Curriculum Audits

The Curriculum Management Audit is a third-party examination of the curriculum design and delivery system of a school or school district. Both curriculum policy and the system in which curriculum functions are analyzed by the audit team. The report provides specific recommendations to improve those functions. The audit will compare your district's performance against five standards. These standards represent working characteristics that any complex organization must have in order to be responsive and responsible to its clients. These standards pertain to the school system's ability to demonstrate the following:

Control of resources, programs, and personnel Establishment of clear and valid objectives for students Internal consistency and rational equity in program development and implementation Use of the results from district-designed or adopted assessments to adjust, improve, or terminate ineffective practices of programs Improved productivity

The Curriculum Management Audit can be oriented to meet the needs of any school district from large to smalland it can focus on a specific evaluation of a district's curriculum area, such as reading, language arts, math, or any content area that you designate. We can provide this flexible approach because PDK builds a custom team of licensed auditors for each audit. Our auditors come from all across the United States, Canada, and Europe and are employed as school district administrators, personnel in state departments of education, university professors, and educational consultants. The audit team uses documents, interviews, and site visits as major sources of data to determine the extent to which there is congruence among the written, taught, and tested curricula. Heres what some superintendents have said about the curriculum audit: "We put ourselves under the microscope because we want to do a better job in preparing our youngsters for the future." Dr. Joe A. Hairston, Superintendent, Baltimore Public Schools "The audit provided wonderful guidance for our district and firm evidence has been accumulated that shows students are learning." George Troxel, Superintendent, Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District

The Three-Minute Classroom Walk Through Training

The Three-Minute Classroom Walk Through combines interactive approaches and practicumstyle activities, during which time your staff will interact extensively with the instructor and each other as they visit real classrooms. The skills and information you will learn in this two-day training include:

How the walk through observation structure is implemented How the walk through and its accompanying reflective conversations work with the appraisal process How the underlying premises of the approach, which is informal and non-judgmental in nature, focus on the development of staff through reflective choice How the reflective conversation and questions complement the classroom walk throughs How reflective questions are phrased How dynamic, new reflective conversation dialogues are conducted How frequent classroom visitations and the walk through process are supported by a strong research base

The ultimate goals of this training are to create:

Reflective, self-directed, self-analytical, interdependent teachers who examine their own practices (even those who initially are at the dependent level) Teachers who are continually willing to improve their teaching Teachers who are committed to teaching the district curriculum and working for everhigher student achievement

The training is site-specific, and we come to you. Your staff does not need to travel out-of-state for this outstanding professional development opportunity. Questions? E-mail pdkprofessionaldevelopment@pdkintl.org.

Coping with High-Stakes Testing: Deep Curriculum Alignment

Deep alignment is adjusting what is taught to align with what is measured on the high-stakes test. It increases the fit between what children learn and how they are assessed. Achievement is assured and gains are evident almost immediately. It is a complex process involving intensive effort and skill in curriculum design, delivery, and monitoring. The topics covered during this two-day session include:

Principles of alignment between the written, taught, and tested curriculum Rationale for curriculum alignment Foundational concepts of deep alignment Specialized terminology used in the deep alignment process Sociological perspective of cultural capital and how it relates to students and tests

You will also learn how to:

Backload publicly-released test items into the curriculum Deconstruct test items Determine the context, content, and cognitive level for alignment Develop parallel test items Check for text/test alignment Design curriculum guides from state standards Develop a multi-year plan for curriculum review Design a curriculum guide format and its critical components Produce and use a validation matrix Create a curriculum plan Write a curriculum policy

The ultimate goal of this training is to provide educators with the ability to create a curriculum document which will guide teaching that will promote higher student achievement, as it is measured on high-stakes tests. The training is site-specific, and we come to you. Your staff does not need to travel out-of-state for this outstanding professional development opportunity. Questions? E-mail pdkprofessionaldevelopment@pdkintl.org.