terms of the teacher’s latitude in selecting

instruction materials, lesson plans that required the prescribed materials in order to be

successfully implemented were rated one on the Likert scale. Lesson plans in which materials

were prescribed but in which other supplemental materials could be used to support the lesson

were rated two. Lesson plans that did not prescribe materials and could be adapted to suit the

materials chosen by the teacher were rated three.

The teacher’s latitude in adapting or modifying prescribed instructional materials was

also measured within the realm of the teacher’s relationship with the curriculum. Lesson plans

were rated one if they required the instructional materials be utilized without any variation.

18Lesson plans rated two allowed materials to be modified and adapted in prescribed ways while

those rated three allowed the teacher to determine how the materials were used and modified to

support the lesson.

In addition, the teacher’s latitude in setting the pace of instruction was rated one on the

Likert scale if the pace, set by the lesson, had to be precisely followed by the teacher. If the pace

of instruction was outlined by the lesson but included opportunities for teacher modification, the

lesson was rated two. Lessons plans were rated three if it they assumed that the teacher would set

the pace of instruction.

Finally, the teacher’s latitude in determining appropriate assessment tools was measured

within the domain of the teacher’s relationship with the curriculum. Lesson plans in which

assessment tools were prescribed with no variations allowed were rated one while those that

allowed the teacher to choose from several prescribed assessment tools were rated two. Lessons

plans were rated three if the teacher was responsible for determining and creating appropriate

assessment tools.

Domain II: The Teacher's Authority to Establish Instructional Strategies

Within the second domain, the teacher’s authority to establish instructional strategies,

lesson plans were analyzed based on (1) the teacher’s latitude in using grouping strategies, (2)

the teacher’s latitude in using cooperative learning strategies, and (3) the teacher's latitude in

structuring student interactions. In terms of the teacher’s latitude in grouping strategies, lessons

that could not be implemented without the use of the prescribed grouping strategy were rated

one. Lesson plans that provided different grouping strategies from which the teacher could

choose one to best support the class were rated two. Lesson plans were rated three if the teacher

was responsible for determining an appropriate grouping strategy.

19Similarly, the teacher’s latitude in using cooperative learning strategies varied based on

whether or not the lesson plan could or could not be implemented without a prescribed strategy.

Lessons that could not be implemented without the use of the prescribed cooperative learning

strategy were rated one. Those lessons that supported several different types of cooperative

learning strategies from which the teacher could choose were rated two while lesson plans rated

three assumed the teacher would determine the strategy appropriate for the class.

Finally, the teacher’s latitude in structuring student interaction was also analyzed within

the second domain. Lesson plans that could not be implemented without the teacher structuring

student interactions in the manner prescribed by the program were rated one. Lessons that

provided different strategies for structuring student interactions and allowed the teacher to

choose those most appropriate for the class were rated two. Those lessons that assumed the

teacher would determine and implement the most effective strategy for structuring student

interactions were rated three.

Domain III: The Teacher's Relationship with Individual Students

Within the third domain, the teacher’s relationship with individual students was analyzed

based on (1) the opportunities available to the teacher to respond to individual students'

contributions, (2) the opportunities available to the teacher to tailor instruction to individual

students’ needs, (3) the opportunities available to the teacher to tailor instruction to individual

students’ interests, and (4) the opportunities available to the teacher to tailor the pace of

instruction to individual students’ needs. In terms of the teacher’s opportunity to respond to

individual students’ contributions, lessons that were fully scripted and did not allow for teachers'

individualized responses to students were rated one. Lessons that were partially scripted but

included opportunities for open, structured conversation between the teacher and students were

20rated two while lesson plans rated three were completely unscripted and allowed open,

unstructured conversation between teacher and students.

In terms of teacher opportunity to tailor instruction to individual students’ needs, lessons

that were delivered to the whole class and did not allow for individualized instruction were rated

one. Lessons that included prescribed activities and opportunities for the teacher to address

individual students’ needs were rated two. Lesson plans were rated three if they encouraged the

teacher to elect the means by which he or she could best address individual students’ needs.

Similarly, lessons were rated one if they were delivered to the whole class with no

opportunity for the teacher to acknowledge individual students’ interests. Lessons were rated two

if they included opportunities for the teacher to acknowledge individual students’ interests and

three if the teacher was encouraged to incorporate students’ interests into the lesson.

Finally, lessons were also analyzed based on teacher opportunity to tailor the pace of

instruction to meet individual students’ needs. Lessons in which the pace of instruction for all

students was set by the lesson were rated one. Lessons in which the pace of instruction was

outlined by the lesson but allowed for modifications for individual learners were rated two.

Lessons were rated three if they did not set any pace of instruction but left the teacher to

determine how students would progress through the lesson.

Domain IV: The Child's Relationship to his or her own Learning

Within the last domain, the child’s relationship to his or her own learning, lesson plans

were analyzed based on (1) the student's opportunities to pursue his or her own interests, (2) the

student's opportunities to take responsibility for his or her own learning, and (3) the student's

opportunities to express him or herself in multiple forms. In terms of the opportunities students

had to pursue their own interests, lessons in which all students pursued the same knowledge

21through one means prescribed by the program were rated one. Lessons in which students

pursued the same knowledge but did so while working with areas of personal interest were rated

two. Lessons were rated three if the students’ interests influenced not only the knowledge they

pursued but also the means by which it would be attained.

In addition, lessons were analyzed based on the opportunities available to students to take

responsibility for their own learning. Lessons in which students were expected to achieve the

same goals as prescribed by the program were rated one. Lessons in which students were allowed

to adjust and individualize the goals set by the program were rated two while lessons were rated

three if students were allowed to set individual learning goals.

Finally, lessons were analyzed based on the opportunities available to students to express

themselves in multiple forms. Lessons that required all students to demonstrate their learning

though one means of expression prescribed by the program were rated one while lessons that

provided students with opportunities to express themselves in more than one form were rated

two. Lessons were rated three if they encouraged students to decide how they would most

effectively express themselves and their learning.

Data Organization

Data was organized in an Excel spreadsheet. A separate sheet was used to organized data

for each of the four domains (Appendix C). Each question used to analyze the lessons in relation

to the domain was assigned a column while the sample lesson plans were assigned to individual

rows. As lessons were examined and quantified, a number from the Likert scale was entered into

a cell within the appropriate column (domain question) and row (lesson plan).

Once coded numerically to reveal the types of experiences present within each domain,

the researcher was able to analyze the data across sample lesson plans to identify any

22overarching patterns in the material. For example, the types of teaching and learning

experiences identified in one sample lesson could be compared with those of another lesson in

the same domain. To do this, the researcher tallied the number of one, two and three ratings

within each column (domain question) to determine the most recurring type of teaching and

learning experience exhibited in the lesson plans. Due to the specific focus of each domain, the

researcher was unable to analyze the data across spheres. As a result, the program as a whole

could only be considered through the analysis of its separate parts.

23CHAPTER THREE

Results

Data collected in each of the four domains, introduced unanticipated elements of the

program. Any recurring feature in lesson plans that was relevant to the data collection questions

and how the lessons were rated was recorded and also organized in the Excel spreadsheet. In

order to better organized and understand all of the components of the data, it was sorted by grade

level. Trends were identified both at the general Success for All curriculum level as well as at

specific grade levels. In the following discussion, domains are first broken down as a whole (i.e.

the number of one, two and three ratings assigned to lessons throughout each domain), then by

specific data collection question, and finally by grade level. In addition, the criteria for rating

lessons as either prescribed, prescribed with variations allowed, or not prescribed, is articulated

in each aspect of the four domains.

Table 1 Summary of Lesson Ratings in Each of the Four Domains

Note. A dash was inserted to indicate domains that lacked lessons categorized by certain ratings.

Domain I: Teacher’s Relationship with the Curriculum

The first set of questions used to collect data concerned the teacher's relationship with the

curriculum. More specifically, the first domain considered the interaction in relation to the

Likert scale ratings Domain 0

Non-applicable 1

Prescribed 2

Prescribed with variations allowed

3 Not prescribed

Domain I 9% 58% 30% 3% Domain II 8% 83% - 9% Domain III - 59% 34% 7% Domain IV - 83% 17% -

24teacher's latitude in (1) the selection of instructional materials, (2) adapting and modifying

instructional materials, (3) setting the pace of instruction in relation to the curriculum, and (4)

determining appropriate assessment tools. In total, 46 sample lessons were used to collect data.

Of those, 57.06% were rated one on the Likert Scale (prescribed with no variation allowed) and

30.43% were rated two (prescribed with variations or adaptations allowed). While only 3.26% of

the lessons were rated three (not prescribed), 9.3% lacked evidence of at least one aspect of the

first domain and were thus coded zero (non-applicable).

Specifically in relation to the teacher's latitude in the selection of instructional materials,

lessons were rated based on evidence of the teacher's authority to decide what material were

utilized in lessons. Within the first domain, 85% of the lessons were rated one and prescribed all

materials to be used by the teacher without allowing for any variation through supplemental

materials. The remaining 15% of the lessons also prescribed materials but were rated two

because they had at least one activity that supported the teacher’s selection of supplemental

materials. However, it is important to note that lessons rated two were not additionally rated

internally. In other words, a lesson that had a single, limited opportunity for the teacher to choose

an instructional material was considered equal to a lesson that had multiple, and more varied,

opportunities for teacher selections.

An example of this distinction is evident in the following two examples. A fourth grade

Writing Wings lesson was rated two because the teacher had latitude in selecting the book he or

she would use to introduce students to the mystery genre. As written in the program, the teacher

was instructed to "obtain a short mystery story, such as one from the Nate the Great series by

Marjorie Sharmat...tell the students that [he or she] would like to read them a story [and then]

read the mystery story [he or she] selected aloud”

25(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writing.htm). While this example provides

evidence of teacher latitude in selecting the material on which an activity is based, not all lessons

rated two gave the teacher this degree of authority. For example, a kindergarten/first grade

Reading Roots lesson had the teacher select "two students [to] read a page or two of a familiar

story for the whole class” (http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm).

Although placed in the same category as the previously discussed lesson, the use of the

supplemental material in the later was significantly more limited and less integral to the

instructional component of the lesson.

The majority of lessons in each grade were prescribed. There were 12 lessons out of the

13 designed for the kindergarten/first grades that were rated one with the remaining one lesson

rated two. Each of the five second grade lessons and 17 out of 20 third grade lessons were rated

one. The remaining three of the third grade lessons were considered less prescribed and rated

two. There were four lessons analyzed for both the fourth and fifth grades. Two of the fourth

grade lessons and three of the fifth grade lessons were rated one while the two remaining fourth

grade lessons and one remaining fifth grade lesson were rated two.

The teacher’s relationship with the curriculum was also analyzed based on his or her

latitude in adapting or modifying the instructional materials. Although the majority of lessons

indicated that the teacher was restricted to the use of prescribed instructional materials, analysis

of the data indicated that the teacher had opportunities to make modifications and adaptations.

To be successfully implemented, 48% of the lessons required that the prescribed materials be

utilized as written in the lesson without modifications. However, 52% of the lessons allowed the

prescribed materials to be modified in varying ways. One manner in which the program created

flexibility for teacher modifications was to include optional activities to be used at the teacher’s

26discretion. Although the teacher was given the opportunity to modify the instructional

materials, the activities and strategies to do so were prescribed. For example, teachers who felt

additional practice was necessary during a Reading Roots lesson were given the opportunity to

“show a ‘Between the Lions’ segment… (Optional)”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm). Similarly, some lessons rated two

gave teachers the option to modify the instructional materials by using prescribed teaching

strategies. In another Reading Roots lessons for example, teachers were given the opportunity to,

if necessary, “review,” “model,” or “use My Turn-Your Turn”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingwings.htm) to enhance the effectiveness of the

instructional material.

Out of the 13 kindergarten/first grade lessons, seven were rated one while the remaining

six included optional activities and were rated two. One out of the five second grade lessons fell

into the prescribed category while the remaining four were rated two because they had at least

one opportunity for modifications using prescribed teaching strategies. The third, fourth, and

fifth grade lessons were split evenly between lessons rated one (prescribed with no modifications

to instructional materials allowed) or two (prescribed with prescribed modifications permitted).

Those fourth and fifth grade lessons that allowed for prescribed modifications included

opportunities for optional teaching strategies to be implemented. In the third grade lessons

however, the program included prescribed modifications in the form of both optional activities

and optional teaching strategies. There were eight third grade lessons in which the teacher had

the option to enhance instructional materials with prescribed teaching strategies and two

additional lessons that provided him or her with optional activities.

27 The third part of the first domain examined the teacher’s latitude in setting the pace of

instruction. The majority of the lessons, 46% were rated as highly prescribed because a time

limit was assigned to each activity to be precisely followed by the teacher. For example, a 45-

minute, third grade Adventure Island reading lesson was broken down into seven different, timed

activities. During active instruction, the teacher had two minutes to “set the stage,” and six

minutes to “build background.” The class then had 15 minutes to work in “partner reading”

before discussing (five minutes) in pairs what was read. The lesson ended with a five-minute

class discussion on the same topic (http://www.successforall.com/elementary/adventure.htm).

Of the remaining 31 lessons, 19 outlined the pace of instruction with specific, detailed

plans but did not set specific timing goals. Although the lessons in this category were not

assigned time specifications, the nature of the lesson plan helped manage time and lesson

progression. For example, during a lesson on interactive story reading the lesson plan helped the

teacher keep the conversation moving with detailed instructions and prescribed time

management techniques.

Read the story interactively, asking questions and discussing vocabulary as suggested

below.

Page 2 Does Owen Talk? ([Whole-Group-Response (WGR)] – Hold your

index finger over your lips to illustrate.)

Owen smiles though. (pantomime “smile.”) Show

me how you smile.

Page 8 Point to the giants. These people are giants. Have the class

repeat the sentence. Giants are people who are really, really, big!

Stand up and stretch your body outward, pretending to be a giant.

28 Encourage students to join you.

Giants are big, but there are also other words to describe giants.

We could say: Giants are large. Have the class repeat. Giants are

huge. Have the class repeat. Giants are enormous. Have the class

repeat. Large, huge, enormous: all these words mean big.

