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But what hurts us more is that you teach us less.

Stunned, first, by how little is expected of students in high-poverty schools—how few assignments they get in a given school week or month.

Clear and public standards for what students should learn at benchmark grade levels are a crucial part of solving the problem.

Kentucky was the first state to embrace standards-based reform.

The more vocational education courses students take, the lower their performance on the NAEP.

New York City schools required all 9th graders to take the Regents math and science exams.

At least they failed something worthwhile."

Ample evidence shows that almost all students can achieve at high levels if they are taught at high levels. But equally clear is that some students require more time and more instruction.

extra funds e

before school, after school, weekends, or summers.

Maryland

Kentucky

San Diego

doubling—even tripling—the amount of instructional time devoted to literacy and mathematics for low-performing students and by training all of its teachers.

high-poverty schools

teachers without even a minor in the subjects they teach

We take the students who most depend on their teachers for subject-matter learning and assign them teachers with the weakest academic foundations.

In just one academic year, the top third of teachers produced as much as six times the learning growth as the bottom third of teachers.

Something very different is going on with the teaching

By the time their students reached high school, these districts swapped places in student achievement.

reversed the normal pattern:

the faculty revamped how it prepared teachers.

he El Paso Collaborative

to provide support to existing teachers and to help them teach to the new standards.

summer workshops,

monthly meetings for teachers within content areas,

work sessions in schools to analyze student assignments against the standards.

released 60 teachers to coach their peers.

no more low performing schools and increased achievement for all groups of students, with bigger increases among the groups that have historically been behind.

he value of a relentless focus on the academic core.

Clear and high standards

Assessments aligned with those standards.

n a real WebQuest, newly acquired information undergoes an important transformation within learners themselves.

A real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students' investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding.

nspire students to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own metacognitive processes.

s students internalize more advanced intellectual skills through ongoing practice, the teacher can gradually remove the scaffolded levels of support. Scaffolding is used to implement such approaches as constructivist strategies, differentiated learning, situated learning, thematic instruction, and authentic assessment.

Real WebQuests should pass the ARCS filter: Does the activity get students' Attention? Is it Relevant to their needs, interests, or motives? Does the task inspire learners' Confidence in achieving success? Finally, would completing the activity leave students with a sense of Satisfaction in their accomplishment?

A teacher can challenge students by “posing contradictions, presenting new information, asking questions, encouraging research, and engaging students in inquiries designed to challenge current concepts” (Brooks & Brooks, 1999, p. ix).

Background for Everyone,

Background stage also paves the way for differentiating student activities in such a way that all students can master required knowledge and then pursue different levels of individual expertise.

ontent, process, products, and learning environment—

irst, we ask, Could the answer be copied and pasted? If the answer is no, then we ask, Does the task require students to make something new out of what they have learned?