Countering the Voices of Scripted Curriculum: Strategies for Developing English Language Arts Curriculum in an Age of Standards
Linda J. Rice
Ohio University

Introduction
In an era in which minimum performance standards and testing to ensure that students have met the standards has become law, many teachers find themselves feeling limited or “boxed in,” working as though they’ve been handed a fragmented and highly scripted curriculum to teach. Scripted curriculum may come from textbooks or test writers. It is the form of curriculum that seems to say, as its name implies, “say this to your students, have them do these things, and we [the company or organization promoting the materials] can promise you this outcome.” Scripted curriculum, often aimed at facts and test preparation, offers formulas for success that seem to treat all learners alike. Scripted curriculum also has the effect of deskilling teachers who become simple deliverers of content and skill processes rather than those who intricately synthesize content, skills, and concepts to create sophisticated curriculum designed to meet the needs of their particular students. While, in fact, state and federal testing has impacted the way many of us teach, it should not deter us from our best practices. As highly trained, dedicated, and innovative teachers, we can help students to meet the defined minimum standards and flourish within the freedoms of a personalized, hands-on, highly engaging classroom setting that celebrates diversity and values a myriad of ways to demonstrate what has been learned. At some point in our children’s education, the test days arrive and standardized assessments determine whether the students have met the standards; however, the months preceding the test need not consume us with versions of scripted, narrow, dictated, drill-and-skill teaching. “If teachers cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well, then students will master the material on which they will be tested—and probably much more. In that case, students will need no special test preparation in order to do well” (“Some say…”). What all teachers must ensure in our (and our district’s) pursuit of meeting standards intended to leave no child behind, is that we are not falling into the role of deskilled teachers who only or primarily teach to the test, but that we employ our well-developed talents and expertise to meet the total needs of students.

Revisiting Why We Became Teachers
Those of us who may feel that our hands have been tied and that our voices have been muted by the federal government that has deemed testing “law,” may find it worthwhile to reflect on why we entered teaching in the first place. State and national assessments were not a part of “teaching” when many of us first entered the field; we have seen the advent and increase of outside influences on education. Few of us would be likely to say that we went into teaching because we wanted to help students pass standardized tests, but many of us would say that we went into teaching because we wanted to help students achieve, to maximize their potential, to reach out to them with caring—and dare I say with love—so that they would grow up to know that they have a very special place and even a unique purpose in the world.

Having taught middle school and high school for ten years, I now teach pre-service teachers at the Ohio University. Working with young, aspiring future teachers and trying to always remain in touch with where they are, what they are thinking, experiencing, worrying about, and wanting to contribute, gives me reason to routinely review why I chose teaching and to analyze how much the field has changed in recent years, with the increase in accountability and testing. I tell my students that I originally chose teaching because, like most of them, I loved literature and writing. I greatly enjoyed my subject matter and wanted to spend a lifetime sharing “English” with other people. I also felt a particular calling to teaching—a way to serve and contribute to the world around me, a way to reach out to young people, have a positive impact on their lives, show deep personal caring and concern, and convey passion and enthusiasm for literature, life, and learning. With all of the demands I experienced as a young teacher, sometimes it was difficult to stay afloat. There were many late nights planning, grading, and coaching. On top of that were classroom management issues, disgruntled parents, and evaluations by administrators. As hard as we work, we feel the presence of critics all around, yet we press on toward the goal of reaching students, because we care.

So while I originally went into teaching because I cared primarily about my subject matter, I have remained in teaching because I care most about students. Even in an age of outside influences, government standards, laws, and standardized tests, it still comes down to believing that we, as teachers, can and do and will make a difference that propels us to our best teaching, which includes finding innovative ways to teach in the midst of standards and testing.

No Child Left Behind: What If We Don’t Like the Act?
While NCLB pushes state governments and educational systems to “help low-achieving students in high-poverty schools [to] meet the same academic performance standards that apply to all students,” it does not require that this happen over night (“What if…”). Rather, NCLB requires states to demonstrate (as Ohio has done with its testing and district report cards) that schools improve (gradually) from year to year, that the percentage of students proficient in reading and math continues to grow, and that the test-score gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students narrows. Explanations of what constitute “adequate yearly progress” are available through the U. S. Department of Education website, http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/ayp/edpicks.jhtml?src=ln.  Even if we don’t like the way in which these determinations are made—preferring teacher judgments of student proficiency, perhaps through portfolios, to standardized testing—the goal of narrowing the gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students is certainly one that most educators would deem to be worthwhile; it is also a goal that the public widely supports. According to nonpartisan opinion research organization Public Agenda, “very few parents say they would turn back efforts to raise standards in their district, and the majority say the implementation of standards was ‘careful and reasonable’” (“Very few…”). Public Agenda also reports that 88% of the public says schools should raise standards and use graduation exams (“Testing.”).

