Aligned Curriculum

At our 2nd ACES (Aspiring Charter Executive Seminar) last night we learned about aligned curriculum and student achievement. 

One thing we discussed was instructional alignment.  S. A. Cohen argues that "the lack of excellence in american schools is not caused by ineffective teaching, but mostly by misaligning what teachers teach, what they intend to teach, and what they assess as having been taught."

K. T. Wishnick, another researcher, found that alignment accounted for more than 36% of the variance in performance on norm-referenced standardized tests.  Altogether, the remaining variables--gender, SES (socioeconomic status), and teacher effect--accounted for little of the variance in student scores.  Moreover, the alignment effect was more powerful for low achievers than for high achievers.