Page 12 If you are a friendly person, it means you are a nice person. A

friendly person can make friends easily. Are the giants

friendly? (WGR)

How do you know they are friendly? ([Think-Pair-

Share (T-P-S)])

Page 14 Point to the giants. The giants are dancing a waltz. A waltz is a

slow dance.

Page 15 Why are the giants sad? (T-P-S)

Page 18 Point to the neighbors. These are the neighbors. Neighbors are

people who live close to you. The neighbors look scared and

angry. Why? (T-P-S)

Page 20 Point to the letter. The neighbors sent the giants a letter. It was

not a nice letter. It told the giants to go away! What do you

think the giants will do? (T-P-S)

Page 29 Owen’s father said he was proud of him. That means he felt

good because Owen did the right thing. Are you proud of

Owen? (WGR)

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm).

29 The lesson promoted time management by restricting the amount of time students had

to respond to questions. Students were directed to Think-Pair-Share (T-P-S) when the teacher

asked open-ended questions. In this way, every student was expected to think about the question

but only a few were called on to share. On the other hand, the whole class was invited to respond

in unison to questions answered simply, and quickly, with one-word responses.

The final six lessons were rated three because the teacher was responsible for setting the

pace of instruction. Unlike the previous two sets of lessons, which either set or outlined the pace,

the final 13% of the lessons gave the teacher the most latitude in this area. The program provided

the teacher with a set of steps to follow but assumed the he or she would determine how the

lesson would most appropriately progress. For example, in a third grade Writing Wings lesson,

the teacher set the pace of instruction during each phase of the writing process. During the

revising phase, the program reminded the teacher of the following bulleted set of steps:

• Have the students consider how they will revise their work, based on the

feedback they have received.

• Tell the students to rewrite their drafts to include the changes.

• Hold brief conferences with as many as of [sic] the students as possible to

help them integrate the feedback they have received.

• Have the students reread their revised drafts to their partners to

demonstrate their changes and to practice for Team Response by fluently

reading their work.

• Ask a volunteer to read his or her changes aloud, explaining

what was changed and why.

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writingwings.ht).

30Of the lessons designed for the kindergarten/first and second grade levels, 100% were

rated two on the Likert scale. Each lesson outlined the pace of instruction but did not assign

specific timing goals. The majority of lessons designed for the third grade, 80%, were rated one

on the Likert scale while the remaining four third grade lessons were split evenly between two

and three ratings. Similarly, the eight lessons designed for fourth and fifth grades were split

evenly between the two highest ratings.

The final question used to analyze lessons within the first domain considered the

teacher’s latitude in determining appropriate assessment tools. Lessons that prescribed evaluative

tools and did not allow for any modifications were rated one. Those lessons that included

prescribed assessment tools but allowed for their components to be modified were rated two

while those that assumed the teacher would create appropriate assessment tools were rated three.

There were no formal written assessments included in 37% of the lessons analyzed. 100% of

those lessons considered non-applicable in this aspect of the first domain, were lessons designed

for kindergarten through third grade; 84.6% of those in the kindergarten/first grade level alone.

The two kindergarten/first grade lessons that did include formal assessments varied in

type. In both instances however, the program provided the material as well as the scoring guide.

Of the lessons designed for the second grade, four out of five included at least one formal

assessment while the remaining lesson had none. Again, each assessment used at the second

grade level also included a prescribed scoring guide. Of the 20 third grade lessons, 13 included a

prescribed assessment tool and accompanying scoring guide. Two additional lessons at this level

included prescribed assessment materials but allowed the teacher to modify, if necessary, the

content checklist used for scoring. The remaining five lessons at the third grade level were

categorized as non-applicable as they lacked any formal assessment tool or scoring guide. 100%

31of the lessons designed for the fourth grade and 100% of the lessons designed for the fifth

grade included prescribed assessment tools. However, in both grades two of the lessons allowed

the teacher and/or students to modify the content checklist.

Of the 46 lessons, only three (all at the kindergarten/first grade level), included

homework assignments. Two of the three assignments were identical in task. The students were

told to “read the words and sentences on the inside front cover of the Shared Stories to family

members several times…[and] to return the Shared Stories and Read and Respond forms to

school with signatures and comments from their listeners”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm). The other homework task,

assigned after a spelling test, involved making corrections, getting a parent’s signature and then

bringing the test back to class the next day

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/fasttrack.htm). All work assigned for home required a

parent’s signature before being submitted in school the following day.

Domain II: The Teacher’s Authority to Establish Instructional Strategies

The second domain was used to analyze the teacher's authority to establish instructional

strategies. The teacher's latitude in deciding how to most appropriately and effectively structure

classroom activities was measured based on his or her opportunities to decide on three different

instructional strategies. Lessons were rated and analyzed based on the teacher’s latitude in

determining how to (1) group students, (2) use appropriate cooperative learning strategies, and

(3) structure student interactions. Within the second domain, 83% of the lessons measured across

these three areas were rated one (prescribed). Lessons rated as such could not be implemented

without the use of the prescribed instructional strategies. On the other end of the Likert Scale,

9% of the lessons were rated three (not prescribed). In other words, these lessons assumed that

32the teacher would determine, and if necessary, establish appropriate instructional strategies.

Although none of the lessons were rated two (prescribed with variations or modifications

permitted), the remaining 8% of the lessons lacked evidence of at least one of the three

instructional strategies and were therefore rated zero (non-applicable).

Further broken down, the teacher's authority to establish instructional strategies was

measured based on his or her latitude in determining grouping strategies. Specifically within this

area, 34 of the lessons could not be implemented without the use of a prescribed grouping

strategy and were thus rated one. These lessons took place in homogenous classrooms in which

the whole class was grouped by ability level. 100% of these lessons were taught at the

kindergarten/first, second and third grade levels. The remaining 12 lessons, or 26% were

conducted in heterogeneously grouped classes at the third, fourth, and fifth grade levels and were

rated three because the teacher was responsible for determining grouping strategies appropriate

for his or her class.

The teacher's authority to establish instructional strategies was also measured based on

his or her latitude in using cooperative learning strategies. 38 of the lessons were rated one

because the lessons could not be implemented without the use of the prescribed cooperative

learning activity. Of these, 22 included formal cooperative activities that required the students to

work in teams to practice or review skills and answer questions. All of the teamwork activities

took place in second through fifth grade classes.

Although the remaining 16 lessons rated one did not include formal teamwork activities,

they did have informal cooperative activities. Cooperative activities of this type involved

students checking and monitoring each other’s work and comprehension either through the

Think-Pair-Share strategy or through partner monitoring. The steps involved in Think-Pair-Share

33begin with the teacher asking a question. Students then individually think for a few seconds

about their answers and then pair with a partner to discuss their thoughts. The teacher then

randomly selects a few students to share their answers. Partner monitoring involves students

working together to help one another learn material. This type of experience generally took place

in reading lessons in which students worked together to help one another read new words or

pages in a book. For example, in a Reading Roots lessons designed for kindergarten/first grade,

students were told to “read [a] story again, [alternate] sentences with [partners]…. make sure

[partners] are reading accurately, and [help] if they are having trouble”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm). The remaining eight of the lessons

analyzed were rated zero (non-applicable), as they did not include cooperative experiences.

Instead, the students worked individually or as a whole class.

Every grade included either informal or formal cooperative activities. At the

kindergarten/first grade level however, 100% were informal cooperative activities; students were

never asked to work in teams. Of the 13 lessons, two included partner monitoring, six had Think-

Pair-Share activities, and five lacked evidence of cooperative learning altogether. At the second

grade level, four of the five lessons included teamwork activities, two of which included both

teamwork and Think-Pair-Share strategies. The remaining two second grade lessons either used

only Think-Pair-Share or lacked any form of cooperative learning. The lesson that lacked

evidence of the instructional strategy instead included an individual written assessment.

Similarly, the majority of lessons created for third grade, 14 out of 20, included teamwork

activities of which 11 also included the Think-Pair-Share strategy. Of the remaining six third

grade lessons, three included Think-Pair-Share while the other three lacked cooperative activities

altogether. Although two of the three lessons that lacked cooperative learning activities instead

34included written assessments, students’ individual scores on one of the tests contributed to a

team score. There were two lessons out of the four designed for the fourth and fifth grades that

included formal cooperative learning activities while the remaining two lessons in each grade

level utilized the informal cooperative learning strategy, Think-Pair-Share.

Unlike the informal cooperative learning exercises in the kindergarten/first grade level in

which partners monitored each other’s work and assisted in reading accuracy, there were several

instances in which students were asked to simply check each other’s work. In these situations,

the students were asked to look at their partner’s work and initial that it was done but not to help

the partner understand or complete the task. For example, in a FastTrack Phonics lesson designed

for the lower grades, students were told to write the word “played” and then to check each

other’s work. However, the teacher was then instructed to “pull down the cover sheet to show the

row two word and have the students check their [own] work.” Students were told to “draw a line

through the word if it [was] incorrect, write it correctly, check it, and then circle the corrected

word to remind them that [it was] a word they need to study”

((http://www.successforall.com/elementary/ fasttrack.htm). The partner’s role was simply to

check the other student's work rather than to help identify and correct mistakes nor to celebrate

work that was done well.

At the kindergarten/first grade level, seven of the 13 lessons required students to check

each other’s work in this way. None of the lessons designed at the second grade level included

partner checks and only two of the 20 lessons at the third grade level included this kind of

student partnership. At the fourth and fifth grade levels, students were asked to initial each

other’s work in exactly half of the lessons designed for each grade (two out of four).

35 Finally, the second domain was measured based on the teacher's latitude in structuring

student interactions. Both student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions were considered

in this measurement. Of the lessons analyzed, 93% included at least one prescribed student

interaction. The remaining 7% of the lessons lacked any form of student interaction be it student-

to-student or student-to-teacher. Of those student interactions that did occur in the lessons, 100%

were prescribed. In other words, every time the students were asked to work either with a

partner, share with the class or answer a teacher’s question, it was done through a strategy

prescribed by the program.

There were four strategies used for this purpose. Think-Pair-Share, in which the students

were given a prompt to think about, discuss with a partner, and then share with the class is one

prescribed student-to-student interaction common in the SFA program. There were three

methods employed by the program for structuring student-to-teacher interactions. Number

Heads, in which the teacher randomly draws from numbers previously assigned to individual

students, helps structure class discussions. With the use of this strategy, every child had an equal

chance of being called on to share. Whole-Group-Response, another strategy prescribed to the

teacher, also helps structure class discussions. Whole-Group-Response, as used in the SFA, has

the teacher ask questions directed at the entire class so that he or she can monitor understanding

through students’ choral responses. Finally, My Turn-Your Turn is another strategy used to

structure student-to-teacher interactions. My Turn-Your Turn is a teacher directed exercise in

which the teacher asks the students to repeat what he or she says or does. The teacher monitors

participation as he or she leads the class in the activity.

Of the instances in which the teacher was directed to structure student interactions in a

prescribed way, 20% took place in lessons designed for the kindergarten/first grade level, 9% at

36the second grade level, 41% at the third grade level, and 15% at both the fourth and fifth grade

levels. The Think-Pair-Share method was used 100 times in 70% of the lessons analyzed. The

remaining 30% of the lessons did not employ this particular strategy. The 13 lessons designed for

the kindergarten/first grade level used Think-Pair-Share 18 times; the five second grade lessons,

six times; the 20 third grade lessons, 33 times; the four fourth grade lessons, 21 times; and the

four fifth grade lessons, 22 times.

Numbered Heads was used a total of 86 times in 70% of the lessons analyzed. The

remaining 30% did not use the strategy to structure class discussions. None of the

kindergarten/first grade lessons had the teacher use Numbered Heads while the second grade

lessons used the strategy 13 times. The third grade lessons had the greatest use of the strategy

with 50 different instances of its use in 20 lessons. Fourth grade lessons utilized the strategy 12

times and the fifth grade only slightly less, utilizing the strategy 11 times.

My Turn-Your Turn was used seven times in 15% of the lessons. The strategy was used

only once per lesson primarily in those designed for the third grade (six of the seven instances of

its use occurred in lessons designed for this level). The other instance in which the program

directed the teacher to use My Turn-Your Turn was in a kindergarten/first grade lesson. Finally,

Whole-Group-Response was used 25 times in 17% of the lessons. 100% of the lessons that used

the strategy to structure class discussions were at the kindergarten/first grade level. None of the

higher grades (second through fifth) utilized the strategy to structure student-to-teacher

interactions.

Of the 46 lessons analyzed, there were 11 that did not allow student-to-student interaction

of any form during instructional periods. Eight of the lessons, if implemented exactly as written,

only permitted student-to-teacher interaction in the form of Numbered Heads sharing, Whole-

37Group-Response, and repetition activities using My Turn-Your Turn. In these lessons, students

did not have the opportunity to interact verbally. Although the lessons included opportunities for

students to work together either by checking each other’s work or reading out loud in pairs, the

lessons did not permit students to share and discuss ideas, brainstorm or partake in other forms of

verbal interactions. However, in seven of the eight lessons that lacked these experiences, the

teacher did invite students to celebrate their classmates’ successes through verbal praise and

applause.

There were two additional features, one more prevalent than the other, that were

identified throughout the majority of the lessons, recorded and then analyzed. First, teachers were

directed to celebrate class progress at every level, kindergarten through fifth grade. Of the 34

lessons that included opportunities for celebration, five kindergarten/first grade lessons included

eight opportunities for celebration, three second grade lessons included four, and 18 third grade

lessons included 33. At the fourth and fifth grade levels, 100% of the lessons included

opportunities for teacher initiated celebrations with 10 occurring in both the fourth and fifth

grade lessons. Less frequently, the program directed teachers to distribute team cooperation

points. This occurred five times in one lesson at the kindergarten/first grade level, 22 times in

four of the second grade lessons, and one time in one of the third grade lessons. Team

cooperation points were not awarded to the students in upper grades.

Domain III: Teacher’s Relationship with Individual Students

In regard to the teacher’s relationship with individual students, lessons were rated based

on the types of opportunities available for the teacher to respond to students, their needs and their

interests. Within the third domain, four questions relating to these areas of teacher/student

interaction were used to collect data. The teacher’s relationship with individual students was

38considered based on opportunities available to the teacher to (1) respond to students’

contributions, (2) tailor instruction to individual students’ needs, (3) tailor instruction to

individual students’ interests, and (4) set the pace of instruction to meet individual students’

needs. Substantiated by evidence of teacher/student interactions, the majority of lessons, 59%,

were rated one (prescribed with no variation allowed) and 34% were rated two (prescribed with

variations and adaptations permitted). The remaining 7% of the lessons were rated three (not

prescribed).

