Since the beginning of this school year, teachers have been required to attend regular training sessions to learn about a new district-mandated teaching system known as the Rigor Matrix. This system requires teachers to “unpack” traditional standards to help students better understand the purpose behind learning the skills of each unit.
The district mandates that teachers have the original standards of the state curriculum written on the board for each lesson with their interpretation next to it. This, however, forces teachers to teach in a certain manner that some feel is not the best use of their time.
AP Literature teacher Mary Willoughby believes that her coworkers would be more supportive of the system if it was backed up by research.
“There’s a central irony to what [the district] is doing,” Willoughby said. “They are telling us that our having this written information on the board is good for students because it makes them aware of the purpose of what they’re doing, so they’re more likely to buy into it. But, they’re failing to do that with teachers. If they would show us the reason why doing this would benefit students, I think there might be more buy in [for the teachers to use the matrix].”
Willoughby claims she has done research on this topic, and has found no studies that show this system will drastically help students’ performance in school.
“The purpose is to ensure that the standards are being taught to the cognitive demand of their intent,” instructional coach Tekeshia Hollis said. “So, whatever the cognitive demand of what that standard is, the teacher is keeping that in mind when they’re teaching and using it purposefully.”
This definition, however, only speaks to what the system is supposed to do, not how it is going to accomplish that.
Like Willoughby, AP U.S. History teacher Roderick Pope believes that there is not much reasoning behind the matrix.
“After 20 years of teaching, I’ve seen many of these things come across the road,” Pope said. “Everyone wants there to be a magic bullet, and there’s just not.”
Pope believes that this district mandate is another attempt to try to solve problems by implementing a complication for teachers that will supposedly help students, and is unnecessary for AP classes.
“I think that for AP, you don’t need that [system], because there is only one teacher teaching each class,” Pope said. “It’s a little monotonous, because the kids know what they’re doing.”
Pope stated that general classes might need more specific standards to ensure that different teachers who teach the same class are teaching the same material across the board. As long as students paid attention to the standards, the system could have potential.
Teachers are reluctant to follow this mandate because they think it isn’t an effective use of their time. Willoughby feels that teachers should focus more on the material that they are teaching, than the purpose behind why the students are learning it. Writing out their own version of the standards takes time, though she added teachers would be happy to do it if they knew it would it would benefit the students.
However, students don’t end up paying any more attention to the broken-down standards than they do the original ones.
“I think having standards is good for students because we know what we are going to be learning, but it’s stupid and unnecessary to have them written out two ways,” said Junior Georgia Smith. “I don’t think anyone actually reads the standards either way, so it’s a waste of the teacher’s and student’s time.”
