Power Standards

Hampton City Schools Operational Definition of Power Standards

"Academic standards are not a curriculum; they are a framework for designing curriculum. A curriculum is a coherent, teacher-friendly document that reflects the intent of the academic standards," according to Erickson (2007, p. 48).

In some Virginia school divisions, teachers rely solely on the state’s Curriculum Framework Documents to plan for instruction. One of the pitfalls of this approach is that it can be difficult to determine which standards/skills/knowledge represent the essential learning outcomes. As a point of clarification, the term essential in Hampton City Schools (HCS) does not mean we are referencing the essential knowledge column of the Curriculum Framework Documents; rather, it means those skills and sets of knowledge that we know are integral to the success of our students in the long run. In HCS, we refer to these select essential learning outcomes as Power Standards.

The term Power Standards was first coined by Douglas Reeves (2008) of the Leadership and Learning Center, who referenced standards that were critical for student success. Dr. Reeves calls them “those standards that, once mastered, give a student the ability to use reasoning and thinking skills to learn and understand the other curriculum objectives.”

The HCS operational definition for Power Standards is as follows:

1. Aligned to the HCS Portrait of a Graduate - During the summer of 2016, a team of stakeholders assembled to develop the HCS Portrait of a Graduate. This portrait, which is currently in draft form, takes into account select career and life skills, content knowledge, leadership/communication/collaboration, and a positive sense of self and purpose. Noted within each of these four areas are select skill sets/knowledge items/characteristics that the division believes are critical to the long-term success of our students. The identified HCS Power Standards are woven throughout the information in the HCS Portrait of Graduate.  

2. Important to the academic discipline - These standards are a pivotal part of the underlying philosophy of the discipline. Examples include problem-solving in mathematics or the scientific method and inquiry process in science; these standards are the reason that the discipline exists.

3. Important to the vertical sequence of the curriculum - Without mastering these standards, the student cannot be successful in subsequent units, grade levels, or subjects within the same content area.

4. Relevant to other subject areas across the curriculum - One of the reasons that Power Standards are “powerful” is because of the strength of the connections they foster.  For this reason, we count similar standards across content areas as Power Standards.