Concerning opportunities for the teacher to respond to individual students’ contributions,

24 of the lessons were categorized as prescribed with no variation permitted. These lessons were

fully scripted providing teachers with prompts of what to say and do. Additionally, the students’

responses in these lessons were scripted. Teachers and students did not have the opportunity to

engage in open, unscripted conversation. For example, in a Reading Roots lesson, the teacher is

provided with the following plan for reviewing a story previously read in class:

Yesterday we read a new story. I want to see how much you

remember about that story. Review the title of the story and the

characters with the students. Ask the following review questions. Call on

different partnerships to share their answers with the class. (T-P-S)

1. What are the children doing at the beginning of the book?

[The children are playing during recess.]

2. Why is Tanya mad at Fang?

[She is mad because Fang pushed her in the mud.]

3. How does Fang help the children?

[Fang finds the ball for them.]

394. Who are the new characters in the story?

[The new characters are Fang and Lana.]

5. How would you describe them? (T-P-S)

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/adventure.htm)

Other lessons in this category were rated prescribed because the teacher did not have the

opportunity to respond to student contributions in discussions. Although these lessons were

different from the set previously described in that they were less scripted, there was no time

afforded to the teacher to address individual students. For example, in an Adventure Island

lesson designed for third grade, the teacher built background knowledge through a class

discussion. However, the time allotted for the activity as well as the lesson’s instructions,

restricted the teacher by directing him or her to listen, rather than respond.

Build Background (6 mins)

Have you ever wanted to travel back in time to see how people lived a long

time ago? If you had the chance to time travel, where would you like to go?

Listen to the students’ responses. Great! Well, as you read Mummies and

Pyramids, you are going to learn so much about ancient Egypt that you’ll feel

as if you’ve traveled back in time.

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/adventure.htm)

Still in other lessons, the teacher again had the opportunity to ask open-ended questions

but was then directed to engage the students in Think-Pair-Share rather than class discussion. As

in the following example, third, fourth and fifth grade Writing Wings lessons directed the teacher

to build students' background knowledge by asking them to reflect on open-ended questions in

pairs.

40Teacher Presentation

• Use Think-Pair-Share to ask the students to think about a funny book they

read, a funny story they heard, or a funny movie they saw and what made

it funny.

• Explain that when authors want to make their stories funny, they add

funny details or humorous events. Point out that when authors add humor

they help to create clear, vivid mind movies that they hope the audience

will think are funny.

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writing.htm)

In the above example, teachers had a limited opportunity to listen and respond to students'

ideas and were not instructed to use the students’ background knowledge to enhance instruction.

While the students had the opportunity to make a connection to their own life experiences, the

lesson did not permit those connections to become a relevant part of instruction.

Of the remaining lessons, 16 were rated two (prescribed with variations and adaptations

allowed). These lessons included opportunities for the teacher and students to have open but

structured conversations. There were two types of activities included in the lesson plans that

permitted the teacher to respond to individual students and their contributions to class

discussions. Of the 16 lessons rated two, eight included teacher prompts to begin unscripted class

discussions. For example, in the Adventure Island lessons designed for the third grade, the

teacher leads all of the students in a class discussion either preceding or following an

instructional activity. Although the class discussion was structured around the questions and

skills emphasized in the Team Work activity, neither the students’ responses nor the teacher’s

reaction were scripted.

41 The second type of activity that permitted open but structured conversation was called

a Team Talk Extender and was included in eight lessons. These activities followed a Teamwork

Activity and Team Discussion. The Team Talk Extender is a question related to the Teamwork

Activity and is intended for whole class discussion. For example, in a Writing Wings lesson

designed around the story Corn is Maize: The Gift of the Indians, the Team Talk Extender asked

the class to consider “what if corn had never been discovered? Would this have affected life

today? Explain" (http://www.successforall.com/elementary/adventure.htm). Students again, were

asked to respond to the question with their thoughts and ideas.

Finally, the remaining six lessons were rated three (not prescribed) because there was at

least one opportunity for the teacher to respond directly to individual students in an unstructured,

one-on-one setting. Writing lessons at the third, fourth and fifth grade levels included time for

the teacher to “hold brief conferences with as many of the students as possible to help them

integrate the feedback they had received”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writing.htm). Teacher/student conferences allowed

the student to direct the conversation and the teacher to react in a way based not on a class

discussion objective but on what he or she had heard the student say.

At the kindergarten/first grade level, 100% of the lessons were rated one (fully scripted

allowing for no individualized responses). At the second grade level, four of the five lessons

were rated one and one lesson was rated two (prescribed but with opportunities for structured

conversation). At the third grade level, three of the 20 lessons were rated one and 15 were rated

two. Of the 15 rated two, eight included a Team Talk Extender and seven had at least one

opportunity for the teacher to initiate an unstructured class discussion. The remaining two third

grade lessons were rated three because of the teacher’s opportunity to engage in brief writing

42conferences with individual students. Of the four fourth and fifth grade lessons, 50% of each

set were rated one; the other half of the lessons at each grade level included student/teacher

conferences and were thus rated three.

The teacher’s relationship with individual students in regard to how they were able to

tailor instruction to individual students’ needs was also measured. Exactly half of the lessons

analyzed were rated one. This percentage of the lessons was delivered to the whole class

allowing for no individualized instruction time. The other half of the lessons were rated two

because they included either prescribed activities or instructional strategies to help the teacher

address individual students' needs.

There were 23 lessons rated two because they included at least one of four types of

opportunities for the teacher to individualize instruction. The first two types of opportunities

permitted the teacher to address individual students’ needs in the context of whole class

instruction. First, Two-Minute-Edits or language mechanics mini-lessons delivered to the whole

class allowed the teacher to focus on the skill he or she believed students needed to learn or

practice. The second type of opportunity was only included once in all of the lessons analyzed.

In this instance, the program told the teacher how to differentiate instruction so that all students

were able to participate.

The other two types of opportunities that allowed the teacher to individualize instruction

took place in one-on-one settings. There were several instances in which the teacher was

instructed to circulate the room to monitor and assist students needing extra help. Additionally,

brief student/teacher conferences also created an instructional situation in which the teacher

could work individually with students to address learning issues.

43 Of the 13 kindergarten/first grade lessons, five were rated one and eight were rated two

in this aspect of the third domain. Seven of the lessons rated two included at least one but no

more than two opportunities for the teacher to assist individual students. The remaining

kindergarten/first grade lesson rated two was unique to all other lessons in that it provided the

teacher with a suggestion of how to differentiate instruction to increase student participation.

Teachers were directed to “encourage students with limited speaking ability to answer the

identification questions at the beginning of the chart"

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm).

Among those lessons designed for the second grade, four out of the five were rated one.

The only lesson at this level to be rated two included at least one opportunity for the teacher to

monitor and assist individual students. At the third grade level however, the teacher had more

opportunities to tailor instruction to individual students’ needs. The 20 lessons designed for this

level were split directly in half by those rated one (prescribed with no individualized instruction

allowed) and those rated two (prescribed with prescribed opportunities for teachers to address

individual students’ needs). Of the 10 lessons rated two, a Two-Minute-Edit was included in six

of the third grade lessons. Opportunities for the teacher to monitor and assist students were

included in two other lessons. One of the remaining two third grade lessons included

opportunities for both student/teacher conferences and for teacher monitoring and assistance.

The last lesson incorporated student/teacher conferences, teacher monitoring and assistance, and

Two-Minute-Edit as opportunities for the teacher to individualize instruction. The fourth and

fifth grade lessons were also split evenly between one and two ratings. Of the four fourth grade

and four fifth grade lessons, two at each level included student/teacher conferences, teacher

monitoring and assistance, and Two-Minute-Edit.

44 While student-teacher conferences were built into lessons at the third, fourth and fifth

grade levels, lower grade’s lessons specifically required the teacher to meet with students outside

of class to address any learning issues. For example, in a Writing Wings Craft Lessons for the

third, fourth and fifth grades, students who did not score satisfactorily (80% and below) on a quiz

were required to arrange a meeting time with the teacher before moving on to the next part of the

lesson.

Concerning the teacher's relationship with individual students, the third domain also

looked at the opportunities available for teachers to tailor instruction to their students’ interests.

Lessons that were rated one in this area were considered prescribed as they were delivered to the

whole class with no opportunity for the teacher to address students’ interests. Lessons that were

rated two (prescribed with variations or adaptations allowed) were delivered to the whole class

but included opportunities for the teacher to address students’ interests. There were no lessons in

this area rated three (not prescribed).

Out of the lessons analyzed, 38 were rated one in this aspect of the third domain. These

lessons prescribed content as well as topics for discussion and related activities. For example, a

third grade Adventure Island lesson used a children’s book about ancient Egypt called Mummies

and Pyramids as a point of departure for all of the teamwork, team discussions, and class

discussions used in a five day lesson. Each day, the students worked in pairs and individually to

develop the reading comprehension strategy prescribed by the program. The program provided

the teacher with prompts for team and class discussions and restricted him or her to exploration

of those areas of interest outlined by the book. The students were not permitted to brainstorm any

other ideas or questions they might have about ancient Egypt.

45 The remaining eight lessons were rated two. Unlike the other 38 lessons, these did

provide opportunities for instruction to include individual students’ interests. These opportunities

were created in writing activities included in the Reading Wings and Writing Wings lessons.

Although the program prescribed the type of activity and skills used in the lessons, the teacher

had the opportunity to adapt the instructions to allow students to work with areas of interest. For

example, in a fifth grade Writing Wings lesson on persuasive writing, the student was instructed

to “select one of the topics listed or think of a new one about which to write”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writing.htm). Although all of the students in this

example were prepared to write a position paper using the same “web” graphic organizer, the

students were allowed choice in both their writing topic and audience.

Every lesson designed for the kindergarten/first and second grade levels were rated one.

At the third grade level, 80% of the lessons were rated one with the remaining 20% rated two. In

the less prescribed lessons, the prescribed writing prompts created opportunities for the teacher

to incorporate students’ interests into the lesson. At the fourth and fifth grade levels, writing

prompts created these opportunities in 50% of the lessons while the other half lacked this form of

flexibility.

Finally, the teacher's relationship with individual students was also considered based on

his or her opportunity to tailor the pace of instruction to meet individual students' needs. In this

specific area of the third domain, lessons that set one pace of instruction without opportunities to

accelerate or slow the speed for students were rated one. Lessons that outlined the pace of

instruction but allowed for adjustments rated two while lessons that did not indicate any pace of

instruction were rated three.

46 Among the 46 lessons analyzed, 52% rated one, 35% rated two, and 13% rated three.

Whereas lessons rated one had no opportunity for pace adjustments, lessons rated two had

opportunities to either accelerate or slow the lesson based on individual needs. In order to fall

into the less prescribed category, the lessons included at least one of four different types of

modifications. Of the 16 lessons rated two, 11 had extra work for students who had successfully

completed an activity and were prepared to move on. However, in these situations students were

not introduced to new material. Instead, extra work either prepared for the next activity or

reviewed old material. For example, at two different points in a Reading Wings lesson designed

for the third grade, students who finished early were told to either "preview and begin discussing

the Team Talk Extender," or to "take turns rereading the page designated for fluency practice"

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingwings.htm). In addition to the extra activities

described above, eight of the 11 lessons rated two also allowed the teacher to modify the pace of

instruction by monitoring students reading and then "assigning individual fluency goals"

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/readingroots.htm).

In three of the remaining five lessons rated two, more accelerated material was built into

the lessons for those students needing a challenge. For example, in a FastTrack Phonics lesson

designed for the kindergarten/first grade, the program incorporated more difficult spelling words

into the lesson to challenge accelerated students. Teachers were directed to “let the students

decide if they [were] ready to attempt to spell these words” and to remind them that “…the last

row of words was really hard. They were Alphie’s Big Words! If you [the students] think you’re

ready, you can try spelling Alphie’s Big Words”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/fasttrack.htm). Elsewhere, in two of the other lessons

rated two, teachers were encouraged to "continue checking teams on individual items until [they]

47are satisfied that the students [understood] the skill and task"

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/adventure.htm).

Finally, there were six lessons that were rated three in relation to the teacher’s

opportunities to modify the pace of instruction for individual students. Of the six lessons in this

category, 100% were in Writing Wings lessons designed for the third, fourth, and fifth grades.

These lessons provided an outline of the lesson and its content but assumed students would work

independently at their own pace. The teacher was expected to monitor and help students make

reasonable progress; he or she was not required to have students work at the same speed. In fact,

the Craft Lessons that precede the writing workshops for these grades, direct the teacher to

"remind the students that if their score [was] 80 or more [on a Quick Check] they [were] ready to

include main idea and supporting details in their writing [but] if they [did] not score at least 80

points they should either redo the Quick Check for a higher grade or have a conference with the

teacher before writing their first drafts"

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writingwings.htm). It was expected that students

would advance to the next stage in the writing process only once they had mastered the necessary

skills.

At the kindergarten/first grade level, 54% of the lessons were rated one and 46% were

rated two. Of the lessons rated two, half had accelerated materials built into the lesson and half

made extra activities available to students. At the second grade level, 60% of the lessons were

rated one and 40% were rated two. Those lessons rated two had opportunities for the teacher to

continue on one section of the lesson until he or she felt the students were ready to move on. One

half of the lessons designed for the third grade were rated one while 40% were rated two and

10% were rated one. Third grade lessons rated two included both extra work and opportunities

48for the teacher to assign individual fluency goals while lessons rated three allowed the teacher

and students to set the pace of instruction. Finally, both the fourth and fifth grade lessons were

split evenly in half between lessons rated one and lessons rated three. While those fourth and

fifth grade lessons rated one did not have opportunities for the prescribed pace of instruction to

be modified, lessons rated three allowed it to be set entirely by the teacher and students.

