Building a Common Core

for Learning to Teach

And Connecting Professional
Learning to Practice

By Deborah Loewenberg Ball and omy. High school graduation requirements are becoming
Francesca M. Forzani tougher, and new and more complex learning goals are being
instituted. At the same time, our education system is underper-

A
mericans expect more than ever from their schools. forming in terms of both what it produces and for whom; it is a
With an eye on “high-performing” nations, policy- system that has never guaranteed or delivered high-quality
makers and education leaders in the United States education to all students.1 In fact, it is not really a system at all:
worry about our global competitiveness and the need our schools vary significantly from one neighborhood to the
to prepare our youth for the demands of the knowledge econ- next, there are more curricula than schools, and tests do not
assess what students have been taught.2
Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the dean of the University of Michigan Improving educational outcomes, and the schools respon-
School of Education, where she is also the William H. Payne Collegiate sible for producing them, requires attention to many intercon-
Professor and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. She has authored or
nected factors, from standards, assessments, and curriculum, to
illustrations by Roland Sarkany

coauthored over 150 publications, is an elected member of the National

Academy of Education, and serves on the National Board for Education parents, communities, families, social supports and services, and
Sciences. Previously, she was an elementary classroom teacher for many public resources.3 Nonetheless, students’ learning depends fun-
years. Francesca M. Forzani is the associate director of the Teacher Edu- damentally on what happens inside the classroom as teachers and
cation Initiative in the University of Michigan School of Education. learners interact over the curriculum. Interventions must some-
Previously, she taught high school English for four years in the Missis-
sippi Delta, where she was a Teach for America corps member. She also
how affect these instructional transactions in order to affect stu-
served on the staff of Teach for America’s summer training institute for dents’ learning. Yet most policy recommendations remain far
three years. from this educational fulcrum. Most policymakers are more

AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011 17

 concerned with recruiting “better” teachers and developing new regular people must learn to teach effectively. Even if some people
approaches to teacher evaluation and accountability than with teach effectively without training—and some do—there are sim-
building the infrastructure needed for high-quality instruction.4 ply not enough such “natural teachers” to fill every classroom in
This strategy focuses on inputs (teacher “quality”) and gauges its this country. And in the next few years, we will need about 1.7
success based on outputs (student achievement gains), without million new teachers. We would like them to be skillful in helping
connecting the dots to ensure that what students do with those students learn.
“better” teachers leads to improved learning. Because “better” is To face this challenge, some argue that we should make it
defined by bets such as academic background or commitment, easier for people to enter the classroom, let almost anyone try
rather than demonstrated instructional capability, it is not sur- their hand at teaching, and, with rigorous systems of evaluation,
prising that this approach is neither reliable nor effective. It is a weed out those who prove ineffective. Using tools of labor eco-
gamble, not a systematic strategy for intervening and improving nomics, others propose incentives to recruit “the best and the
learning and teaching inside classrooms. Because it is unreliable, brightest” and salary schemes that pay for results. Although these
some students win and others lose. strategies may sound sensible, none is sufficient to solve the core
problem of ensuring that every teacher helps students succeed,
The Dynamics of Educational Improvement because none focuses on the training and support needed to teach
Focusing directly on the development of instructional practice responsibly.
and its effects is not easy, however. One major shortcoming in our Teaching effectively depends on more than being smart and
educational infrastructure has been the lack of a common cur- gaining experience. In no other skilled trade or profession would
we leave performance so much to chance. We do not believe that
flying an airplane, for example, depends on nothing more than
a strong interest in and commitment to air travel, a dose of aca-
demic knowledge, and hit-or-miss experimentation on real
Most policymakers are more concerned passengers. Few people would travel on planes if such beliefs
with recruiting “better” teachers than were the basis for pilots’ training. Neither would they tolerate
such haphazard preparation for the practice of hairdressers,
with building the infrastructure needed veterinarians, or surgeons. Yet somehow it has been tolerated
for the practice of teaching children. It is at least as dangerous,
for high-quality instruction. and more unethical.
Herein lies the crux of the challenge: improving educational
outcomes for young people depends on developing and supply-
riculum. A second has been an impoverished approach to sup- ing skilled instructional practice. Such practice is complex and
porting teaching practice. These two are related, for any effort to involves much that is not natural or intuitive. However, teaching
develop and improve teaching is weakened when there is no is a large-scale occupation with high turnover.† Thus, we need a
agreement about what to teach.5 Taken together—no agreed-upon system that can enable large numbers of people to carry out this
curriculum and no system for developing skilled teaching prac- practice reliably and responsibly. For all children to experience
tice—hope for instructional improvement is slim. In this article, high-quality instruction, we cannot depend on individual prac-
we propose a departure from inherited ideas about instruction titioners making it up based on personal preference and inven-
and its improvement. Our proposal shifts away from individual tiveness. When teachers receive minimal preparation and are
“style” and open-ended “learning from experience” as the build- encouraged to follow their whims, children are put at risk. No
ing blocks of practice, and emphasizes instead the importance of profession or skilled trade that serves adult clients is so cavalier
common professional standards. with preparation or so reluctant to set clear, shared standards of
Given the strong individualistic culture that permeates teach- practice.
ing and learning to teach in the United States,6 why might a shift Ironically, this reluctance to specify skilled practice is a barrier
to shared specific standards for professional practice be possible? to instructional improvement. The widely reinforced belief that
The Common Core State Standards, which specify a set of learning teaching is a creative art, mostly learned on one’s own, impedes
goals in mathematics and English language arts, represent a the possibility of substantial growth in knowledge and improve-
watershed for this country.* They offer the possibility of a common ment in practice. Collective knowledge, shared standards for
foundation on which a stronger educational infrastructure could practice, and common principles and protocols are the markers
be built. And more Americans now understand that skillful teach- of a profession. Encouraged by the agreement on a common core
ing is crucial for students’ success. Skillful teaching can make the of content for students’ learning in mathematics and English
difference between students being at the top of the class or the language arts, we propose, in parallel, a common core curriculum
bottom, completing high school or dropping out. for teacher preparation.
Of course, many policymakers seem to believe that good teach-
ing is an innate skill or a creative act, not something one can learn †
Although many decry the fact that so many teachers leave the classroom after a few
to do. This is both false and—if it were true—hopeless. The teach- years, this is a complicated issue. In order to attract teachers, the occupation was
ing force numbers over 3.5 million. At this scale, thousands of designed to facilitate eased entry and, hence, weak occupational commitment.7
Moreover, it was not designed to support professional advancement. To make
teaching a long-term career for more people, more changes would be required than
*To learn about these standards, see www.corestandards.org. simply calling for better retention.

18 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011

 activities of teaching which are essential; if they cannot discharge
them competently, teachers are likely to face significant problems.
Competent engagement in them would mean that teachers are
well-equipped to develop other parts of their practice and become
highly effective professionals.”9
In working to articulate these high-leverage practices, we
sought to shift teachers’ training from an emphasis on knowledge
and beliefs to a focus on judgment and action. A practice-focused
curriculum for learning to teach would focus on the actual tasks
and activities involved in the work. Such a curriculum would not
settle for developing teachers’ beliefs and commitments. Because
the knowledge that matters most is that which is used in practice,
the professional curriculum would emphasize repeated oppor-
tunities to do the interactive work of teaching and to receive
feedback—not just to talk about that work.
The identification of a common core of high-leverage teaching
practices requires a specific description of skilled teaching prac-
tice. The fields of teaching and teacher education often seem