It seems we can talk endlessly about America as the “land of opportunity” where “anyone can be President,” but without guaranteeing literacy to all students, this is surely a fallacy. Those who want to reinforce the status quo and ensure society that there will always be an abundance of dishwashers, short order cooks, and cashiers (realizing that these are all essential to the workings of society and meaning no disrespect to their value) to serve them and make their daily life run more efficiently have reason to resist the call that all students reach proficiency within 12 years. But others who want students to experience the full range of opportunities that have become a part of the American dream realize that guaranteeing proficiency is integral to the equation. For now, the government (representative of the people) has decided that high stakes testing and its connection between accountability for results and school funding, is the means to ensure that no child is left behind. Most Americans say that statewide tests are useful for evaluating school and student performance, with 78% agreeing that “scores on statewide tests are helpful for parents to keep up with how their children are doing” (“Most Americans…”). Eighty-three percent strongly or somewhat agree that “scores are very useful for parents and their community to evaluate how well their schools are performing,” and 85% strongly or somewhat agree that “scores on statewide tests are very useful to evaluate how well their students are performing” (“Most…”). Student perceptions on testing reveal that while 25% of students think they take “too many” tests, 71% think the number of tests is “about right,” and 4% think they take “too few” tests. When asked if their teachers “focus so much on preparing for standardized tests that they neglect other important topics, or does that usually not happen?” student perceptions reveal that while 20% believe important topics are neglected, 78% say that “usually doesn’t happen” (“Eight in…”). Also according to opinion surveys conducted by the nonpartisan Public Agenda, when students are asked “From your experience, do these tests ask fair questions that you should be able to answer, or are the questions so difficult or unfair that you cannot be expected to answer them?”  80% say the questions asked are fair while 19% say they are “difficult or unfair”  (“Student perceptions…”).

As teachers, our balking at the standards, claiming them to be “unrealistic” and “unfair,” may prove counterproductive if we are play a vital role in meeting the entire needs of our students and citizenry, equipping all with the tools for literacy, regardless of poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, or limited English proficiency. As much as teachers may not like testing, it does offer us a way to verify that what we are doing is effective. The idea of testing is not to make the job harder for teachers, but to help students succeed. Testing is one way to allow America’s education system to establish specific goals, track the attainment of these goals, narrow the achievement gap, and improve public confidence in public education. For instance, Ohio’s state performance index shows that over the past three years, the averages of all students’ scores on the proficiency tests has increased from 73.7 to 83.1 points (“Committed to…”). Other statistics in the state’s 2002-2003 Annual Report show that the “system of assessments and accountability intended to promote better teaching and learning for all of Ohio’s students” is having a positive outcome. Ohio sixth-graders this past year increased their reading proficiency by 6.8 percentage points when compared to the previous year (58.2 to 65), and African-American students showed the most improvement of any group, making progress on 12 of 20 tests. The greatest gain occurred in sixth-grade reading, with 14.2 percent points of growth, followed closely in sixth-grade science (9.1 percentage points), and fourth-grade reading (5.5 percentage points). Several of Ohio’s urban districts in low income communities also moved out of “Academic Emergency,” the state’s designation for low-performing schools.

As teachers we deal with a plethora of social ills that come through the doors with our students. We face unfunded mandates. We even have the sense that if we had those students in those districts, our job—at least in terms of meeting government established standards—would be easier. It causes us anxiety to know that our effectiveness as teachers is tied to how our students perform on standardized tests. But in the midst of these legitimate concerns, we need to remember our own capabilities and draw on the profession’s wealth of knowledge, creativity, and best practices. Drill-and-skill and practice tests are not the only way to prepare students to pass tests of minimum proficiency. Curriculum scripted by text books and test writers are not the keys to providing students with the best learning experiences. Of course these may prove useful in preparing for the battery of standardized tests that our students must pass, but they should not become or replace the curriculum that highly-skilled teachers develop and communicate to (and with) their students.  Our best teaching challenges and encourages our students to rise to their potential and provides a multitude of support to assist them on their journey.

