Aligning What Is Taught With What Is Intended to Obtain Achievement Outcomes That Exceed Expectations

• In Event: 34.073 - Providing Equitable Opportunities to Educate Diverse Populations for Achievement Outcomes That Equal or Exceed Expectations

Abstract

Sometimes even when a group of students have a teacher who cares about them, has the appropriate credentials, and is committed to helping them achieve, the results do not always turn out as expected. The students may need more resources to meet or exceed expectations. This presentation will focus on school-based project that used additional human resources – the type of human resources that one does not ordinarily find in an elementary school that serves students from a high poverty neighborhood.
The project began by first engaging a group of university researchers with teachers in the school district for the purpose of assessing the curricular expectations for fourth grade mathematics. The results of this assessment activity revealed that there was a heavy emphasis on topic of “fractions. Although the fourth grade teachers in the school had outstanding credentials, the researchers noted that there were some gaps in the teachers’ conceptual knowledge and understanding about fractions. This gap could affected students’ ability to apply conceptual understanding of fractions in later grades or even in algebra. Furthermore, past performance on state accountability tests indicated that fourth grade students at this school did not perform as well as their peers in the district or the nation. Thus, the researchers, along with the classroom teachers and the school personnel arranged for the professor and the former mathematics coordinator to teach the children about fraction one class period per week for ten weeks. Herein lies the main point of this presentation: All students in the school district had an equal opportunity to learn what was in the fourth grade mathematics curriculum. Yet, these students received more in the form of additional teaching resources – just what they needed.
The results were remarkable. The following school year when the students who received the instruction from the university professor and the mathematics coordinator took the fifth grade accountability test which contain a greater proportion of fractions, they performed better than previous cohorts of fifth grade students at their school, and better than peers in the school district as well as the nation. These students from the “hood” not only met, but also exceeded expectations!

(Note: For some technical reason, the author could not paste into this document the results of the students' performance).

Author

• Gerunda B. Hughes, Howard University