Domain IV: Child’s relationship to his or her own learning

The final set of questions used to collect data was concerned with the child’s relationship

with his or her own learning. While the previous three domains considered how the teacher

interacted with the curriculum and his or her students, the final domain examined the child’s

experience in SFA language arts lessons. More specifically, the fourth domain looked at the

student’s opportunities to (1) pursue his or her own interests, (2) take responsibility for his or her

own learning goals, and (3) express him or herself in multiple forms. Each lesson was examined

in relation to each of these areas and rated one to three on the Likert Scale. Lessons rated one

were considered prescribed with no variation allowed. Lessons rated two were also considered

prescribed but allowed some variations and adaptations while those lessons rated three were

considered not prescribed. Across these three aspects of the child’s relationship with his or her

own learning, 83% of the lessons were considered prescribed with the remaining 17% considered

prescribed with modifications allowed.

Related specifically to the types of opportunities available to students to pursue their own

interests, 72% of the lessons were rated one. The 33 lessons that fell into the category of

prescribed with no variation allowed, required that all students pursue the same knowledge

through the means prescribed by the program. While the remaining 13 lessons required students

to pursue the same knowledge, they were rated two because they included opportunities for the

49students to work with areas of personal interest. There was at least one of two type of

opportunities included in lessons rated two that incorporated student preference. 12 lessons

included a writing component that asked the students to choose and write about a topic of their

choice. The type of writing exercise and skill practiced were both prescribed but the student was

allowed to decide on the substance of the composition. In the remaining lesson rated two, a

“book club” activity allowed students to not only select a book to read but also to choose how to

report on the book to the class.

Concerning this area of student experience, every kindergarten/first and second grade

lesson rated one. In the third grade, 55% of the lessons rated one and 45% of the lessons rated

two. Lessons designed for the fourth and fifth grades were again split evenly in half by those

rated one and those rated two. Other than the one lesson in the third grade that included “book

club,” every other lesson rated two in the third, fourth and fifth grades were rated as such

because they allowed students to choose a topic for their writing assignment.

The fourth domain also considered whether or not the program allowed students to take

responsibility for their own learning goals. Of the 46 lessons analyzed, 39 were rated one

because all students were required to achieve the same goals as prescribed by the program. The

remaining seven lessons allowed students to adjust and individualize the goals set by the

program. Students were involved in goal modification and setting in two different ways. First,

three of the lessons at the kindergarten/first grade level allowed the students to choose whether

or not they would try to learn and be tested on the week’s challenge spelling words. Second, two

of the Writing Wings lessons designed for the fourth and fifth grades allowed students to review

the prescribed scoring guide and make changes as the class saw fit. In this way, students were

able to weigh certain aspects of the assignment more heavily than others based on class

50consensus. Although Writing Wings lessons at the third grade are very similar to those lessons

that are designed for the fourth and fifth grades, the third grade was not allowed this

modification opportunity. Instead, the program prescribed a scoring guide to evaluate students’

progress.

Finally, relating to the child’s relationship to his or her own learning, data was collected

on students’ opportunities to express themselves in multiple forms. Overwhelmingly, the lessons

were rated one in this category. 93% of the lessons required that students demonstrate their

learning through one form of expression prescribed by the program. Only 7% of the lessons,

three out of the 46, permitted the students to demonstrate their learning in more than one way.

One of these opportunities was created through the third grade “book club” included in a

Reading Wings lesson.

Two additional lessons created the opportunity for students to express themselves in more

than one way. In the third grade Writing Wings lessons, students were allowed to illustrate their

books after completing the written component. Unlike the opportunity created with the “book

club” in which students decided how they would express themselves, the illustrations were not

factored into a scoring guide. The students were only evaluated based on the written component

of the assignment. Furthermore, one of the third grade lessons only permitted students to include

illustrations in their books “if time [permitted]”

(http://www.successforall.com/elementary/writing.htm). Third and fourth grade Writing Wings

lessons did not permit students to illustrate.

51 CHAPTER FOUR

Discussion

Regardless of lesson type, grade level or whether the analysis of the lesson focused on the

experience of the teacher or child, the SFA curriculum appeared overwhelmingly prescribed. In

the majority of lessons, both the teacher and student were greatly restricted in their authority to

shape the curriculum and determine how to make its content personally meaningful. Similarly,

the interactions that took place among students and between students and their teachers were, for

the most part, controlled by the program. The classroom experiences described above and typical

to SFA classrooms, not only lack spontaneity and limit teacher and student creativity, but also

imply a lack of confidence in the ability of teachers to teach, and a similar lack of confidence in a

child’s natural capacity to learn. While a closer look at the different aspects of the SFA

experience reveals that there are variations within the curriculum, they are not outside the realm

of a highly prescribed program.

Domain I: Teacher's Relationship to the Curriculum

The emphasis placed on preparing students for high stakes testing is evident in Domain I.

As previously cited, states’ standardized exams greatly restrict teachers’ choices in what they

teach, how they teach, and what criteria they use to evaluate teaching and learning (Porter,

1989). In the context of SFA, the teacher is at best an instrument for delivering a program script

that dictates most, and in some cases, all, that is done in the classroom. The role of a SFA teacher

is designed before he or she enters the school or sets foot in the classroom. Although the teacher

is a necessary component in the program’s implementation, the teacher’s individual

characteristics, skills and personality add little value to the program’s curriculum.

52A clear demonstration of the curriculum’s restricted nature within Domain I is the

program’s high level of prescription concerning instructional materials. With only 15% of the

lessons in this study allowing for variation through supplemental materials, there appears to be

significant evidence supporting Datnow and Castellano’s assertion (2000) that nearly all of the

materials, including reading booklets, additional text related materials, workbooks, activities and

assessments, are prescribed and their use required in SFA schools. In this sphere, the program’s

primary purpose is to maintain control over instructional materials and their use while

simultaneously limiting teacher discretion. Seldom does a SFA teacher have the authority to

select instructional materials on which to base the curriculum and his or her teaching approach.

The high level of prescription, found especially in the lower grade levels, reflects the

program's conviction that students must learn to read by the third grade; a task, which, according

to the SFA foundation, is only accomplished through improved curriculum and instruction

(McKinney, 2005). States, and their schools, have too much at stake to assume teachers will

structure reading and writing programs to prepare their students to meet state standards. By

standardizing what and how reading skills are taught in these critical years, SFA attempts to

guarantee that essential knowledge is taught effectively by limiting potential teacher effects.

The few lessons that were analyzed in the first domain and found to be less prescribed

and more supportive of supplemental material were written primarily for the upper grades (third

through fifth). Perhaps because the program assumes that with effective Success for All

curriculum and instruction in place in the earlier grades students will achieve requisite skills,

more latitude in selecting instructional materials is afforded to teachers who have more advanced

learners.

Additionally, the shift in the curriculum from more to less prescribed may be related to

53the change in emphasis from reading in the lower grades to writing in the upper grades. The

kindergarten/first and second grade lessons that were analyzed focused entirely on reading. Third

grade lessons on the other hand, were comprised of both reading and writing lessons while the

fourth and fifth grade lessons analyzed focused on writing and did not include reading lessons.

Whether the selection of lessons used in this study is reflective of the SFA curriculum as a whole

(a focus on reading at the younger grades and writing at the older grades) or not, the teacher's

relationship with the curriculum at the two levels is very different. In general, the writing

workshops included in the third, fourth and fifth grade lessons were less scripted and allowed

more teacher autonomy in selecting materials than did the reading lessons designed for the lower

grades.

Although SFA teachers have very limited opportunities to select instructional materials

used in the curriculum, they do have a greater degree of latitude in modifying or adapting the

prescribed materials using optional strategies and activities. However, unlike the teacher’s

latitude in the selection of instructional materials, which increased with grade level, the

program's allowance for modifications to the prescribed materials decreased with grade level.

This characteristic of SFA may also be an outcome of the program’s fundamental belief that

students must be reading at grade level by the end of third grade (Slavin & Madden, 2001).

In other words, in order to ensure all students are developing the critical skills emphasized in the

early grades, the program must allow a certain degree of teacher differentiated instruction.

Therefore, SFA kindergarten/first, second, and third grade teachers have more opportunities to

modify instructional materials and the pace of teaching through optional supplemental activities,

review, and practice exercises. However, as students progress through the SFA curriculum, they

are assumed to have mastered the skills necessary to succeed in future years. Supposing all

54students are prepared with the knowledge and experience necessary to do well in the upper

grades there is presumably less need for additional practice and lesson modifications.

The instructional climate of programs in which teachers have little authority to evaluate

student performance reduces teachers' sense of professionalism. Rather than an active participant

helping students make sense of new material, the teacher who is not permitted to make

professional decisions in the best interest of his or her students is little more than a transmitter of

knowledge. By limiting the teacher's authority to respond to students and modify instruction, the

SFA curriculum creates teachers who, as Schmidt and Prawat (1999) describe, simply go through

the motions in routine and unremarkable ways.

In terms of the teacher’s relationship with the curriculum, SFA provides the teacher with

the greatest degree of latitude in setting the pace of instruction in relation to the curriculum.

While 46% of the lessons were rated highly prescribed in this area, 41% were rated prescribed

but allowed for modifications and 13% were rated not prescribed. Teachers seemed to have more

latitude in adjusting the pace of instruction in the lessons designed for the upper grades; teachers

had a significantly greater degree of autonomy in structuring the upper grades’ writing

workshops than they did in the lower level reading lessons. In the writing lessons, the teacher

was not only empowered to determine how instructional time would be used to develop specific

writing skills, he or she was also responsible for monitoring student progress. Teachers who

experience a greater degree of latitude in writing workshops it would seem, are more likely to

have an increased sense of commitment, productivity and responsibility.

Lower elementary grade teachers retain some of the autonomy described in the upper

grades in regard to setting the pace of instruction but it is to a lesser degree. Unlike the writing

lessons, which assume the teacher will set the pace of instruction, the kindergarten/first grade

55lessons set the pace the teacher is expected to follow. Again, due to the importance of

developing and refining fundamental reading skills as soon as students begin their formal

schooling, the program seems to attempt to balance its responsibility for curriculum

improvement through prescribed lessons with teacher responsibility for monitoring student

progress. At such an early stage in the development of students' reading and writing skills, both

components are necessary to ensure students are mastering the material and advancing their

literacy. Rather than dictate one pace of instruction and potentially deny teachers and students

adequate time on new material, the teacher of youngest grades is afforded the opportunity to

adjust the pace of instruction.

Lessons designed for the second and third grades, however, seem to place more emphasis

on the curriculum than on creating sufficient time for good, evaluative teaching. Lessons are

broken up by timed activities and both teachers and students are expected to work at the set pace.

As suggested by Wong and Wang (2002) the program's objectives, as they are actually played

out in the classroom, are set by the state's particular curriculum guidelines and tested by the

state's standardized, high-stakes tests. As students approach the end of the third grade and the

first of a series of standardized tests, the program's explicit curriculum is emphasized: to have all

students reading at grade level and prepared for standards based assessment (Success for All

Foundation, 2004). In order for this goal to be achieved, teachers must prepare all of their

students with the information most likely to be tested. As a result, there is less latitude for the

teacher to adjust the pace of instruction.

When it comes to the teacher's relationship with the curriculum in terms of his or her

latitude to determine appropriate assessment tools, 87% of the lessons analyzed showed that the

program made no allowance for teacher authority in this area. All of the lessons rated one

56(prescribed) were designed for kindergarten through third grades and either included both the

assessment and scoring tools or lacked a formal evaluation altogether. Of those lessons that

lacked an assessment, 84.6% were in kindergarten/first grade lessons and none expected nor

permitted the teacher to create an alternative. The two kindergarten/first grade lessons that did

include a formal assessment were cumulative and used as an evaluative tool for the teacher at the

end of a unit.

One such assessment, the SOLO (Appendix D) was given by the teacher to individual

students to monitor progress in reading. The purpose of the assessment was to help the teacher

evaluate how well students were acquiring language arts skills. As cited by Datnow and

Castellano (2000), students whose tests scores indicate they may need additional help are pulled

out of non-core subject lessons for one-to-one tutoring. At this level, the test is not intended to

help the student monitor progress; it is rather a diagnostic tool to help the teacher determine

students' needs so that they can be addressed and success achieved (McKinney, 2005). Although

the program does not provide students with extra help within the general education classroom,

the pullout measure is one demonstration of the program's belief in the importance of individual

attention in preventing learning deficits (McKinney, 2005).

However, while the program allows the teacher to pay attention to individual children,

this is a far cry from permitting the classroom teacher to individualize instruction. The testing

and referral process utilized by the program seems to send the message that teachers are not

trusted with the responsibility of identifying need and taking a proactive stance to address the

learning issue. General education classroom teachers are directed to rely on prescribed methods

for evaluating student progress and on other professionals to address the needs of their students.

57 There is one lesson at the kindergarten/first grade level that includes an assessment

tool that can be used by the student to monitor his or her own progress. At this level, this type of

assessment is an introduction to the type of test used in the middle and upper elementary grade

levels. In the case of this assessment, the material tested (spelling words) as well as the test's

scoring guide were provided to teachers. Prescribed assessments of this kind were seen more

frequently as lessons progressed through the grade levels.

An additional difference between the kindergarten/first grade level assessments and those

of the second, third, fourth and fifth grade levels, was how closely the assessments in the later

grades resembled standardized test questions. The quick checks and formal written tests used in

the upper grades helped students as well as teachers monitor progress, were focused on reading

comprehension and language arts skills, and were multiple choice. It is concurrent with a general

trend previously discussed in other areas of Domain I that the program begins to emphasize this

form of testing in the second grade; teachers at this level must begin to prepare students for the

high stakes tests the learners will soon experience.

However, the extent to which teachers are removed from determining what is tested and

how it is tested has implications in what it means for teachers and students to be successful.

Teacher effectiveness is indirectly measured by students' acquisition of skills emphasized in the

state's curriculum standards and expectations. It is understandable that in this type of educational

environment, teachers feel pressured to adhere to the prescribed curriculum as their students'

preparation for the assessments will reflect their success as a teacher. By limiting teachers'

control of knowledge, high stakes tests are redefining what it means for teachers and their

students to be successful (Lipman, 2004).

58 It should be acknowledged however, that teachers do enjoy more control over content

in the writing lessons designed for the third, fourth and fifth grades. Although teachers are still

provided with writing prompts and accompanying scoring guides, they have opportunities to

make adjustments to the assessment. Based on his or her evaluation of students’ progress rather

than the program’s preset standards, teachers in the upper grades are empowered to make

decisions concerning the skills that should be emphasized and how they should be appropriately

measured.

