Relationships among content standards, instruction, and student achievement

Seeking to examine a fundamental assumption of standards-based reform, this dissertation uses data from San Diego City Schools (SDCS) to address the following questions: (1) To what extent is the content of instruction aligned with the California content standards and with the blueprint for the California Standards Test (CST)? (2) How do instruction, the standards, and the CST blueprint compare with one another in the topics covered and the levels of cognitive demand emphasized? (3) To what extent is the alignment of instruction with either the standards or the CST blueprint related to student achievement on the CST?;I use responses from 724 SDCS teachers on the Survey of Instructional Content (SIC), developed by Porter and colleagues, to examine English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in elementary and middle schools during the 2004-05 year. In concert with detailed analysis of the standards by subject matter experts, the SIC, which conceptualizes content as a matrix of topic by cognitive demand, allows for calculation of alignment among instruction, standards, and blueprint. I first examine alignment in and of itself. I then use various alignment figures in a three-level HLM analysis to predict student CST achievement, controlling for student prior achievement, student demographics, and teacher characteristics.;Key findings of the alignment and content analysis are that instruction appears to be better aligned with the standards than with the CST blueprint; that teachers report coverage of many more topics than are in the standards or blueprint for their grade level; and that, on average, teachers' cognitive demand emphases are more balanced than those in the standards or blueprint, which tend to emphasize "lower" levels of cognitive demand. Key findings of the achievement analysis are that the greater the alignment between instruction and the standards or blueprint in terms of the topics covered, the higher the student achievement (except for elementary ELA), and that the higher the level of cognitive demand teachers report (regardless of alignment), the better their students perform. Effect sizes (for a one-unit standard-deviation increase in the predictor) are mostly in the .05 to .08 range.