We recognize the need to create, establish and faithfully implement a standards-aligned curriculum. Our focus must be on the most important standards of each grade-level that are built upon in future years so that we can identify which students are meeting grade-level expectations and which students need additional support. By effectively teaching students these priority standards within a given grade level, the curricula in successive grades can expand upon those concepts. This can be accomplished with a fully articulated, and regularly reviewed and revised, scope and sequence that teachers will implement both vertically and horizontally.

Instructional lessons and units that incorporate and overlap multiple skills and standards will enable students to see the connections between these skills and how they relate to authentic, real-world experiences, rather than simply in isolation. With strong foundational skills in reading, writing and mathematics combined with good academic work habits, students will develop the ability to persevere, problem-solve, and use coping strategies to work through difficult tasks and prepare for future educational and career endeavors.

By providing students with meaningful and rigorous lessons and assessments that focus on and promote this connection of standards-mastery, strategies for critical thinking, problem-solving, and acquisition of foundational skills, students will be able to apply what they have learned in order to succeed.