To improve the quality of teaching,

A Common Core for Teaching Practice
educators must establish a common core
To improve the quality of teaching across the entire United States, of professional knowledge and skill that
educators must establish a common core of fundamental profes-
sional knowledge and skill that can be taught to aspiring teachers,
can be taught to aspiring teachers, across
across all types of programs and pathways. This common content all types of programs and pathways.
should include knowledge and skills on which novices can be
assessed reliably in order to make decisions about their readiness
for independent practice and for advancement. It also should preoccupied with adjectives for describing practice that distract
serve as the foundation for ongoing professional training. from deliberate attention to the logical and ethical obligations of
This common core should focus directly on the development skillful teaching. Labels such as “effective,” “teacher directed,”
of instructional practice.8 Although it should attend to the knowl- “culturally responsive,” “inquiry-oriented,” “ambitious,” or
edge and orientations that underlie effective teaching, the aca- “reform-oriented,” for example, are attempts to anchor instruc-
demic training should support the demands of the actual tion in a set of worthy commitments but say little about its specific
work—what teachers need to know in order to practice effectively entailments. Some center on the connection to student learning
and make good judgments. If new teachers must be able to help (e.g., “effective,” “ambitious”) while others emphasize surface
students learn to evaluate sources and write persuasive argu- features (e.g., “teacher-directed,” “reform-oriented”). But these
ments, explain the concept of gravity, develop young people’s terms are vague and can be misleading—instruction that attends
capacity for civic engagement, and diagnose pupils’ difficulties closely to children’s ideas, for example, often involves a substan-
with adding and subtracting fractions, then professional training tial amount of work on the teacher’s part and might therefore be
must prepare teachers for these tasks, which are difficult to do labeled “teacher-centered” as reasonably as “child-centered.” For
well. Why would we ever think it reasonable for individual teach- the purposes of a core curriculum for learning to teach, we focus
ers to devise ways to carry them out on their own? Or for each new on responsible instructional practice keyed to a set of basic profes-
teacher to invent how to teach? If teachers fail to help significant sional orientations.
numbers of their students learn, it may be because they do not
receive sufficiently explicit professional training that would help Defining Instructional Practice
them to do so. To blame the environment, the children, or their The fundamental professional imperatives of teaching are to help
parents denies the efficacy of skilled professional practice and students master academic knowledge and skill, and to support
violates the fundamental ethical commitment of the teaching their social and emotional development. Schools are, for many
profession: to help every student succeed. children, the primary opportunity for academic learning.
Along with our colleagues at the University of Michigan, we By “academic learning,” we do not mean a narrow collection
have worked for the past several years to identify a set of high- of facts and procedural skills, assessed only by standardized tests.
leverage practices that underlie effective teaching. We also have We mean conceptual understanding; the capacity for disciplined
been developing ways to teach these practices so they can serve
as the foundation for the curriculum used in a variety of pathways ‡
To learn more about this work, which we call the Teacher Education Initiative, see
to teaching.‡ We have defined high-leverage practices as “those http://sitemaker.umich.edu/tei/home.

AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011 19

 reasoning, analysis, argument, and critique; and the ability to
communicate ideas and interact effectively with others. Academic
goals for students include critical and creative thinking, and the
ability to solve problems related to local, national, and global
issues. Students also must develop the ability to use and adapt to
rapidly changing technology, and to interact effectively in a global
society. All of this requires factual knowledge and procedural
skills, but it also challenges students to review, apply, and expand
what they have learned in substantive ways.
Responsible instructional practice means working assiduously
to help all students reach these goals, and seeking to minimize
educational inequities. This includes skill in selecting, represent-
ing, and opening content for a wide range of students from many
different backgrounds; establishing sensitive, respectful, and
helpful relationships with all students and their families; and
resourcefully using students’ out-of-school experiences. It is not