This data supports the previously made conclusion that teachers in the upper grades are

trusted with greater control over lesson content. In the lower grades, the program gives teachers

learning goals and tells them what material must be mastered in order for the goals to be

achieved. Assessments at this level are used to help teachers monitor how well students are

attaining the program’s goals and to determine whether extra support outside of the classroom is

appropriate. The general education teacher in the lower grades does not use student assessment

to shape future lessons. In the upper grades, the program still sets learning goals but allows the

teacher more latitude in determining how to prepare the students to reach the goals. Assessments

in the later grades again serve to illuminate points of difficulty that students have not mastered.

However, the tool is intended as much for the student as for the teacher to monitor progress.

Both students and teachers can adjust their focus during future instruction to address any issues

that surfaced on the assessments.

Domain II: Teacher's Authority to Establish Instructional Strategies

Three of the major components and characteristics of the SFA curriculum directly

influence how lessons are analyzed within Domain II. Described by Datnow and Castellano

(2000), the SFA curriculum is highly prescribed, includes ability grouping regardless of grade or

59age, and cooperative learning experiences. As would be expected of a highly scripted program

that integrates these elements of teaching and learning, the majority of the SFA lessons

prescribed strategies for all three aspects of the second domain including (1) student grouping,

(2) cooperative learning, and (3) structuring student interactions. Overwhelmingly, the program

limited the teacher's autonomy in this sphere of the curriculum by limiting his or her control over

instructional strategies.

With reading and language arts placed at the foundation of school success in the early

grades, SFA attempts to differentiate instruction so that each student works on appropriate

material. However, rather than attempt to achieve this task in a heterogeneously grouped

classroom, all students are grouped homogeneously by ability for 90 minutes a day of reading

instruction. For this reason, 100% of the reading lessons designed for kindergarten through third

grade were delivered to students separated and grouped in this way. The significance of ability

grouping in the teacher's experience may be two fold. In theory, teachers in this setting should be

able to deliver instruction to the entire class with limited modifications required. While the

teacher's job is simplified in this respect, it removes teacher responsibility to consistently

consider the students' individual strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, it reduces the teacher's

need to think critically about how those learning characteristics can be acknowledged and

addressed in cooperative learning situations.

The daily emphasis on reading makes the program's explicit curriculum clear to both

teachers and students. However, Apple (2004) suggests that students will derive additional

meaning from explicit curriculum’s implementation. It would seem therefore, that in addition to

the direct message students receive about the importance of reading, they may also interpret the

homogeneous class structure as a reflection of the program's values and beliefs. As cited in

60Hickey and Zuiker (2001), Rueda, Macgillvray, Munzo and Arzubiaga (2006) describe the

effect of the students' inferences on motivation levels. The authors contend that students will

negotiate how they view themselves as learners based on how they fit into the curriculum's

standards and values. The combination of defining school success as the ability to read at grade

level, comparing students' abilities, and then grouping students based on those competencies,

may make some students feel deficient and thus unmotivated. As Slavin and Madden (2001)

describe, students who lack motivation and positive self-esteem may enter into the downward

spiral of poor achievement, frustration, and disinterest.

Although there are also challenges associated with heterogeneously grouped classes,

research conducted in the last 30 years suggests cooperative learning is an effective means of

differentiating instruction in diverse classrooms. Domain II data analysis also looked specifically

at the teacher's latitude in using cooperative learning strategies in SFA classrooms. In order to

discuss the curriculum's success in integrating cooperative learning into the classroom, it is first

necessary to discuss past research that identifies the elements of cooperative learning.

David Johnson and Roger Johnson have been leading advocates of the theory and

practice of cooperative learning since the late 1960's. In the 1980's the two educators developed

the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota and have reviewed and written a

substantial amount of the research that exists on the teaching strategy (Johnson & Johnson,

1999). Johnson and Johnson (1999) describe cooperative learning as carefully structured groups

that include a high level of positive interdependence and face-to-face interaction between

members (referred to by Johnson and Johnson as “promotive” interaction). Although cooperative

learning takes place in small groups, members are held accountable for their share of work.

Teachers are responsible for instructing students about the interpersonal and small-group skills

61they need to coordinate their efforts and for helping them process how the skills were used

effectively or could be used more effectively in the future. As stated by Johnson and Johnson

(1999), "seating people together and calling them a 'cooperative group' does not make them one"

(p. 2). Instead, the grouping strategy is an "instructional procedure separate from the make up of

the classroom" (Johnson & Johnson, 1993, p. 60).

In assessing the extent to which SFA permits or encourages cooperative learning, it is

important to note that the researcher used the strategies identified by the program as models of

cooperative learning to analyze the data. However, there is little resemblance between how SFA

implements cooperative learning and how Johnson and Johnson (1999) define the learning

strategy. At best, a small percentage of SFA lessons call for or allow cooperative activities but

these activities in isolation do not constitute a cooperative learning approach. They are at best,

components of cooperative learning. Thus, the most that can be said of SFA is that a small

percentage of lessons contain elements of cooperative learning but the program as a whole, falls

short of employing cooperative learning as a program strategy.

Of the lessons analyzed, 38 included activities that Johnson and Johnson identified as

parts of formal and informal cooperative learning. The remaining eight lessons lacked any

evidence of the learning strategy; 100% of those lessons that lacked cooperative components

were in kindergarten through third grade lessons with five of the eight in kindergarten/first grade

lessons alone. In the upper grades, both the higher percentage of lessons using cooperative

learning strategies as well as the formality of the strategies used, may indicate a difference in the

type of instruction and learning the program expects of its teachers and students at different

grade levels.

62 In SFA lessons designed for the kindergarten/first grade, cooperative learning is

informal. In fact, unless the teacher or student was made aware of the elements of the specific

instructional strategies, Think-Pair-Share or partner monitoring, they may not be identified as

cooperative learning. Due to the informal nature of Think-Pair-Share and partner monitoring, the

two cooperative activities are written directly into lessons plans without any pre-instructional

decisions on the part of the teacher. The teacher has very little responsibility for making the

cooperative activity happen. Likewise, students do not really need to practice or develop

cooperative skills to successfully take part in the activities. Students, who understand the steps

involved in the two informal strategies, can complete the activities without understanding the

potential benefit of working together.

Although Think-Pair-Share does entail elements of cooperative learning as described by

Johnson and Johnson (1999), some may challenge the integrity of the strategy as it is used in

SFA in the lower elementary grades. Undoubtedly, the strategy can help teachers focus their

students' attention, ensure their cognitive processing (Johnson & Johnson, 1999), and give

students the opportunity to practice sharing their own ideas. However, one of the stipulations of

cooperative learning is that students work to accomplish shared goals. Think-Pair-Share

experiences that do not give students the opportunity to discuss, challenge, and support each

other's thinking and ultimately arrive at a shared opinion, lack a fundamental component of

cooperative learning. While the experience may reasonably constitute a cooperative activity,

alone, it does not represent a cooperative learning approach.

Likewise, having students check each other's work without giving them the opportunity

and responsibility of helping each other with suggestions is not a form of cooperative learning. In

reading lessons at the kindergarten/first grade levels, students were instructed to check and initial

63each other's work. At times, these interactions were entirely non-verbal. The initials signified

that the partnership had completed the task rather than that they had cooperated to ensure each

other's success.

There were only two lessons at the kindergarten/first grade level that included informal

cooperative learning activities in which students did actually work together to accomplish shared

goals. Student partners in each of these lessons had face-to-face, promotive interaction as they

monitored and assisted in each other's work and understanding. In light of Johnson and Johnson's

meta-analysis on cooperative learning that suggests working to achieve a common goal produces

higher achievement and greater productivity than does working alone, (cited in Johnson and

Johnson (1999)), it would seem an important experience to emphasize even in the earliest years

of a student's formal education. Even kindergartners they argue "can practice social skills each

day in cooperative activities….They are a necessity for the healthy social and psychological

development of individuals who can function independently" (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, p. 5).

However, SFA does not seem to wholeheartedly embrace the potential of the approach as both

teachers and students in the early grades are limited in opportunity to use students' knowledge

and experiences as a resource for teaching and learning.

In terms of cooperative learning, both teachers and students in SFA classrooms are given

more responsibility in the upper grade levels. Teachers are expected to facilitate more formal

cooperative learning experiences and students are expected to have the necessary social skills to

make them work. Lessons designed for the upper grade levels included both formal and informal

cooperative learning approaches. One main difference between the learning strategy as it was

used in kindergarten/first grade and then in the later grades, is the introduction of teams and

shared goals. According to Johnson and Johnson (1999), in order for the teamwork to engender a

64cooperative approach it must include both academic and social skill objectives; the lessons

analyzed lacked evidence of any focus on the second type of skill. Instead of including a social

skills objective in the lessons' cooperative activities, the program attempts to teach all necessary

skills in two weeks (10 lessons) at the beginning of the school year. It seems that the curriculum

assumes the skills will be practiced and utilized throughout the year although it is never made

explicit beyond those first few lessons.

While the cooperative experiences included in the lessons had the potential to facilitate

promotive interaction, the teacher was not instructed to explain the social skills to be used nor

the criteria for students' success. As a result, students did not have the opportunity to process the

social skills that aided or hindered their cooperative effort. However, Johnson and Johnson

(1999) stress that "every cooperative instructional unit [should be] a social skills lesson as well

as an academic one" (p.9); without these two elements of the learning strategy, the teamwork

activities are not sufficiently comprehensive, nor are they used in such a way as to constitute a

cooperative learning approach.

Furthermore, although the cooperative learning experiences did take place in teams, the

curriculum did not assign complementary roles to members of the group. While there was a team

leader who helped the group review strategies and directions, the other members did not have

assigned tasks or responsibilities. Similarly, the teamwork activities included in the lessons gave

all students the same information without dividing the resources they needed to solve the

problem among the team members. Although the potential was there for students to work

together to help each other solve problems, assigning complimentary roles and dividing

resources among students could have helped to ensure greater interdependence. In the SFA set

up, nothing prevents students from working alone even though they are assigned to work in a

65cooperative group. Rather than being an authentic cooperative learning approach, Johnson and

Johnson (1999) would refer to the SFA approach as a "traditional classroom learning group" in

which "the more hard working and conscientious students would perform higher if they worked

alone" (p. 1).

In the same way that the SFA curriculum did not require positive interdependence,

students never had to reflect on how working together could be beneficial. Students did not have

the opportunity to process either individually, in their group, or as a class what went well and

what needed improvement in their cooperative efforts. Without a social skill objective, group

processing lacks structure and significance as an element of cooperative learning and is thus an

unnecessary component of the SFA curriculum.

The SFA curriculum could also place a greater emphasis on positive interdependence by

more consistently utilizing joint rewards in the form of cooperation points. This form of extrinsic

motivation is limited in the kindergarten/first grade lessons as students have very few

opportunities to cooperate. However, as students are introduced to formal cooperative learning

experiences, joint rewards are relied on heavily. In the four second grade lessons that involved

teamwork activities, students were rewarded for positive behavior a total of 22 times, an average

of 5.5 times in a 45 minute lesson. By the third grade however, teachers were no longer

instructed to reward students for good cooperative behavior. Instead, the focus turned to

frequent, whole group celebrations for teamwork. Students in the upper grades are expected to

have learned the necessary skills for successful cooperative behavior and to recognize their

intrinsic value; extrinsic motivation in the form of rewards is no longer deemed necessary.

Before moving on to discuss other aspects of the data analysis, the SFA cooperative

learning model must be considered as it alludes to this study’s research aim; to determine that

66which is implicit in the routines and expectations experienced and acknowledged by students

(Apple, 2004). As referred to previously in the review of literature, Apple’s (2004) first question

refers to a program’s hidden curriculum as the norms, values, and dispositions that educational

institutions prescribe to students simply through school’s day-to-day basic regularities.

Furthermore, Apple seeks to determine whose knowledge becomes schools’ official knowledge,

why it is organized and taught as it is and why particular groups of students are targeted for this

form of instruction (2004).

High-stakes, standardized exams are generally criterion-referenced and include a

minimum score that students must achieve to pass. The criterion or subject matter that the test is

designed to assess are aligned with state standards. Although students are not tested against each

other as with norm-referenced percentile rankings, students success is measured against a

minimum score; students’ knowledge of the criterion is thus categorized as either sufficient of

deficient. An educational program that prepares students for such an individualized measure of

success is limited in the curricular experiences it can offer to its students and teachers.

Cooperative learning, as it is used in the SFA program, has the potential to develop

students’ testable academic preparedness and skills. However, appropriately implemented, the

teaching strategy has the potential to do much more than help students pass standardized exams;

it has the potential to teach students the skills and knowledge not easily assessed by states’ tests

but essential nonetheless. Cooperative learning extends learning beyond explicit curriculum

standards to the essential development of life competencies. SFA students learn individually, not

cooperatively and in doing so miss invaluable opportunities to develop critical thinking, problem

solving and interpersonal skills needed for life and career successes beyond high stakes tests.

67 As shortsighted as the program’s vision may seem in contrast to our nation’s

educational function to prepare students for responsible and active involvement in society, Wong

and Wang (2002) suggest that scripted reform models (such as SFA) are very common in the

nation’s failing, Title I schools. As cited, Lipman (2004) extends the discussion to suggest that

test-driven practices, common in schools with underserved student populations, promote

educational tracking. The data seems to indicate that SFA’s emphasis on test-driven practices

undermines the potential of cooperative learning situations and thus diminishes students’

opportunities to develop critical literacy.

The fact that this form of educational tracking is taking place in our nation’s Title I

schools, implies that this type of schooling is not only appropriate but that it is the best we can do

for a large percentage of our students. Rather than create cooperative experiences that promote

fundamental forms of critical thinking and social and psychological development (Johnson &

Johnson. 1999), SFA may limit students by preparing them only for low-skill, low-wage service

jobs.

The last part of Domain II, which examines teachers’ latitude in structuring student

interactions, seems to be directly related to the type of cooperative learning activities included in

the curriculum. As discussed earlier, students’ interactions with one another and with the teacher

in the younger grades were through either the Think-Pair-Share strategy or choral response.

Students at this level were not expected to respond individually. Considering the program's

emphasis on instilling a sense of success and positive self-expectation into its youngest learners,

it is not surprising that students' individual accountability was not stressed until the later grades.