Instead of rejecting the whole idea of standardized testing or being antagonistic to the aims of NCLB, we might say, “I may not be able to take my students from a 40% pass rate to a 60% pass rate immediately, but I can take them from 40% to 45% this year and 45% to 48% next year.” Starting with the Standards for English Language Arts sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association http://www.ncte.org/about/over/standards/110846.htm, which outline essentials that students must have in order to be functionally literate and have a range of opportunities in a democracy, teachers can build curriculum—not from text books and test companies, but by their own ingenuity—to make the skills meaningful and coherent with the real lives of students, their interests and communities.

Strategies for Developing Curriculum in an Age of Standards
Armed with content expertise and knowledge of their particular students and ways of learning, teachers need not be limited to pre-packaged, test-driven curriculum that seems to diminish their professional capabilities. Even in this age where standardized testing has become law, we mustn’t lose site of the vital, front-line role we play in designing engaging curriculum that has real-world relevance to our students. Following are seven strategies to assist teachers in their effort to counter the voices of scripted curriculum.

1. Start with the standards. There are plenty of “fun activities” that we know invigorate students and interest them in learning. The key is to identify the educational value in the activities and align them with existing standards. As teachers, we often inherently “know” that what we have our students do is “valuable,” but we fail to clearly articulate this value—perhaps because we haven’t taken the time to analyze it in terms our instructional objectives. Our failure to clearly articulate the educational value of what we are asking students to do is often the very thing that causes us to appear as though we are working on hunches and feelings rather than deliberately established rationales. Although we can agree that much of good teaching is intuitive, it need not be elusive or beyond definition. We should always be able to link what we do with standards that articulate a purpose related to student learning.

2. Think outside the “Teacher’s Edition.” Recently, I met with a struggling fourth year teacher whose lesson planning and overall lack of organization had come under fire by the building principal. She had to start turning in weekly lesson plans for review and show how her plans addressed the Academic Content Standards for English Language Arts established by the Ohio Department of Education. When I asked the teacher to explain what she thought the problems were, she said, “Well, the Teacher’s Edition for the one class is really good. It has things highlighted and underlined and lots of good notes in the margins, but the other Teacher’s Edition really doesn’t have much.” This kind of reliance on the textbook diminishes teacher expertise and public perception of teachers’ mastery of content. While Teachers’ Editions and supplemental materials from textbook companies may comprise a portion of how we think about what we teach, we need to put our teacher knowledge and content knowledge at the forefront of our planning. We need to think beyond the marginal notes and textbook-generated questions and consider our own students. What will interest them? How can we relate the text to their lives? What questions, prompts, projects, and research topics will prove thought-provoking and relevant to their life experience? The answers to these questions are not found in the margins or handbooks that accompany corporately composed textbooks; the answers to these questions lie within the teachers who live and work, question and struggle, seek and discover with their students. Moving away from facts about the author and time period and delving into themes and rhetorical strategies that make those themes come to life, helps students to engage with literature, understand the value of reading, and find topics worth writing about.

3. Aim to develop thematic units that integrate the language arts strands (reading, writing, speaking, viewing, listening) and offer students prolonged exposure to themes, topics, or historical time periods. Sample thematic units might focus on Appearance vs. Reality, Loneliness, and/or Heroism. Developing a theme with literary examples, writing assignments, class discussions, films, artifacts, etc., allows students to engage in a variety of ways, over an extended period of time, thus creating a more cohesive curriculum and learning environment for students. The thematic approach also helps teachers to “think outside the box” as we seek out the short stories, movie clips, writing prompts, artwork, etc. that demonstrate the theme. We may also ask students to contribute their own examples of the theme found in literature, film, song, art, etc. One way to approach the thematic unit is to write the theme on the center of a sheet of paper, then branch out to the language arts strands and/or the multiple intelligences and brainstorm resources and ideas related to the theme. Then cross-reference the ideas with standards, choosing instructional objectives that align student-centered learning strategies with the Academic Content Standards of your state or those sponsored by the NCTE and IRA. With this approach, we act as the highly-skilled teachers we were (hopefully) trained to be, creators and guides of curriculum, rather than mouthpieces of scripted curriculum.

4. If possible, use young adult literature to reach struggling students/readers. The themes and readability of YA literature help students, especially at-risk or reluctant readers, to latch on to reading by proving to be more immediately relevant to their lives (Nilsen, Pace, and Donelson 2000). If students can develop a confidence with and enjoyment of reading, they will be more likely to become lifelong readers. Research shows that students’ cultivation of a desire to read makes many other educational objectives more attainable (Snow, Burns, and Griffin 1998). 

