“A systemic failure to teach all children the knowledge they need in order to understand what the next grade has to offer is the major source of avoidable injustice in our schools.” —E.D. Hirsch, Jr., renowned American educator

It is quite common to observe adults and students, within and outside the Stevenson community, talk about the uniqueness of our culture. What is it about our district that makes all we do so exemplary, yet unique?

Much of the answer lies in our unwavering commitment to five interdependent components:

I. Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
II. Equity and Access: Attention to Individual Students
III. Working Within a Professional Learning Community
IV. Creating a Culture for Learning
V. Community Engagement

These five components form the foundation of A Shared Vision, a district document containing the fundamental beliefs and commitments that guide Stevenson. I’d like to address the first component, Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.

As the opening quote from E.D. Hirsch indicates, the lack of a coherent curriculum is pervasive in most schools. Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, in their bestselling book The Learning Gap, argued that American students perform poorly on international assessments primarily because their teachers lacked “academic preparation commonality.” In other words, teachers are not often on the same curriculum page. Too often teachers have different expectations for their students and don’t cover the same material— even when they teach the same course.

Only recently have schools across the nation realized the importance of a common, coherent curriculum for all students. At Stevenson, however, we have been a model of this concept for nearly two decades.

In our district’s original vision document written in 1983, the authors focused on the importance of “a core of common learning” geared toward common “student outcomes,” making holistic adjustments to the curriculum “on the basis of student results.”

These vision points, articulated by our district almost twenty years ago, are now considered on the cutting edge of best teaching practices in schools.

What does a common coherent curriculum look like?

In a school with a common coherent curriculum in all disciplines, the adults work collaboratively to ask several critical questions and continuously seek the answers.

Is the curriculum coherent?

A coherent curriculum effectively organizes and integrates important ideas so students can see how the ideas build on or connect with other ideas, enabling them to develop new understandings and skills. Without a clearly defined curriculum, teachers often duplicate their efforts and spend valuable class time on unnecessary review of the material students already know.

At Stevenson, there exists a teacher-developed, well-articulated curriculum that places an emphasis on important ideas and major themes over time.

Is the curriculum focused on important content?

School curricula must focus on content and instructional processes that are worth the time and attention of our students.

A good example of making each classroom moment count is our school’s Advanced Placement (AP) program, which provides students with a college-level experience. With 97% of Stevenson students college-bound, a school goal for the past five years has been to increase the number of graduating seniors enrolled in at least one AP course before they graduate. For the class of 2002, almost 60% had an AP experience, helping to rank Stevenson number one in Illinois and in the Midwest, and number two in the nation for total exams taken by our students.

One of the more remarkable benefits for students taking an AP course is the explicit criteria on which their work will be judged. The AP program’s expectations for student performance are very clear. This is in alignment with University of Wisconsin researcher Lauren Resnick’s work that suggests making the goals of learning clear—and providing vivid examples of what “good” work looks like—points students toward excellence.

Essentially, the AP curriculum establishes the important content all students are to learn. At Stevenson, teams of teachers continuously come together to ensure coherence and consistency will exist in preparing students for our AP program. This is just one example of some of the behind-the-scenes work our teachers do outside the classroom.

For the 40% of Stevenson students that do not take an AP course, the demands and expectations of a common coherent curriculum have been replicated for their college preparatory experience. Courses and content are not taught in isolation. Teacher teams meet weekly to discuss the best teaching practices, and to ensure consistency in the goals, expectations, and assessments of our college preparatory courses.

A focused, connected, coherent curriculum, in and of itself, is not the magic bullet or wonder drug that will remove the inequities that exist in schools. Although a focused, well-articulated, coherent curriculum is extremely important and should be required of all schools, it is not nearly enough.

The curriculum cannot flourish unless there exists individual opportunities to close the learning gap for each and every student. Without opportunities for teachers to work within a professional learning community or to collaborate on curriculum, instruction, and assessment issues, teachers new to a course will struggle. Without a school culture that seeks to place a premium on creating a learning culture for students and adults, the curriculum becomes lifeless and sterile. And without a community engaged in the support of a relevant and coherent curriculum, there exists little ownership in the school outside of its limited boundaries.

To the public eye, the vision of a coherent curriculum is often invisible. Our focused effort, however, designed to avoid social injustices that might occur in student learning opportunities, has been a subtle but powerful part of our school culture visible to those within our community. It is what keeps us exemplary, yet unique.