Rather than potentially embarrass and alienate students in the early grades, the program aimed to

develop self-confidence so that students could effectively participate in the upper grades.

68Beginning in the second grade however, formal cooperative learning was established and

students were held individually accountable. The use of Numbered Heads, a strategy in which

the teacher randomly selects a number to elicit certain students’ participation, reinforced the

notion that each student must be prepared to report on their group’s learning. While this strategy

is introduced to students only as young as the second grade, it is used consistently in each

subsequent grade level.

Due to the fact that the program prescribes the type of student and teacher interaction that

takes place in the classroom, it would seem the teacher is not trusted to structure individual and

group discussions. Therefore, teachers working closely with the curriculum could deduce that the

program places little value in their relationships with, and understandings of, individual students.

In other words, the program's lack of confidence in the teachers' ability to structure appropriate

and beneficial classroom interactions may translate to a perceived lack of confidence in teachers'

understanding and awareness of their students' individual development, ability, and personality.

Domain III: The teachers relationship with individual students

Domain III data analysis looked specifically at teachers' relationships with individual

students. Concurrent with the previous discussion of the limited opportunities SFA teachers have

to structure student interactions, the majority of lessons restricted the teacher's interactions with

students as well. Of the 46 lessons analyzed, 24 were fully scripted and often included not only

the teacher presentation but also the student response. Of the lessons rated one in this respect,

71% were at the kindergarten/first and second grade levels. While all but six of the lessons

designed for the third, fourth and fifth grades were partially scripted, they did provide the teacher

with opportunities to converse openly with students. These conversations were related to the

69work the students had completed in their teams and were often instigated with an open-ended

question.

In the six writing lessons designed for the third, fourth and fifth grades however, the

teacher's latitude in responding to individual students increased again. Rated three, these lessons

were unscripted and supported open conversation in which the teacher could respond directly to

individual students.

There is an obvious trend of teachers’ latitude to respond to individual students

increasing as grade level increases. It would seem that the shift from more to less structured

lessons and discussions is the result of the program's premise that young students are limited in

their capacity to make connections and engage in effective, focused conversation. By limiting the

students' opportunities to respond, the teacher is not responsible for structuring informal

conversation to supplement and enhance formal classroom instruction. Furthermore, the highly

scripted lessons restrict teachers' ability to respond to individual students and reinforce the idea

that the only goals and objectives of the program are those of the explicit curriculum.

In the early grades, the goals are concentrated on increasing phonics and phonemic

awareness. Students’ personal connections to the material are irrelevant in how they develop

literacy skills. As stated by Lipman (2004), learning environments that deny conversations about

personal meaning in education redefine what is considered relevant and useful for students to

learn while also redefining what it means to be successful. Conformity and standardized

knowledge is more valuable in achieving the SFA objectives than creating possibilities for

students to think, act differently and find personal significance in the curriculum.

Although the program seems to neglect students' personal contributions to their own and

their community's learning, the curriculum does acknowledge the need for teachers to

70individually assist students in their work. Thanks to the homogeneity of SFA classrooms,

teachers are responsible for teaching the same material, with few modifications, to all students.

However, because it would be blatantly negligent to deny the differences that still exist, even

within classes grouped by ability, teachers at each grade level have prescribed methods for

addressing individual students’ needs. For example, in the kindergarten/first grade level, teachers

are instructed to monitor understanding and assist when necessary. In third, fourth, and fifth

grade lessons, the teacher identifies a skill that students need to learn or refine and then conducts

a "two-minute-edit." In other lessons, teachers hold brief conferences with as many students as

possible to help them edit and finalize their writing compositions.

The difference in teachers’ latitude to address students’ individual needs at the lower and

upper levels is that teachers of the third, fourth and fifth grades can choose some of the material

they cover. At the kindergarten/first grade level, teachers can only assist students with the skills

emphasized in the program's prescribed lessons. While lessons are still prescribed in the upper

grades, teachers have some authority to identify what is needed to increase students' fluency.

The increase in latitude may be due to the broader scope of material taught in the upper

grades. Whereas teachers in the lower grades have a very specific task of increasing students'

basic reading skills, upper level teachers must address a wider range of skills. It would seem that

the most effective way to address more varied and advanced reading and writing techniques and

strategies would be to teach them as they emerge in students’ work. In this way, material seems

both relevant and appropriate to teachers and students. Teachers, who are empowered to make

professional decisions in the best interests of their students, accept responsibility for their success

and are more motivated to find effective teaching methods (Porter, 1989).

71 The teacher's latitude to set the pace of instruction based on students’ individual needs

was also included in Domain III data analysis. The argument that motivation for teaching and

learning is diminished when teachers and students are forced to cover material neither party is

convinced is appropriate (Porter, 1989), also applies to students who are struggling and need

extra help; it would be remiss to expect accelerated students to remain engaged with material

they find repetitive and tedious. A program that acknowledges differences even among students

grouped homogeneously also makes accommodations for students needing more accelerated

work opportunities.

In SFA, the nature of reading and writing lessons create different opportunities for

teachers in this respect. Because the writing lessons are less scripted and allow students to work

individually and at their own pace, the student's writing level can be as basic or as complex as

their individual skills permit. In reading lessons however, teachers are expected to keep all

students working on the same material, at the same pace. The reading lessons do not permit

students to move on to new material as they are permitted to do in writing lessons. Instead,

reading lessons prescribe extra work for teachers to assign to students who finish early.

However, the material included in these activities is not accelerated; although the application is

different, the skills and content that are addressed in the additional activities are the same. While

accelerated students are provided with extra work, they are not challenged; their goals remain the

same whether they do the minimum amount of work necessary or work hard to complete all of

the additional work.

With far fewer extra work opportunities included in the early grades than in the later

grades, there seems to be an emphasis on keeping students in the younger grades working

together. This may be due to the program's assumption that all students enter kindergarten

72lacking the same skills. However, because the additional activities that are included in lessons

are not, in fact, accelerated, reading lessons at all grade levels keep students working at the same

pace. Students, it would seem, are not considered capable of learning new material without

teacher instruction and teachers are not considered proficient in determining material that would

appropriately challenge accelerated students. Furthermore, students in this restricted setting may

infer that they can get by, and even succeed, by doing the minimum amount of work necessary.

The SFA curriculum greatly neglects another important element in student motivation. In

83% of the lessons, there was no allowance for teachers to tailor instruction to individual

students' interests. Not only does the limited opportunity for teachers to explore students'

interests and personal talents lead to a de-professionalizaton of teachers (Abrams, Pedulla &

Madaus, 2003) it also devalues students' strengths as individuals.

It is not until the third grade that SFA teachers have opportunities to incorporate students’

interest into the classroom. In the kindergarten/first and second grade levels, exploration of

students' interest is considered less important than their acquisition of basic reading skills. The

program seems to neglect that the life experiences students bring with them into the classroom

can serve as essential points of departure from which students can contextualize and deepen new

knowledge. As cited, Stanchfield (1977) places student interest in a learning cycle. In the cycle,

personal interests create motivation and curiosity about new things, which, in turn, generate

future learning. For the most part, the SFA curriculum neglects to start the cycle by de-

contextualizing and generalizing knowledge so that standardized information can be emphasized.

The program's recognition, although still minimal, of the importance of personal interest

and motivation in education is more obvious in the writing lessons designed for the upper grades.

Although the type of composition students are instructed to write is prescribed, they are

73encouraged to consider personal hobbies, likes and dislikes and then choose a topic based on

their own personal interests. However, as with lessons designed for the lower grades, the writing

lessons continue to be focused on skills tested on standardized exams. Writing assignments

permitted the teacher to integrate students' interests into the lesson because it did not jeopardize

how well the student could work with and practice the standardized knowledge. Skills alone,

rather than the significance of the skills in the lives of the students, it would seem, are most

important in the SFA curriculum. As cited, Porter (1989) suggests that demands of standardized

tests, result in schools’ overemphasis on areas easily assessed and neglect of students' conceptual

understandings.

Domain IV: The student’ relationship to his or her own learning

A main reason that this study has focused so intently on the teacher's experience is the

notion that the teacher, as Haim Ginott (1972) articulated so well, is the decisive element in the

classroom. His or her joys and frustrations in teaching will be felt and shared by the students.

Due to the interrelatedness of the teacher and student experience, thus far this study has focused

on the teacher’s relationship with the program and how it shapes students’ educational

experiences. However, the last domain of data analysis in this study did focus directly on the

learning experience of SFA students.

Perhaps more so than any other domain examined in this study, the student's relationship

to his or her own learning is the most overwhelmingly prescribed. In light of the heavily

prescribed instructional experiences of the teacher, it is expected that students’ experiences

would also be prescribed. More remarkable however, is the degree to which current educational

theory discourages the types of restrictive learning experiences common to SFA students.

74 As discussed previously, students' interests were, for the most part, left out of SFA

lesson plans. The effect of this on students’ motivation, especially in the younger grades when

students’ personal interests were entirely ignored, is significant in the educational path students

pursue. Without believing that the knowledge taught in school has value in their personal lives,

students will become unmotivated; knowledge must have value outside of its contribution to

student success on standardized tests. Not only does an uninterested student lack a desire to

learn, but he or she also lacks a sense of the intrinsic rewards associated with learning something

for oneself. Removing the constraints on learning and increasing the presence of choice on the

other hand, can induce in students an increased sense of motivation.

Although students in the upper grades did have opportunities to work with topics that

interested them, they were not allowed to explore or enhance their knowledge about the topic. If

students wanted to learn more about their subject of interest, they had to do so outside of the

classroom. While students may appreciate the opportunity to work with a topic of personal

interest, the curriculum seems to send a clear message about the knowledge it values and

believes to be important. These school experiences, as Murnane and Levy (1996) describe,

legitimatize a certain set of knowledge, values and behaviors, while excluding those that may be

of personal significance to students.

Students also had very limited opportunities to take responsibility for their own learning.

Again, with a highly prescribed curriculum focused on getting students to pass tests, the

program's goals are the students’ goals. Regardless of interests, strengths and weaknesses, the

majority of lessons analyzed required that students achieve the same goals as they were

prescribed by the curriculum. In addition to the overarching program goals, the curriculum also

dictated students’ objectives in individual lessons and units. Students had little authority over

75how they learned material, demonstrated their skills or had their learning assessed. Students

who find themselves alienated from the learning community because they cannot determine or

work towards personal goals, are less likely to participate in the school environment or to

identify themselves as learners (Hickey & Zuiker, 2005).

The only opportunity students had to take responsibility for their learning goals was

created in the writing lessons designed for the fourth and fifth grades. However, the opportunity

was, in fact, very limited. Although the program prescribed the writing task, skills students had

to demonstrate, and the scoring guidelines, students in these lessons were permitted to adjust

how points were distributed on the scoring guide. In the same way that the program allowed

students to write about an area of personal interest while maintaining control over the types of

skills that were developed, this opportunity also balanced student initiative with program control.

Regardless of the skills individual students emphasized and developed in their compositions, the

final scoring guide examined only those skills the program identified as most important for test

preparation.

As might be expected with a program that does not require its students to take

responsibility for their own learning, there were very few homework assignments included in the

SFA lessons analyzed in this study. Perhaps to help establish reading habits outside of school at

an early age, those lessons that assigned work to be completed at home were in the

kindergarten/first grade level. All assignments were due back the following day and required a

parent or guardian's signature to verify that it was in fact done. In the upper grades, homework

was not assigned in either reading or writing lessons. The lack of homework seems to reflect the

program's lack of confidence in students’ ability or inclination to work outside class.

Furthermore, as homework diminishes in the upper grades, the program potentially sends the

76message that reading for pleasure outside class is less important than reading for the purpose

of learning to read.

The most heavily prescribed aspect of not only the fourth domain, but of all the domains,

concerned students' opportunities to express themselves in multiple forms. Of the 46 lessons

analyzed, 43 restricted students' expression to one form prescribed by the program. The three

lessons that did allow students to choose how to demonstrate their learning did so in very limited

ways. The first opportunity students had to choose a form of expression was found in a third

grade reading lesson’s book club. Students were allowed to choose a book to read and a method

for reporting on the book to the class. The book club activity, although relatively not prescribed,

was not an integral part of a lesson nor was it evaluated. It was, in fact, a supplemental activity

that followed a prescribed, written test. Because the book club was not part of a lesson and it did

not require students to demonstrate specific skills, it did not matter how the student reported on

the book. However, in assignments where students did have to exhibit specific skills, the

program prescribed how they would be demonstrated - a multiple choice, written test that closely

resembles a high stakes test.

The other two activities that permitted students to express themselves freely were in third

grade writing lessons. Students, after completing their writing compositions, were allowed to

include an illustration if time permitted. While all students had to complete the same assignment,

and demonstrate certain skills in the same way, only those students who could complete the tasks

easily and quickly were allowed the opportunity to add illustrations. It is no wonder that the

program has come under attack for its stifling effects on teachers' and students' creativity

(Datnow & Castellano, 2000). It should be a major concern that SFA students may experience

learning in the school setting as a means of reproducing meaning and knowledge solely to pass

77tests. As cited, Newmann, Marks and Gamoran (1996) argue that students who try to make

sense of the values, expectations, rewards, and sanctions that exist in restricted environments

such as SFA classrooms will likely consider school to be a constrained arena of insignificant

personal experience.

The SFA curriculum claims to recognize the enthusiasm and positive self-expectation of

young children as its greatest resource in achieving its goals. It is reasonable to ask therefore,

why the program so blatantly ignores and devalues the opportunity to have students take

responsibility for finding personal significance in learning. As John Dewey (1902) described,

teachers should be guides who help their students learn in the context of their own personal

interests. Whether this is enabling students to explore areas of personal meaning or express

themselves in ways they feel confident and enjoy, the SFA curriculum discards the students’

enthusiasm by holding the state’s curriculum standards as the school's official knowledge and the

high stakes assessments as the official test of that knowledge.

78CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusions

Consideration of Apple’s (2004) questions concerning the hidden curriculum of the

educational climate within Success for All schools sends a clear message about the risks

associated with standardizing knowledge and how it is taught and learned. Apple (2004) asks

first, what norms, values, and tendencies are prescribed to students through schools’ normal,

day-to-day routines? Second, Apple questions whose knowledge becomes schools’ official

knowledge, who selected it, why it is organized to be taught as it is, and why particular groups of

students are targeted for this form of instruction. Finally, Apple’s last question examines the

ideological and epistemological commitments that teachers tacitly accept and promote by using

certain models.

