He has also aligned the social studies curriculum at Highland to standards documents. The goal of the cadre teacher plan when the school year began was for them to demonstrate performance assessments in their buildings and then help every teacher do the same. By late fall, this was happening only occasionally. The lack of initial principal support may be one problem. Few used the cadre teachers in a focused, consistent way to help teachers move their practice toward standards.
Principals now say they understand the purpose more clearly.
Another problem may be that the cadre teacher plan became too complicated and didn't fit with what so many teachers in the middle grades already were trying to do. That's a large and semantically confusing guide for teachers to absorb. It led Brian to comment that teachers need a common terminology for what they are trying to do. Another problem is lack of time. Two months passed before they needed to think about them again, and if principals did not set aside time in faculty or department meetings to work with performance assessments, teachers probably did not make them a priority.