How should the new curriculum be designed in order to achieve both goals— (a) encouraging more students to pursue further studies in math, science, and engineering, and (b) ensuring that students will generally perform well on the existing standardized tests?

DISCUSSION ESSAY

A Representative Educational Technology Challenge
An innovative private school has decided to redo its high school mathematics and science curriculum in response to recent emphasis on the integrated nature of science and mathematics, and strong interest in having more graduates pursue college majors in science, mathematics, and engineering disciplines. However, to maintain the school’s accreditation, its students must perform acceptably on standardized tests that have been developed to test knowledge on traditional science and mathematics topics, rather than assess skills in putting that knowledge to practical use.

There are at least two fundamental issues to address:
1. How should the new curriculum be designed in order to achieve both goals— (a) encouraging more students to pursue further studies in math, science, and engineering, and (b) ensuring that students will generally perform well on the existing standardized tests?
2. What kinds of formative assessments will help students and teachers maintain steady progress toward both goals?

Learning Activities
1. Develop a general framework with guidelines and a notional high-level curriculum to respond to the first issue in the representative educational technology challenge.
2. Develop a formative assessment scheme along with a suggested schedule for assessments, guidelines (rubrics) for use of assessments by students and teachers, and one specific assessment and accompanying rubric (assessment guideline with expectations) to illustrate the scheme.