In response to Apple’s (2004) questions concerning schools’ implicit curriculum, official

knowledge, and teachers’ beliefs, SFA is programming teachers to generate test-takers. SFA

teachers model the way by accepting and promoting a curriculum that limits students’ formal

education to the standardized knowledge tested on high stakes exams. Students may leave school

with decontextualized information needed to pass tests but lack skills and awareness necessary to

use their knowledge for active and responsible participation in society.

Beginning immediately in SFA schools, students are exposed to the program’s values and

tendencies and, as Apple (2004) would argue, its implicit curriculum. On a daily basis, students

are expected to engage in prescribed activities that lack personal meaning. How well the lesson

fits the personality, interests and abilities of the child is of less concern than how well the child

conforms to the expectations of the program. While the program does not allow for

individualization, its goals are highly individualistic. Students are expected to stay together and

79learn the same material in the same way but to do it on their own. The student’s only role in

the SFA classroom is that of an individual learner. There is no discussion of the student’s role in

a community of learners. Whereas this conversation could involve the student’s mutual

responsibility as knowledge holder and knowledge receiver, it instead focuses on the student’s

position as a solitary learner.

Based on evidence discussed in this study and in response to Apple’s questions, students

who are consistently exposed to the SFA program will internalize messages about their value in a

community that encourages individual success while de-emphasizing the individual. The

activities and experiences that are routine in the SFA curriculum emphasize skills and knowledge

selected by the state. Not only is this knowledge considered official knowledge, but the way in

which it is organized to be taught makes it the official knowledge. SFA, Apple would likely

suggest, goes as far as to prohibit the official knowledge from being taught in ways that promote

students’ development of other skills and competencies. By restricting schools’ focus and

students’ development to the knowledge and skills tested on standardized exams, schools can

assure their success as measured by their students’ test scores. Personal interests and strengths

however, Apple (2004) might argue, are diminished as students are tracked for entry-level jobs

that emphasize standardized proficiencies and conformity.

Also in reference to the theoretical framework on which this study was based, Apple

(2004) might suggest that one consequence of the ways in which official knowledge is defined in

the SFA curriculum is a subtle and unconscious lowering of the expectations and individual

standards that students set for themselves. By creating an educational setting in which students

feel they are learning skills and knowledge neither important in or relevant to their lives, SFA

deadens students’ desire to pursue new learning experiences after completing high school.

80Students, who view high school graduation as the conclusion of their formal education, may

have fewer opportunities to identify and strive for more specialized and higher paying career

aspirations. On the other hand, Apple would likely suggest that by lowering the “glass ceiling”

for Title I students, SFA is generating semi-skilled laborers content to fill positions in a new and

emerging labor workforce.

The SFA teacher’s role is also diminished. It seems an appropriate analogy would equate

the SFA teacher to a computer into which a program can be downloaded and used; regardless of

the type of program, knowledge about the user’s strengths and weaknesses would improve its

value as an assisstive or educative tool. However, by neglecting the importance of the teacher’s

relationship with individual students, the program does not acknowledge there is anything to be

learned from the students to improve instruction. In essence, the program expects its teachers to

promote only one form of teaching for all learners.

There are theoretical implications of the program’s form of one-dimensional instruction.

Apple (2004) suggests that teachers tacitly accept theories about knowledge and learning by

using certain instructional models. Based on the program’s lack of regard for students’ individual

differences and how they can be used to strengthen instruction, it appears SFA does not

acknowledge the existence or potential of multiple intelligences. While it seems obvious that

teachers should capitalize on their students’ competencies in order to address learning deficits, it

is not happening in SFA classrooms.

The curriculum denies teachers the opportunity to acknowledge students’ multiple

intelligences by defining knowledge as the information assessed on the high stakes tests. The

official knowledge of a SFA school does not validate interpersonal, bodily-kinesthetic, or

musical skills. Nor is it built on discussions about personal interests, cultural differences,

81environmental issues or service based learning. Not only does SFA limit the material it

considers important for students to learn but it also restricts the material’s importance to the

physical confines of the classroom. Students, who learn material for the sole purpose of passing a

test, are unlikely to recognize its relevance outside the classroom; learning, in this situation, is

complete when the test has been passed. The Success for All curriculum makes learning in

school a means to an end rather than the foundation on which all other learning begins.

Here again, it is appropriate to work within Apple’s framework to examine the beliefs,

and the rationale behind those beliefs, that teacher’s tacitly accept by implementing the SFA

curriculum. In other words, it seems reasonable to suggest that the values and expectations on

which the program was developed become those of its teachers when a school adopts the

curriculum. As previously discussed, not only does this have implications in how teachers view

themselves as professionals but it also influences what they expect of and hope for from their

students. Apple would likely support the statement that SFA schools employ teachers who, at

least on an unconscious level, believe their students have less potential than those students who

attend non-Title I schools. Success for All teachers tacitly accept that they are not responsible for

training their students for active and influential participation in society and in democracy. These

expectations are, for the most part, reserved for teachers of students in more affluent school

systems.

In addition to failing to provide its students with a strong base for future learning, SFA

fails to prepare its students to confront social inequalities. In the highly standardized curriculum

students learn that there is only one right answer to questions. As early as kindergarten, teachers

look for one response from their students the same way tests look for one out of several multiple

choice answers. Students do not have the opportunity to explore, defend or challenge

82controversial issues, and they are expected to wholly accept what the teacher (the SFA

curriculum) presents as sound knowledge.

Inadequately preparing students to challenge inequities is not a problem unique to SFA.

However, it is a problem that is especially significant in the Title I schools in which the program

is most often implemented. Lipman (2004) suggests that social inequalities are perpetuated when

different students are prepared for life in different ways. Students who are not empowered to

challenge others’ ideas while maintaining their own beliefs will never understand the importance

of advocating for the disempowered. Equally, Apple (2004) would likely consider it convenient

for the developers of school reform programs such as SFA that their students are not learning to

look critically at their own educational experiences and how they are being prepared for life after

school. It seems opportune for the nation’s economy that educational tracking in the school

system will continue to replenish a semi-skilled, low-wage workforce.

Apple would likely suggest that the SFA curriculum, if successful, will do a good job

providing workers for a new labor force, one that is more highly skilled and proficient in basic

skills than was the labor force that sustained the manufacturing, industrial age economy.

However, it will do little to educate our future leaders, CEO's, entrepreneurs, inventors and

scientists who will not come from such limiting educational programs. It is troubling to suspect

that the success of SFA in lower achieving schools could split our public education system into

two tracks; one which produces proficient workers, and one that produces leaders and

innovators. Rather than helping achieve the vision of universal education central to the

prominence of the American educational model, we will in fact create a two-tiered educational

system.

83Limitations

Sample

As discussed earlier, a sample of Success for All lesson plans was analyzed for this study.

Although the school reform program has many different instructional components, this study

looked only at sample lessons plans from the SFA language arts program. Within SFA’s

language arts curriculum, there were lesson plans available for five different programs: (1)

Reading Roots, for beginning readers; (2) Reading Wings, for second through sixth graders; (3)

Adventure Island, for struggling readers in grades one to five; (4) FastTrack Phonics, for

kindergarten and first grade phonics lessons; and (5) Writing Wings, for grades three through six.

Each program emphasizes different aspects of language arts instruction for different ability

levels. Therefore, while the lessons in each component share similar characteristics common to

all SFA programs, the lessons' structures and activities varied between programs as well as

among grades.

The small sample size of each type of language arts lesson, although inclusive of all

types represented on the Foundation’s website, required that the researcher consider all of the

samples holistically rather than how they individualistically represent their specific program. In

addition, the sample lessons were selected from the program at different times of the year. For

example, lessons from the Roots program included those implemented as the 1st, 5th, 18th, 21st

and 54th lesson of the school year. Therefore, while each type of lesson may evolve over the

course of an academic year, the sample only demonstrated how one or two of the lessons were

implemented at one specific stage of the year.

84Interpretation

It must also be recognized that not all Success for All teachers will use and interpret the

curriculum as the researcher did in the analysis of this study. However, it is one of the

stipulations of the program that teachers strictly adhere to the curriculum as it is written.

Professional development, training, and support opportunities are included to any school that

adopts the model to support and ensure precise implementation of the program’s different

components and strategies (Datnow & Castellano, 2000). This study’s analysis of the program’s

curriculum assumed the lessons would be implemented as intended by the Success for All

Foundation.

Implications

While a more expansive study considering the Success for All curriculum through all of

its programs might reveal alternate types of teaching and learning expereinces, this study

indicates the need for further examination into the program’s implicit curriculum. This study

may lay the ground work for a qualitative study which dervives its data directly from the teachers

and students of SFA classrooms. The actual experiences and feelings of those people for whom

the curriculum is written, could confirm or rebuke conclusions drawn by this researcher.

Considering the implications of the program’s implicit curriculm and its increasing presence in

our nations’ schools, anything less then additional, substantiated research would be irresponsible.

Furthermore, as our standards based education system is being implemented and adjusted, this

type of research could play an essential role in how we define success in our school systems.

85APPENDIX A

Sample Lesson Plan

86

87

88APPENDIX B

Data Collection Questions

Domain 1: Teacher’s relationship with curriculum

1 Prescribed – No variation

2 Prescribed –

Variation/adaptation allowed

3 Not prescribed

What latitude does the teacher have in the selection of instructional materials?

Materials prescribed No variation allowed

Materials prescribed Lesson supports supplemental materials

Materials not prescribed Lesson can be adapted to suit the material chosen by the teacher

What latitude does the teacher have in adapting or modifying instruction materials?

Lesson requires the prescribed materials to be implemented

Lesson allows materials to be modified and adapted in prescribed ways

It is the responsibility of the teacher to determine how materials are used and modified to support the lesson

What latitude does the teacher have in setting the pace of instruction in relation to the curriculum? Pace set by lesson Must be precisely followed by the teacher

Pace outlined by lesson Opportunities for modification

The lesson assumes the teacher will set the pace of instruction

What latitude does the teacher have in determining appropriate assessment tools?

Assessment tools prescribed No variation allowed

Prescribed assessment tools are provided but allow for modification

The teacher is responsible for determining and creating appropriate assessment tools

Domain 2: Teacher’s authority to establish instructional strategies

1 Prescribed – No variation

2 Prescribed –

Variation/adaptation allowed

3 Not prescribed

What latitude does the teacher have in grouping strategies? Lesson could not be implemented without the use of the prescribed grouping strategy

Lesson provides different grouping strategies that support the lesson

Lesson assumes teacher will determine the grouping strategy appropriate for the class

What latitude does the teacher have in using cooperative learning strategies? Lesson could not be implemented without the use of the prescribed cooperative learning strategy

Lesson provides different cooperative learning strategies that support the lesson

Lesson assumes teacher will determine the cooperative learning strategy appropriate for the class

What latitude does the teacher have in structuring student interactions?

Lesson depends on prescribed structure for student interaction

Lesson provides different structures for student interaction from which the teacher can chose one to support the lesson Lesson does not depend on one structure for student interactions

Lesson assumes teacher will determine the most effective way to structure student interactions

89Domain 3: Teacher’s relationship with individual students

1 Prescribed – No variation

2 Prescribed –

Variation/adaptation allowed

3 Not prescribed

What opportunity does the teacher have to respond to individual students? Lesson fully scripted No individualized responses allowed

Lesson partially scripted Includes opportunities for structured open conversation

Lesson unscripted Supports unstructured open conversation

What opportunity does the teacher have to tailor instruction to individual students’ needs?

Lesson delivered to the whole class, no individualized instruction allowed

Lesson delivered to the whole class with prescribed activities and opportunities for the teacher to address individual students’ needs

Lesson encourages teacher to elect means by which he or she will address individual students’ needs

What opportunity does the teacher have to tailor instruction to individual students’ interests? Lesson delivered to the whole class, no opportunity for teacher to acknowledge students’ interests.

Lesson delivered to the whole class with opportunities for the teacher to acknowledge students’ interests

Lesson provides opportunities for the teacher to incorporate students’ interests in the lesson

What opportunity does the teacher have to tailor the pace of instruction to meet individual students’ needs?

Domain 4: Child’s relationship to his or her own learning

1 Prescribed – No variation

2 Prescribed –

Variation/adaptation allowed

3 Not prescribed

What opportunity does the student have to pursue his or her own interests? Lesson requires that all students pursue the same knowledge through means prescribed by the program

Lesson requires that all students pursue the same knowledge with opportunities to work with areas of personal interest

Lesson and supporting activities are driven by students’ interests

What opportunity does the student have to take responsibility for his or her learning goals? Lesson requires that all students achieve the same goals at the same time through means prescribed by the program

Lesson allows students to adjust and individualizes goals set by the lesson

Lesson allows students to set individual learning goals

What opportunity does the student have to express him or herself in multiple forms? Lesson requires that students demonstrate learning through one means of expression prescribed by the program

Lesson provides students with opportunities to demonstrate learning in more than one form

Lesson encourages students to choose how they will express themselves

90

Domain 1

Lesson Plan G. D 1.1 Type D 1.2 Add/Opp. Act …if nec. D 1.3 D. 1.4 Score Guide H.W. Read. Oly. SOLO

R.R.18, Day 1 K-1 2 1 sup.lim. 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a H.W.

Alphie’s Lagoon 2 K-1 1 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a

Fast Track P L5D1 K-1 1 1 2 n/a

R.R.18, Day 2 K-1 1 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a H.W.

Fast Track P L5D2 K-1 1 1 2 n/a

R.R.18, Day 3 K-1 1 1 2 1 SOLO

Fast Track P L5D3 K-1 1 1 2 n/a

Fast Track P L5D4 K-1 1 1 2 n/a

Fast Track P L5D5 K-1 1 1 2 n/a H.W. Study for test - signature

Fast Track P L5D6 K-1 1 1 2 1 test/score guide H.W. Correct test

Fast Track P L21 K-1 1 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a

Fast Track P L54D1 K-1 1 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a

Fast Track P L54D2 K-1 1 2 Add/Opp. Act 2 n/a

Captain's C L1D1 2 1 1 1 n/a

Captain's C L1D2 2 1 2 …if nec. 1 1 Read. Oly.

