Academic Task Demand in the 21st-Century, High-Stakes-Accountability School: Mapping the Journey From Poor [to Fair to Good to Great] to Excellent?

Abstract

Drawing on theoretical and empirical research concerning the relationship between academic work and student learning, this article explores the following questions: What skills are required to execute the academic tasks teachers assign on a daily basis? How do teachers and administrators interpret the task demands represented in instructional materials? How does task demand relate to a school’s improvement process? Our findings suggest that task demand focused largely on low-level skill development. However, having established baseline systems and practices, schools are working to institutionalize more sophisticated practices that foster 21st-century knowledge and skill acquisition.

Notes

1. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, growth scores, also called Student Growth Percentile (SGP), tell us how much a student grew over the previous year compared to his or her academic peers. SGPs are percentiles (ranging from 1 to 99) calculated by comparing one student’s history of MCAS scores to the scores of all the other students in the state with a similar history of MCAS scores.

2. The ninth principal consented to be interviewed, but we were unable to secure an interview date because of his school’s end-of-the year schedule.

3. The remaining schools expressed interest in attending, but were unable to coordinate their schedules with the meeting date and, therefore, were unable to participate.