Springboard™
Springboard™
College Board
New York, New York
TARGET STUDENTS
Grades 6-12. Aimed toward increasing the numbers and diversity of students preparing to succeed in college.
PROGRAM PURPOSE
Springboard™ is a comprehensive and integrated program for students in grades 6-12 focused on reading, writing, and mathematics. It is designed to increase the number and broaden the diversity of students prepared to succeed in college and Advanced Placement Program (AP) courses. A set of standards for college success, which are the focus of Springboard, were created by College Board with the idea of closing the gap between secondary school requirements and college-level expectations. The hope is that more students could be prepared for college and fewer and fewer students would require remedial courses once they reach college. These standards identify the knowledge and skills that college faculty expect freshman students to possess by creating a vertical alignment, or road map, of critical thinking skills from sixth grade to twelfth grade. Springboard incorporates rigorous standards, professional development, instructional resources, and diagnostic assessments delivered through a Web-based program.
The program is based on the Knowledge and Skills for University Success, a three-year project developed by the Center for Educational Policy Research at the University of Oregon for the Association of American Universities in partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts and the College Board Standards for College Success.
APPROACH
Philosophy. Curriculum materials are not yet available for review. Promotional materials suggest that the program assumes that mastery of critical thinking skills is key to success in college preparatory courses, particularly the Advanced Placement Program. Whether thinking skills are assumed to be general or domain specific or both is not explicit in the general overview.
Instructional focus. They are focused on building the analytical, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills that The College Board has identified as standards for college success. These standards are expected and required of students who enter college or AP work and the basis of AP courses and testing. Instructional materials, called model instructional units, each real world problem-solving skills described in the College Board Standards for College Success. Problem solving and collaborative learning strategies are “seamlessly embedded within the units.”
Instructional components. The program integrates four components:
- Standards for College Success—critical thinking skills identified by the College Board as critical to success in college.
- Professional development—face to face and online support for language arts and mathematics teachers.
- Instructional materials include manuals that provide lessons sequenced within a framework of standards.
- Diagnostic assessment—online tests provide scoring and feedback on students’ progress within each level; levels roughly correspond to a grade level worth of courses.
The standards are of two kinds: foundational skills and academic content standards. The foundational skills are “habits of mind that enable students to succeed in college and to get more out of their college education.” They include inquisitiveness risk taking, accepting feedback, and learning from mistakes; critical and analytic thinking; drawing inferences, reaching conclusions based on an evaluation of sources and their assumptions; and supporting an opinion with a logical argument. In English, there are four areas of standards: reading, writing, research skills, and critical thinking skills. One reading and comprehension standard, for example is “understanding the defining characteristics of texts and recognizing a variety of literary forms and genres,” and this is elaborated in more detail. The instructional materials apparently both directly teach these standards and embed them in lessons in which students use and apply them. The features of these instructional activities, or the program’s philosophy about how these standards are acquired, is not made explicit.
Setting. Regular language arts and mathematics classroom.
Materials. Printed teacher manuals include several lessons with enough content to teach, test, and re-teach if necessary. Instructional resources are aligned with the College Board Standards for College Success and state standards. The materials provide examples of student work that reflect the program standards—critical thinking skills. A Linking Guide aligns all of the standards with a district’s textbooks.
Alignment with standards. The program describes itself as “infused with the College Board Standards for College Success and directly linked to all state standards, so that instruction and testing around a College Board standard ensures meeting or exceeding each state standard.”
ASSESSMENT
Assessments are web-based, and provide online administration and automatic scoring with immediate feedback. After students have worked with a series of lessons, the teacher uses a diagnostic test, consisting of multiple choice and short constructed response questions. Teachers can score the assessments online or use a bubble-in sheet and scanner if their students take it online. If students do well on the diagnostic assessment, they may move on to the next SpringBoard proficiency and strategy. If students do not do well, teachers have resources in the manual to re-teach the material. Exemplars illustrate mastery of particular content to teachers and students.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Face-to-face professional development prepares teachers to use new pedagogical strategies for teaching mathematics and English language arts. Teachers have year-round access to online mentors and online communities of peers to share best practices and questions. During training, teachers will 1) learn how to use the diagnostic assessments and model instructional units to integrate with their district curricula; 2) practice teaching the instructional units, using the strategies just learned; 3) learn how to access professional development resources to support classroom teaching and use student level and classroom progress reports, and 4) learn how to use the student level and classroom progress reports to inform instruction.
EFFECTIVENESS
This information is forthcoming.
COST
Information is not available.
Contacting SPRINGBOARD™. Information available at 1-800-999-9149, or call Jennifer Topiel at 212 713-8052.
Web site: www.collegeboard.com/springboard.
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