What are students expected to learn?
Our district objectives are posted on the district curriculum web site. In each content area, the specific objectives for each grade level are listed. At this time, only two of the content areas, Language Arts and Mathematics, are organized in clear SAI format. This format means that the objectives are not only written in teacher language, but they are also written in plain English commonly known as "I Can Do It" Standards.

Language Arts

Math

Science

Social Studies

Where do these standards come from? How were they created?
Illinois State law mandates that all K-12 public schools shall be tested through the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) which follows the expectations established in the Illinois Learning Standards. Our district's objectives are derived directly from the Illinois Learning Standards. The state standards set forth overall goals, standards, and benchmarks at specific age levels and the purpose of the ISAT is to verify that students are accomplishing these specific benchmarks. Here's a specific example of how we derived one of our 6th grade math objectives...

Illinois Learning Standards

District 108 Objectives

State Goals	STATE GOAL 6: Demonstrate and apply a knowledge and sense of numbers, including numeration and operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), patterns, ratios and proportions. As you can see, State Goal #6, covers a large amount of knowledge and skill content. The Illinois State Board of Education wrote it to identify one of five large areas into which the subject of Mathematics can be divided. It is too general to guide instruction, so the State Board specified a number of "Standards" for what students should know and be able to do within Goal #6 by the time they graduate from high school.
State Standards	Standard A. Demonstrate knowledge and use of numbers and their representations in a broad range of theoretical and practical settings. Again, while Standard A tells what a student should have achieved by the end of grade 12, it is still pretty broad. So the State Board created benchmarks for benchmark grade levels....
State Benchmarks	Late Elementary Benchmark: (5th Grade) 6.A.2 Compare and order whole numbers, fractions and decimals using concrete materials, drawings and mathematical symbols. Middle School Benchmark: (8th Grade) 6.A.3 Represent fractions, decimals, percentages, exponents and scientific notation in equivalent forms These benchmarks do a good job of telling us what students should achieve by the end of grades 5 and 8, but they give no guidance for grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 7. So District 108 teachers created objectives for each grade level that reflect continuous progress towards each state benchmark.
District Teacher Objective	District Teacher Objective 1) Read and write up to 10-digit numerals 2) Read and write decimals to 10,000ths 3) Show relationship of fractions, decimals and percents 4) Write place values as powers of 10 (example: 100 = 102) Often the District Teacher Objectives contain "educationese," that is, the jargon that teachers use to be precise about what they mean. However, because non-educators find these terms confusing, we rephrased the objectives in plain English for students and parents. .
District I Can Do It Objective	Use numerals up to 10 digits & 4 decimal places, and write place values as powers of 10. The last step was to rewrite the objective into simple, plain language that students and parents could understand.

Why is it important to have standards?

Best use of resources
Establishing common standards for all schools facilitates the wise use of district funds as well as time and effort spent by students, teachers, and parents.

Share best practices
With all schools working from the same guidelines, schools are able to share their best practices and work together at improving student achievement.

High expectations
Reseach suggests that Students learn best when they are aware of the expectations. It also suggests that students live up to-or down to-the expectations they know about. So the best strategy is to clearly communicate high standards and help students live up to them.

What components of the SAI process deal with standards?

Visit the District Curriculum Web Site	Curriculum Web Site We've posted our grade level objectives to our district web site so that parents and community members can clearly see what the expectations are for students.
	Classroom Posters We've placed posters in each classroom that clearly label the standards for each given year. The posters are a daily reminder of what students are expected to understand and be able to do.
	"I Can Do It!" Sheets The same expectations that are listed on the posters are also printed out on an "I Can Do It!" sheet which is given to each student. The "I Can Do It!" sheet also serves as a checklist for students to monitor their progress on the objectives.

Why are the classroom posters and I Can Do It! standards so important?
In short, they are important because they layout the explicit expectations that we have for students. As Mager states, "If you know where you're going, you have a better chance of getting there." (1984)

Focus on results, not content
The district's standards concentrate on the end results of learning, not just the content. We have borrowed from Wiggins & McTighe, who suggest writing objectives as a proposition. It "invariably helps the designer to be clearer about specific purposes and makes the unit more coherent and effective." (1998) Clear objectives translate into clear expectations and this helps students avoid the "Guess what I think is important?" syndrome. Students shouldn't have to guess about what to learn, Instead the expectations, should be presented in clear, concise terms.

Helps measure the results
There is clearly a movement across the country to hold schools accountable for student learning. We recognize this movement and believe that the establishment of clear expectations will enable us to create assessments that are in complete alignment with the goals that we have set forth for students. In fact, the assessments are created at the beginning of the year and are given to teachers along with the objectives. This helps to avoid the situation that others may have had in their education - the situation where the tests never really seemed to match up with the content that was taught (Mager, 1984).

Helps us decide what's important
Prior to the SAI process, our teachers faced the enormous task of identifying the most important material for students. This can become a problem because, by nature, most teachers are "designers" (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). They love to create and design instructional units that motivate and engage students. In fact, many teachers maintain a large collection of their favorite instructional materials. However, over time, they may retain these favorite lessons despite the fact that they no longer meet the objectives. Therefore, the process of identifying and rewriting our district objectives has helped us to come to a common understanding of what skills and knowledge were most important.

Student responsibility for learning
One of the overall SAI goals is to help students become responsible for their own learning. Both the classroom posters and I Can Do It sheets help students to organize their own efforts towards learning. "Experience has shown that with clear objectives in view, students at all levels are better able to decide what activities on their part will help them get to where it is important for them to go." (Mager, 1984)

Improve selection of instructional materials
Each year our district spends considerable funds on instructional materials. By identifying the objectives first, we have established a framework for ensuring wise use of these funds. Instead of buying a textbook or a computer software program because it looks good or because it keeps students active, we instead focus on whether the resource helps students meet the objectives (Mager, 1984).

Resources

Illinois Learning Standards, Illinois State Board of Education, http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ils

Wiggin, Grant & McTighe, Jay. (1998) Understanding by Design. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Mager, Robert. (1984) :Preparing Instructional Objectives. Belmont, Ca: Lake Publishing

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