5. No matter what other “fun” activities or alternative assessments (acting, dancing, building models, creating artistic displays, etc.) are used in the classroom, incorporate a written component. While acknowledging the popularity of multiple intelligences and diverse and creative demonstrations of learning, we can further support students’ learning by having them write about what they created and, where applicable, about the symbolic meanings and representations of their creative expressions (Glasgow 2002c). Not only does this provide immediate real-world relevance—asking students to put into words what they have alternately expressed by other creative/artistic means—but it also helps students’ metacognition, consideration of how they know what they know (Wilhelm 1997).

6. Use descriptive rubrics as often as possible. Rubrics require us to establish clear and critical links between what we ask students to do and how we will evaluate their performance. Demystifying assessment criteria gives teachers and students the opportunity to articulate and discuss what is valued in any given assignment. Rubrics, in effect, establish a tangible set of expectations and remove much of the subjectivity often associated with assessment in English Language Arts. Glasgow (2002a, 2002b) and Milner & Milner (2002) provide helpful examples of rubrics and criteria for making them.

7. Seek out best practices and alternative ways of teaching. We often have to use unconventional means to capture students’ attention, but once we have accomplished that pivotal task, we can help them to learn and do almost anything. If drill-and-skill lessons in grammar are not reaping improved writing (and they did not in my classroom), try Harry Noden’s Image Grammar (1999), a whole new way to use and teach grammatical structures in the context of writing. If traditional research methods and papers are not working with your students (a true challenge in the age of the internet), try the I-Search (Macrorie 1988) or the Multigenre Paper (Romanao 2000). If classic novels are putting your students to sleep, try young adult literature. If you don’t have resources to buy the books, consider having students check them out from the library and teaching through Literature Circles (Daniels 2002). Attend conferences, collaborate with other teachers, subscribe to the English Journal (http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals), The ALAN Review (http://alan-ya.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&Itemid=31), or other professional journals, enter chat rooms where we can discuss problems and solutions with each other; just don’t give up and don’t give in.

Closing
When we consider the importance of children, when we consider the importance of teaching, when we consider the resources we do have, and the magnitude of the challenge we’ve been given, we know we short change our students by defaulting to curriculum scripted by Teachers’ Editions and test makers. We need not be boxed in and limited by what others, who do not know our students and do not live in our communities, have written for us. We can meet the standards, and we can exceed the standards, but to do so we must call forth the best in us. We must employ our best resources—time, energy, caring, commitment, knowledge of students, knowledge of content, creative thinking, innovative strategies—and teach knowing that with or without government involvement and standardized tests, it is our call as teachers to leave no child behind.

References
“Academic Content Standards K-12 English Language Arts.” Ohio Department of Education. http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?Page=2&TopicRelationID=305.

“Accountability.” Questions and Answers on No Child Left Behind. U. S. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/print/nclb/accountability/schools/accountability.html.

“Committed to Success for All Students: 2002-2003 State of Ohio Report Card.” Ohio Department of Education. http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?Page=3&TopicRelationID=116&Content=15350.

Daniels, Harvey. (2002). Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups. York, ME: Stenhouse.

“Eight in 10 public school students say…” Education: People’s Chief Concerns. Public Agenda. http://www.publicagenda.com/issues/pcc_detail.cfm?issue_type= education&list=13.

Glasgow, Jacqueline (2002a). Standards-Based Activities With Scoring Rubrics: Middle and High School English. Volume 1: Performance-Based Portfolios. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. 

Glasgow, Jacqueline (2002b). Standards-Based Activities With Scoring Rubrics: Middle and High School English. Volume 2: Performance-Based Projects. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. 

Glasgow, Jacqueline (2002c). Using Young Adult Literature: Thematic Activities Based on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

Macrorie, Ken (1988). The I-Search Paper: Revised Edition of Searching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

“Most Americans say that statewide tests are useful…” Closing the Achievement Gap in America’s Public Schools. U. S. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/searchResults.jhtml?oq=Closing+Achievement+Gap&odq=Closing+the+Achievement+Gap&rq=1&tx=%22Most+Americans+say+that+statewide+tests+are+useful.

Milner, Joseph O’Beirne & Lucy Floyd Morcock Milner (2002). Bridging English. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Noden, Harry R. (1999). Image Grammar:Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann.

Ramono, Tom (2000). Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann.

Snow, Catherine E., M. Susan Burns, and Peg Griffin (Eds.). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. National Research Council. Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties on Young Children. National Academy Press, June 1998.

“Some say that testing causes teachers to teach to the test. Is that true?” Questions and Answers on No Child Left Behind. U. S. Department of Education.

“Standards for the English Language Arts.” Sponsored by the NCTE and IRA. http://www.ncte.org/about/over/standards/110846.htm.