Captain's C L1D3 2 1 2 …if nec. 1 1 quick check

Captain's C L1D4 2 1 2 …if nec. 1 1 Read. Oly.

Captain's C L1D5 2 1 2 …if nec. 1 1 quick check Read. Oly.

R.W. Wk 1,1 Exp. 3 1 2 …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Exp. 3 1 1 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Exp. 3 1 2 Add/Opp. Act …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1,4 Exp. 3 1 2 Add/Opp. Act …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1,5 Exp. 3 1 test 2 …if nec. 1 1 test/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 1 Nar. 3 2 ex. (1 sup.) 2 …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Nar. 3 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Nar. 3 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 4 Nar. 3 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 1 1 prompt/score guide

R.W. Wk 1, 5 Nar. 3 1 test 1 1 1 test/score guide

Treasure H Strategy 3 1 1 1 n/a

Treasure H L1D1 3 1 1 1 n/a

APPENDIX C

91

Domain 1 (continued)

Lesson Plan G. D 1.1 Type D 1.2 Add/Opp. Act …if nec. D 1.3 D. 1.4 Score Guide H.W. Read. Oly. SOLO

Treasure H L1D2 3 1 1 1 n/a

Treasure H L1D3 3 1 1 1 n/a

Treasure HL1D4 3 1 1 1 n/a

Treasure H L1D5 3 1 1 1 1 test/score guide

W.W. Inform CL 3 2 ex. (1 sup.) 1 2 1 quick check

W.W. Inform writing 3 1 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist Teacher can select and distribute

W.W. Nar CL 3 2 ex. (1 sup.) 1 2 1 quick check points for a language mechanic lesson

W.W. Nar writing 3 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist

W.W. Mystery CL 4 2 1 Sup. 1 2 1 quick check

W.W. Mystery writing 4 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist

W.W. Comp/Cont CL. 4 2 1 Sup. 1 2 1 quick check

W.W. Comp/Cont 4 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist

W.W. Position CL 5 1 1 2 1 quick check

W.W. Position 5 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist

W.W. Fract. F.T. CL 5 2 ex. (1 sup.) 1 2 1 quick check

W.W. Fractured F.T. 5 1 choice (1 act) 2 …if nec. 3 2 content checklist

Totals:

1 39 85% 22 48% 46% 21 23 50%

2 7 15% 24 52% 41% 19 6 13%

3 0 0 13% 6 0 0%

N/A 0 0 0 17 37%

92

Domain 2

Lesson Plan G. D 2.1 D 2.2 A. M. initials *s D 2.3 T-P-S N.H. Celeb. M.T.Y.T W.G.R.

R.R.18, Day 1 K-1 1 1 1 1 7 2 8

Alphie’s Lagoon 2 K-1 1 1 partner mon. 2 1 initials 5 1 1 1

Fast Track P L5D1 K-1 1 1 T-P-S initials 1 2 4

R.R.18, Day 2 K-1 1 1 partner mon. 4 1 4 2 1 Stresses to partners to make sure they make "no mistakes"

Fast Track P L5D2 K-1 1 N/A initials N/A No student interactions: students check each other’s work but

R.R.18, Day 3 K-1 1 N/A 1 1 1 2 1 never have the chance to communicate with each other

Fast Track P L5D3 K-1 1 1 T-P-S initials 1 2 3 Only one opportunity for student interaction

Fast Track P L5D4 K-1 1 1 T-P-S initials 1 1

Fast Track P L5D5 K-1 1 1 T-P-S 1 2 1 1 5 Students’ only interaction is reading to each other. No discussion.

Fast Track P L5D6 K-1 1 N/A 2 1 Game played in which students can interact - following test

Fast Track P L21 K-1 1 1 T-P-S 2 initials 1 1 1 2

Fast Track P L54D1 K-1 1 N/A 1 initials N/A

Fast Track P L54D2 K-1 1 N/A 2 N/A 1

Captain's C L1D1 2 1 1 Teamwork 1 3 1 1 1

Captain's C L1D2 2 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 5 1 2 3

Captain's C L1D3 2 1 1 Teamwork 1 7 1 5 1

Captain's C L1D4 2 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 7 1 1 4

Captain's C L1D5 2 1 Test 1 T-P-S 1 3 2

R.W. Wk 1,1 Exp. 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 2 1 1 Students are assessed and regrouped according to reading ability

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Exp. 3 1 1 Teamwork tme 1 1 2 2 1

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Exp. 3 1 1 Teamwork tme 1 1 3 2 1

R.W. Wk 1,4 Exp. 3 1 1 Teamwork tme 1 1 3 3 1

R.W. Wk 1,5 Exp. 3 1 Test 1 T-P-S 1 1 1 1 1 Ind. test score contributes to team score - Post test teamwork

R.W. Wk 1, 1 Nar. 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 3 4 1 "Teacher procedures for teamwork vary with strategy instruction"

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Nar. 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S tme 1 1 4 3 3 1

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Nar. 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S tme 1 1 2 3 2 1

R.W. Wk 1, 4 Nar. 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S tme 1 1 1 4 2 1

R.W. Wk 1, 5 Nar. 3 1 Test N/A 1 1 2 2 Ind. test score contributes to team score - Post test teamwork

Treasure H Strategy 3 1 N/A 1 1

Treasure H L1D1 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 1 2 1

93

Domain 2 (continued)

Lesson Plan G. D 2.1 D 2.2 A. M. initials *s D 2.3 T-P-S N.H. Celeb. M.T.Y.T W.G.R.

Treasure H L1D2 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 3 1

Treasure H L1D3 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 3 1

Treasure HL1D4 3 1 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 3 1

Treasure H L1D5 3 1 N/A 1 1 1 1 1

W.W. Inform CL 3 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 1 3 3 1 Heterogeneous classes - teacher decided teams

W.W. Inform writing 3 3 1 T-P-S 2 initials 1 7 2 4 Author checking - partner checking and feedback - teacher score

W.W. Nar CL 3 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 3 3

W.W. Nar writing 3 3 1 T-P-S 1 tme initials 1 3 3 4

W.W. Mystery CL 4 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 5 4 1

W.W. Mystery writing 4 3 1 T-P-S 1 tme initials 1 8 2 4

W.W. Comp/Cont CL. 4 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 3 3 1

W.W. Comp/Cont 4 3 1 T-P-S 1 tme initials 1 5 3 4

W.W. Position CL 5 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 7 3 1

W.W. Position 5 3 1 T-P-S 1 tme initials 1 6 3 4

W.W. Fract. F.T. CL 5 3 1 Teamwork T-P-S 1 5 2 1

W.W. Fractured F.T. 5 3 1 T-P-S 1 tme initials 1 4 3 4

Totals:

1 34 74% 38 83% 50% 93% 43 100 86 65 7 25

2 0 0% 0 0% 50% 0% 0

3 12 26% 0 0% 0% 0

N/A 0 0% 8 17% 7% 3

94

Domain 3

Lesson Plan

G. D 3.1 D 3.2 A. M. Other D 3.3 D. 3.4 Accel. Act.

R.R.18, Day 1 K-1 1 2 1 1 1

Alphie's Lagoon 2 K-1 1 2 2 1 1 2 Accel. Act

Fast Track P L5D1 K-1 1 1 1 1

R.R.18, Day 2 K-1 1 2 4 Ind. Act. 1 1 "Encourage students with limited speaking ability to answer the identification

Fast Track P L5D2 K-1 1 1 1 2 Challenge words questions at the beginning of the chart (p.47)."

R.R.18, Day 3 K-1 1 2 1 1 1 1

Fast Track P L5D3 K-1 1 1 1 1

Fast Track P L5D4 K-1 1 1 1 2 Challenge words

Fast Track P L5D5 K-1 1 2 1 2 1 1

Fast Track P L5D6 K-1 1 1 2 1 2 Challenge words

Fast Track P L21 K-1 1 2 2 1 1

Fast Track P L54D1 K-1 1 2 1 1 2 Accel. Act

Fast Track P L54D2 K-1 1 2 2 1 2 Accel. Act

Captain's C L1D1 2 1 Open with part. 2 1 1 1

Captain's C L1D2 2 1 1 1 1 2 continue checking until satisfied

Captain's C L1D3 2 1 S. share T. Lis. 1 1 1 1

Captain's C L1D4 2 1 S. share T. Lis. 1 1 1 2 continue checking until satisfied

Captain's C L1D5 2 1 Open 1 1 1

R.W. Wk 1,1 Exp. 3 2 T.T. Extender 1 1 Idiv. Flu. 2 2 Accel. Act "Teacher's note: This targeted treasure hunt includes a glossary of

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Exp. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act terms used in the story. If the students have difficulty understanding these

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Exp. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act terms, direct them to the glossary."

R.W. Wk 1,4 Exp. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act

R.W. Wk 1,5 Exp. 3 1 Test 1 1 Time 1 1

R.W. Wk 1, 1 Nar. 3 2 T.T. Extender 1 1 Idiv. Flu. 2 2 Accel. Act Opportunities to listen to students responses but not respond.

R.W. Wk 1, 2 Nar. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act

R.W. Wk 1, 3 Nar. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act

R.W. Wk 1, 4 Nar. 3 2 T.T. Extender 2 tme 1 Idiv. Flu. 1 2 Accel. Act

R.W. Wk 1, 5 Nar. 3 1 Test 1 1 time 1 1

Treasure H Strategy 3 1 S. share T. Lis. 1 1 1

Treasure H L1D1 3 1 2 1 1 1

95

Domain 3 (continued)

Lesson Plan G. D 3.1 D 3.2 A. M. Other D 3.3 D. 3.4 Accel. Act.

Treasure H L1D2 3 1 1 1 1

Treasure H L1D3 3 1 1 1 1

Treasure HL1D4 3 1 1 1 1

Treasure H L1D5 3 1 Test 1 1 1 1

W.W. Inform CL 3 1 brief conf. 2 1 1 1 Individual conferences need to be arranged for student to get help if 80%

W.W. Inform writing 3 2 open 2 2 brief conf. 2 3 was not achieved on the quick check

W.W. Nar CL 3 2 brief conf. 1 1 1

W.W. Nar writing 3 2 open 2 1 tme brief conf. 2 3 "Hold brief conf. with as many students as possible to help them integrate

W.W. Mystery CL 4 2 brief conf. 1 1 1 feedback they have received

W.W. Mystery writing 4 2 open 2 1 tme brief conf. 2 3

W.W. Comp/Cont CL. 4 2 brief conf. 1 1 1 Students opportunity to respond is limited to one work responses.

W.W. Comp/Cont 4 2 open 2 1 tme brief conf. 2 3

W.W. Position CL 5 2 brief conf. 1 1 1

W.W. Position 5 2 open 2 1 tme brief conf. 2 3

W.W. Fairy Tale CL 5 2 brief conf. 1 1 1

W.W. Fractured F.T. 5 2 open 2 1 tme brief conf. 2 3

Totals:

1 52% 24 23 50% 83% 38 24 52%

2 35% 16 23 50% 17% 8 16 35%

3 13% 6 0 0 6 13%

N/A 0 0 0 0

96

Domain 4

Lesson Plan G. D 4.1 D 4.2 D 4.3 R.R.18, Day 1 K-1 1 1 1 Alphie’s Lagoon 2 K-1 1 1 1 Goals for captains cove are Fast Track P L5D1 K-1 1 1 1 the same for all students in the class R.R.18, Day 2 K-1 1 1 1 Fast Track P L5D2 K-1 1 2 opt. accel. Act. 1 Students decide if they are ready R.R.18, Day 3 K-1 1 1 1 to attempt the challenge words. Fast Track P L5D3 K-1 1 1 1 Fast Track P L5D4 K-1 1 2 opt. accel. Act. 1 Fast Track P L5D5 K-1 1 1 1 Fast Track P L5D6 K-1 1 2 Test-opt. accel. Act. 1 Fast Track P L21 K-1 1 1 1 Fast Track P L54D1 K-1 1 1 1

Fast Track P L54D2 K-1 1 1 1

Captain's C L1D1 2 1 1 1 Captain's C L1D2 2 1 1 1 Captain's C L1D3 2 1 1 1 Captain's C L1D4 2 1 1 1 Captain's C L1D5 2 1 1 1 R.W. Wk 1,1 Exp. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 graphic org R.W. Wk 1, 2 Exp. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 draft R.W. Wk 1, 3 Exp. 3 1 Revisions 1 1 R.W. Wk 1,4 Exp. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 R.W. Wk 1,5 Exp. 3 1 test 1 Test 1 R.W. Wk 1, 1 Nar. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 graphic org R.W. Wk 1, 2 Nar. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 draft R.W. Wk 1, 3 Nar. 3 1 Revisions 1 1 revisions R.W. Wk 1, 4 Nar. 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 1 final R.W. Wk 1, 5 Nar. 3 2 book club 1 Test 2 book club Test followed by book club: children select Treasure H Strategy 3 1 1 1 book and how to report on book

Treasure H L1D1 3 1 1 1

97

Domain 4 (continued)

Lesson Plan G. D 4.1 D 4.2 D 4.3 Treasure H L1D2 3 1 1 1 Treasure H L1D3 3 1 1 1 Treasure HL1D4 3 1 1 1 Treasure H L1D5 3 1 1 1 W.W. Inform CL 3 1 1 1 W.W. Inform writing 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 2 If time allows, students may illustrate their books W.W. Nar CL 3 1 1 1 W.W. Nar writing 3 2 Topic of Int. 1 2 Illustration W.W. Mystery CL 4 1 1 1 W.W. Mystery writing 4 2 Topic of Int. 2 S. adj. score guide 1 W.W. Comp/Cont CL. 4 1 1 1 W.W. Comp/Cont 4 2 Topic of Int. 2 S. adj. score guide 1 W.W. Position CL 5 1 1 1 W.W. Position 5 2 Topic of Int. 2 S. adj. score guide 1 W.W. Fairy Tale. CL 5 1 1 1 W.W. Fractured F.T. 5 2 Topic of Int. 2 S. adj. score guide 1 Totals:

1 33 72% 39 85% 43 93% 2 13 28% 7 15% 3 7% 3 0 0 0

N/A 0 0 0

98APPENDIX D

99

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