What are the levels of alignment?

I like to think there are three levels of alignment that teachers, and principals, and school people should take a look at. First, are you content aligned? To check your content alignment I would look at the Curriculum Framework, I think, because you’re teaching the essential skills. And one of the great dangers in assuming that you are content aligned is you’re teaching the textbook. One of the things you want to be very careful of is your teachers think they are doing the right thing by teaching a textbook from page one to page 329, but [their] job is to teach the essential skills and find the materials such as the textbook or other materials that match the essential skills.

The second level of alignment is what I call emphasis. You could be teaching the right stuff but you may not be teaching it in the right proportions. The new English Blueprints in some reporting categories has a 70% content weight where others have a 20%. Or you’ll watch computation diminish in importance from third grade to eighth grade, as it should, and Patterns, Functions and Algebra would increase to almost a third of the test by 8 th grade. So they could be teaching Patterns, Functions, and Algebra, but if they’re not teaching it in (right) proportion, (if you’re an eighth grade teacher (teaching) to almost a third of the test) the students aren’t going to get what they need and they’ re not going to be successful.

Now the third level of alignment is in assessment. You could be teaching the right stuff, your could be teaching it in the right amount of emphasis, but the way you assess the knowledge could be totally different in level of thinking or in format as on the SOL test.