The Purpose of Education

Education has no higher purpose than preparing people to lead personally fulfilling and responsible lives. Many of the disciplines we teach are designed to help students to develop the understandings and habits of mind they need to become compassionate human beings able to think for themselves and to face life head on. What we teach them should equip them also to participate thoughtfully with fellow citizens in building and protecting a society that is open, decent, vital, and responsive to global problems that threaten humanity.

What Students Should be Able to Know and Do?

Over the past 20 years, in many subject subject areas, a broad consensus has been reached on what all students should know and do by the end of high school. This consensus on the Learning Goals for our students has transformed the way educators think about curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

It is not small understatement to say that a thorough understanding and familiarity of the learning goals in a discipline or grade range will have profound implications for the way an educator plans, delivers, and evaluates educational resources and instructional practices.

Ask yourself the following question. Has your understanding of the national learning goals radically changed the way you think about how and what to teach? If not, why not? It is radically changing the way leading reform efforts in curriculum, assessment, and professionl development are moving forward around the nation.

What criteria is used to determine what you teach?

Utility.

Is what your teach every day clearly helpful in their long-term employment prospects (not simply in other classes) or will it be useful in making personal decisions?

Social Responsibility.

Is the what you teach likely to help your students participate intelligently in making social and political decisions when they are older?

The Intrinsic Value of Knowledge.

Is what you teach present aspects of the discipline that are so important in human history or so pervasive in our culture that a general education would be incomplete without them?

Philosophical Value.

Does what you teach give your students the ability to ponder the enduring questions of human meaning such as life and death, perception and reality, the individual good versus the collective welfare, certainty and doubt?

Childhood Enrichment.

Does what you teach enhance childhood - a time of life that is important in its own right and not solely for what it may lead to in later life?

Where are the Learning Goals I Should Know?

Science:

*Project 2061 Benchmarks

*NSES

Mathematics:

*Project 2061 Benchmarks

*NCTM Standards

Technology:

*Project 2061 Benchmarks

History:

*National Standards for History

*Illinois Standards for Social Science

Language Arts:

*NCTE-IRA Standards for English Language Arts

*Illinois English Language Arts Learning Standards

Why not more state Framework links?

--or why state learning goals are often relatively useless, with some few exceptions. It is critical to compare the granularity of learning goals to determine if they specific enough without being overly prescriptive. For example, Illinois State Learning goals are far too broad to be useful for any sort of alignment. Illinois State Learning Indicators are very specific, but are open to wide interpretation on what genuine understanding would look like for an indicator. It is only upon looking at Illinois State's sample assessments for Learning Indicators that one gets a sense of what the meaning of the indicators are.

Some Core Principles:

• Clearly articulated learning goals provide a framework for designing coherent and effective educational experiences.

• The bulk of textbook publishers are not effectively aligned to the national learning goals (despite their claims to the contrary)

• A select number of NSF funded instructional materials development efforts have created units that show clear gains in student assessments in achieving the national learning goals.

• A new generation of research based assessment items is in the works, promissing to transform the validity of assessments.