GRADE LEVEL EXPECTATIONS

Working Criteria for Developing Vermont’s Grade Level Expectations

Introduction: Over the past decade all but one state (Iowa) has developed state standards. Like Vermont’s Standards, they were developed to serve multiple purposes: local curriculum development, local assessment development, and state assessment development. As states and districts started to use the state standards for these purposes, they learned both the strengths and weaknesses of their standards. The development of grade level expectations to meet the Federal requirements under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) provides states with an opportunity to learn from that experience, and build a strong set of Grade Level Expectations (GLEs).

Vermont’s Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities, adopted by Vermont’s State Board of Education in 1996 and updated in 2000, was designed for three purposes:

  1. To provide a structure from which standards-based district, school, and classroom curriculum can be developed, organized, implemented and assessed.

  2. To provide the basis for the development of a state, local, and classroom comprehensive assessment system.

  3. To make explicit what may be included in statewide assessment of student learning.

These purposes will not change with the development of GLEs at the state level. The GLEs, however, will provide more explicit guidance for these purposes for districts and schools, and for state assessment development.

In Vermont’s Framework, the standards and evidences are articulated at three grade groupings: Pre-K –4; 5–8; and 9–12. To date, only Vermont districts and schools have articulated the Framework standards and evidences at each grade level. Developing Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) at the state level to meet the requirements of NCLB provides Vermont both an opportunity and a challenge. The challenges include honoring the work already completed while applying the knowledge learned during the past decade. The opportunity is to help provide more explicit guidance locally based upon the knowledge acquired over the past decade.

In order to prepare for and help guide Vermont’s work, the Department of Education contracted with The Vermont Institutes, the Center for Assessment, and Measured Progress to scan Vermont local curriculum documents, standards from other states that already have GLEs in place, and national standards documents. The Department and the contractors learned a lot from that scan. The most significant thing learned was that a great deal of thought work had been given across Vermont, and across the country to articulating expectations at different grade levels. However, there were other things learned that could be used to help Vermont complete its work.

Such as…

  1. The grain size of the GLEs was almost always uneven across the documents scanned, and, in many cases, within a standards document. GLEs in some states and districts were very general, and other times they were extremely specific.

  2. Only in some cases was there an intentional strategy used to show how process skills and content knowledge were to interact.

  3. Some documents appeared to be long lists of isolated skills and knowledge.

  4. Rarely did it appear that “tough” choices were made between the important concepts, knowledge, and skills and other concepts, knowledge, and skills. This strategy has the potential to perpetuate the “mile wide and inch deep” phenomenon, so prevalent in US curriculum.

  5. Sometimes the language was not focused on performance – “Develops understanding” compared to “Demonstrates understanding…”

  6. Many documents included redundancies. The same content, skills, and knowledge are articulated in multiple places.

  7. Rarely did curriculum or standards documents indicate the best level (classroom, school, district, or state) at which to assess GLEs or standards.

  8. Rarely did the documents indicate methods or sample items for assessment or instructional purposes.

The Department and contractors have used these and other learnings to develop a “working” definition of GLEs, and a “working” set of criteria for the development of Vermont’s GLEs. They are considered “working” because we know as they are applied by Vermont GLE writing teams, they will be strengthened.

The rest of this document is divided into four parts:

I. A “Working” Definition of a GLE;
II. “Working” Criteria for the Development of Vermont GLEs;
III. “Working” Criteria for a Set of Vermont GLEs; and
IV. Potential Strategies for Specifying GLEs

I. What is the Working Definition of a GLE?

A GLE is a stated objective that relates directly to a Vermont Standard, and in most cases Vermont evidences associated with standards. A GLE differentiates performance on content knowledge or skills between adjacent grade levels, and, as a set, leads to focused, coherent, and developmentally appropriate instruction without narrowing the curriculum. GLEs can be used for local curriculum and assessment development, and will be further specified, where appropriate, for state assessment purposes.

II. Criteria for the Development of Vermont GLEs

  • GLEs must relate to the Vermont’s Framework standards at the benchmark grades - 4 and 8. In most cases they should also relate to the evidences.

  • GLEs should maintain a balance between a generalizable skill, concept, or piece of knowledge, and enough specificity to differentiate skill, concept, or knowledge between adjacent grades, to make it clear to teachers what is to be taught and learned, without being so specific that it narrows the curriculum.

    E.g., in reading, “understanding plot development” is a generalizable skill. The example below from California Standards demonstrates one way a generalizable skill (plot development) can be specified for grades 4 and 8.

    California English Language Arts Standard 2.2:

    Grade 4: Identify the main events of the plot, their causes, and the influence of each event on future actions.

    Grade 8: Evaluate the structural elements of the plot (e.g., subplots, parallel episodes, climax), the plot’s development, and the way in which conflicts are (or are not) addressed and resolved.

  • GLEs should explicitly indicate cognitive demand (interaction of content and process). There should be a mix of cognitive demands at all grade levels, not an assumption that students in lower grades do less cognitively demanding work (e.g. routine skill/procedure, conceptual problem or question, multiple step problems, problem solving, analysis, reasoning…).

  • GLEs should be clear enough so that examples of how the GLE could be taught and assessed can be drawn from it.

  • GLEs should contain language that describes expected performance so that a student’s performance in relation to the GLE can be assessed.

    Not assessable – e.g., “Develops understanding of plot...” or “Begins to use...”
    Assessable – e.g., Demonstrates understanding of plot by retelling a story appropriate for grade level.

  • GLEs should be focused on curriculum and learning, but specific enough so that test specifications can be drawn from it. Note: Test specifications might indicate the upper ceiling of that expectation for state assessment purposes or explicit strategies for assessing the GLEs. E.g. … Retelling a story at a Level 14. OR, Demonstrate understanding of plot by: a) retelling a story, putting the story parts in coherent sequence; b) given an incomplete story sequence, extend the story with a coherent “next step”; c) given a definition of plot development, provide an example.

III. Criteria for the Development of a SET of GLEs

  • The set of GLEs should be of comparable grain size.

  • Where possible, the GLEs should be held together by a unifying idea, or process (e.g., Mathematics – proportionality at middle school (NCTM); ELA - Understanding plot development).

  • The set of GLEs should promote coherent, focused, developmentally appropriate instruction, as opposed to isolated instruction just on topics, facts, or individual skills that need to be covered.

  • The set of GLEs should be reasonable to adequately teach within a school year, and still allow for inclusion of local standards.

  • Each GLE in a set should indicate if the GLE is assessable for large-scale assessment, or if it more appropriately assessed at the school or classroom level. For example, a range might be included that indicates how suitable a GLE is for large-scale assessment - highly suitable, suitable, or not suitable.

  • Success on GLEs in one grade should be a good predictor of success in the following year.

  • Success on GLEs across multiple years should be a good predictor of success at the benchmark years of grades 4 and 8.

  • The set should be comprehensive across the standard for the grade.


IV. Potential Strategies to Specify Grade Level Expectations

  • Hardness of content or skill

  • Inclusion of a different, but related content or skill or use of multiple text sources

  • Interaction of content with process

  • Difficulty of text (reading) or features of genre

  • “Foundational skill needed in one or more subsequent grades (e.g., learning decoding skills in reading).

  • Unifying skills and concepts that require months/years to develop (e.g., proportionality in mathematics; writing with purpose in different genres.).

  • “Natural” or common developmental sequence or dependencies from year to year.

  • Others
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