According to Catherine Gewertz in Education Week, David Coleman, the new president of the College Board, launched his tenure with a call to “use the organization’s clout to help historically underserved students reach their potential and find ways for all students to immerse themselves in academic “work worth doing.””
The question is what is the “work worth doing?”
Work Worth Doing
- Increased Rigor through higher expectations in the form of:
- More challenging coursework
- Enhanced student supports
- Assessments that require students to apply concepts to real-world situations using higher-order thinking
- Fewer Standards and Deeper Learning – Deep focus on a few key concepts and ideas. In math, that means less emphasis on “working problems” and more emphasis on applying mathematical concepts.
- Reading gets students to college! – More reading across all disciplines, particularly more informational text at the lower grades that requires students to draw on evidence in text to build argument
- Writing keeps them in college! Increase writing across all disciplines with an emphasis on analysis, precision, and accuracy.
- Word Power – Emphasize academic vocabulary commonly found in complex texts, rather than endless lists of words most students “will never see again.”
