Teaching for Rigor:

Three Challenges for School Leaders

The Marzano Center Essentials for Achieving Rigor instructional model provides
school leaders with resources, support, and the confidence they need to succeed.

A new model of instruction provides the how

to teach for rigor.
The Marzano Center Essentials for Achieving Rigor model has been developed to
meet challenges for school leaders implementing college and career readiness
standards. The model:

S upports a focused shift in pedagogy

Gives teachers a road map for planning units of instruction, grounds
instruction in 13 essential strategies and a clear learning progression,
facilitates feedback and collaboration, and provides real-time
formative data that allows teachers to assess and adjust their practice.

U nifies school culture

Unifies various programs and approaches around a common
instructional model and a common language of instruction. Teachers
across grades and departments, parents, community, and staff share
a common language and common expectations for student learning
aligned to rigorous standards.

P rovides formative feedback

Allows teachers to monitor student progress and make adjustments in
their instruction before the end of a unit or year. Because the model
helps teachers adjust their instruction in real time, it supplements RTI
academic interventions for individual students by developing teachers
and instructors across the school to commit to rigorous instruction for
struggling or low-achievement students.

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Introduction
Schools implementing new college and career
readiness standards across the nation are
facing serious challenges. While most districts
are fairly far along in the process of aligning
curriculum and textbooks to the standards,
teachers and school leaders still report that
they need targeted professional development
in pedagogy, the focused training to help
them teach lessons and units aimed at
achieving rigor.
These reports are more than anecdotal.
Indeed, multiple states have already shown
troubling drops in student scores with
assessments aligned to college and career
readiness standards. Our analysis of more than
2 million data points at Learning Sciences
International has revealed a significant
finding: Less than 6% of observed classroom
lessons are devoted to higher-order thinking
skills and cognitively complex learning
analysis, hypothesis generation and testing,
reasoning, decision-makingthose skills
that are the foundation of rigorous standards

such as Common Core, college and career

readiness standards, and other aligned state
standards.
What this indicates is that while teachers and
students may be visiting the land of cognitive
complexity, they are certainly not living there.
If school leaders expect teachers and
students to succeed with new standards,
it is imperative that principals and school
administrators do all they can to help
teachers make these critical pedagogical
shifts. While researchers have been calling
upon school leaders to become instructional
leaders for some time, the shift to rigor makes
instructional leadership not just an option but
a requirement of successful schools.
As a school leader, what steps can you take?
This brief paper identifies solutions to help
you and your school overcome these major
challenges and reach high levels of rigor for
all students.

Our analysis of more than

2 million data points
at Learning Sciences
International has
revealed that less than
6% of observed classroom
lessons are devoted to
higher-order thinking
skills and cognitively
complex learning.

Challenge #1: Providing Focused Professional Development

The most pressing challenge for school
leaders is the need to find and implement
focused professional development to support
critical instructional shifts.
As teacher Emily Workman summarized the
problem in her 2012 blog for Core Commons:
A number of initiatives have popped
up, offering teachers opportunities
for training and professional

development, but feedback from

teachers and policy experts indicates
that these resources are either not
reaching enough teachers, are a
one-size-fits-all approach, or are of
questionable quality.
In a 2012 brief, Jane Cogshall similarly called
for a move toward professional learning
so that more teachers in more schools have
access to professional learning that is

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less fragmented and more coherent, more

relevant, and better differentiated. Cogshall
also recommended a shift away from sit
and get professional development toward
professional learning embedded in the daily
work of teachers.
We believe that professional learning aligned
to rigorous college and career readiness
standards will ideally feature a combination
of the following components:

Training in specific, research-based

classroom strategies to move students
toward attainment of higher-order
thinking skills that address the
requirement for both student autonomy
and complex thinking
Training in standards-based planning
on measurement topics to show
progression of knowledge across units
and grade levels

Reflection on lesson outcomes, with

action plans for intervention and
enrichment

Integrated monitoring and feedback

tools to help teachers transition their
instructional practice toward cognitively
complex tasks and the student-centered
classroom

Professional development embedded

in daily work (Cogsall, 2012) and

collaborative learning in a supportive,

non-evaluative, growth-focused
environment

Parallel training for teacher coaches,

who will continue to provide support
and feedback long after formal training
has been completed

Challenge #2: Unifying School Culture

Many school leaders may feel unprepared to support teachers
in making these pedagogical shifts, but the transition is vital in
maintaining a unified school culture. What do these shifts actually
look like in the classroom? How can the leader ensure that necessary
pedagogical shifts are made uniformly throughout the school? The
successful school leader will ensure that all teachers and instructors
throughout the school have access to the critical training around a
model of instruction that will support students to meet expectations
around new standards.
For this reason, a research-based model of instruction aligned to
college and career readiness standards can help foster a collective
sense that the school as a whole is moving together toward increased
instructional rigor. We can define such a model of instruction as the
agreed-upon description and definition of effective teaching aligned to
rigorous standards. Such a model would serve the following purposes:

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Provide a common language of instruction across both grade

levels and departments or disciplines

Unify pedagogy across a wide range of instructional approaches

for diverse learning populations

Provide parents and community a clear understanding of the

purpose and methods of the schools instructional goals

Alleviate anxiety about the number of initiatives teachers are

expected to implement

Challenge #3: Avoiding the Dips and Gaps

As noted, preliminary assessments in New
York, Kentucky, and Maryland, among other
states, are showing sharp drops in student
achievement with new assessments aligned
to CCRS. An unpublished Annenberg analysis
of 2013 New York state test scores, reported
in The New York Daily News, was even more
troubling, as it pointed to achievement gaps
widening for special education, ELL, Black,
and Latino students.

will need tools to allow them to identify

struggling students and student subgroups
early on in units so as to be able to adjust
instructional strategies. To meet this
challenge we recommend:

School leaders will want to meet this

challenge head-on. Focused professional
development around critical pedagogical
shifts and a unified model of instruction will
certainly help. But additionally, teachers

Multiple measures of student growth to

inform teachers of instructional gaps

Formative feedback during units and the

necessary monitoring data to facilitate
instructional decision-making

Specific research-based instructional

strategies to help move struggling
students toward attainment of
cognitively complex skills

A New Standard of Professional Development

Teachers need instructional models and
training to help them step into a new role
as skilled facilitators, to guide students
to take ownership of their own learning.
School leaders need the resources to help
teachers make this crucial transition.
The Essentials for Achieving Rigor model
has been designed specifically to assist
teachers to develop a new pedagogy, the

crucial missing component that educators,

analysts, and above all, teachers, have
been calling for. Integrating 13 essential
strategies into a comprehensive program
of professional development, the model
has received high praise from educators
in schools and districts who are already
beginning to meet these challenges.

Download a FREE MONOGRAPH by Robert J. Marzano

and Michael D. Toth for the research and data foundations
of the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model.
Contact us for more information at 1.877.411.7114,
or visit our website at MarzanoCenter.com.

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What teachers are saying

about Essentials professional
development:
[After this training] I will make
adaptations when the desired result is
not evident. I will go back and re-teach
or allow the students to teach each
other as a way to deepen their own
knowledge. I will continue to be more
aware of where every student is and
what needs to be done to teach them
all effectively.
The training provided good examples
and deepened my understanding of
creating complex tasks.
I am now ensuring that I am making
changes to my lesson plans based on
the monitored results I am seeing.