Teachers must understand their subjects

series of dates
deeply and flexibly, and skillfully to be memorized
represent them in intellectually honest and irrelevant-seeming
stories about white men. The responsibility to represent subject
ways to a wide range of students. matter with integrity and care is at the heart of teachers’ obligation
to help students learn.
To facilitate learning, teachers must know their students well—
enough for teachers to believe that all students are entitled to a not only their personalities and preferences, but also their ideas
high-quality education and that all students can learn; teachers about subjects and their ways of thinking about them, including
must also have the skills to act on those beliefs in their teaching. their intellectual habits, misconceptions, and interests. They must
Caring about students, although important, is insufficient for understand the ways in which students’ personal and cultural
responsible practice. Skillful teaching involves facilitating in- backgrounds bear on their work in school and be able to respond
depth analysis of ideas through reading, writing, and discussion; with appropriate instructional activities. This means skillfully
scaffolding students’ knowledge and skill development through eliciting, probing, and analyzing students’ thinking through verbal
assignments and projects that require in-depth explanation, the interactions and written work. It also means teaching students
sophisticated use of argument and evidence, and the strategic how to be “people who study in school”—learners who are dis-
employment of technology; and encouraging growth in interper- posed toward questioning, skilled argument and discussion, and
sonal skills through whole- and small-group work, oral argument, intellectual honesty, particularly in relation to specific school
and other opportunities for social interaction. subjects.10 These are examples of what we mean by high-leverage
The core work of instruction is to build bridges between stu- practices.
dents and the subject being studied. School subjects and chil-
dren’s ideas about them are, consequently, of primary importance. Other Challenges: Lack of Knowledge, Grain Size, and
Teachers must understand their subjects deeply and flexibly, and Subject- and Context-Specificity
skillfully represent them in intellectually honest ways to a wide In addition to identifying the high-leverage practices at the heart
range of students. Care with the subject matter is central to stu- of responsible teaching, constructing a common core for teaching
dents’ futures. If teachers are casual about the impressions that presents other problems. Because the tasks and activities of
students draw about the nature of a subject, they may lessen responsible teaching are many and the time for teacher training
students’ engagement in the subject and detract from their learn- and professional development is limited, we must identify those
ing. They may, for example, lead students to think that mathemat- aspects of the work that are the most important for novices to
ics is not subject to reason, but is merely a series of mindless rules learn to do well. Doing this requires addressing our collective lack
and formulas (or, just as bad, an endless game of guess and check). of knowledge about teaching, questions of “grain size” (i.e., how
Similarly, if teachers are inattentive to important aspects of the detailed this work ought to be), and the subject- and context-
ideas that they teach, students may develop misconceptions or specific nature of teaching practice.
distorted understandings of key concepts—many of which may Identifying the core elements of teaching requires a special
interfere with the pursuit of more demanding learning goals later. “decomposition of practice,”11 which is challenging because of our
An inadequately prepared history teacher, for instance, may gloss underdeveloped language of practice. From one teacher prepara-
over debates about ideas or events, leading students to think that tion program to the next and from one researcher to the next, the
history is not subject to investigation and revision, but is just a language used to describe teaching is neither precise nor com-

20 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011

mon. For example, although teachers use questions continually, able to and demands on the teacher would differ from one context
no set of technical labels exists for particular types of questions to the next. Expectations and norms for communicating with
within a content domain. Questions that teachers use to elicit parents and colleagues might also vary depending on the com-
students’ thinking—such as, “What have you found so far?” or munity in which a school is located and on the policy context
“Can you explain how you got your answer?”—are different from bearing on a particular school system.
ones they might use to challenge or extend their students’ think-
ing—such as, “What if an older student said that 8/8 is greater than Toward a Common Core Curriculum for
5/5 because there are more pieces?” Similarly, even widely used Responsible Practice
words like “curriculum” and “scaffolding” mean different things Whereas other professions have been able to decompose practice,
to different people. A precise, shared technical language about agree on the most important knowledge and skills, and develop,
instructional practice would enable much faster progress in support, and assess them, teaching has not. This is our challenge,
research and thinking about teaching. and our time to overcome it is now.
A related challenge is finding an appropriate grain size at We must identify the tasks of teaching that are so important
which to identify and name the work of teaching. A high-leverage that skillfully executing them is fundamental to effective teaching.
practice must be small enough to be clearly visible in practice, but Examples include being able to figure out and respond to what
not so small as to atomize it. In other professions, from aviation students say, launch a task in class, check quickly on students’
to medicine to cosmetology, professionals are trained to carry out
specific elements of their work that have been articulated at a
useful grain size. For example, prospective pilots are trained to With a practice-focused curriculum for
execute takeoffs, landings, and turns, not just given basic advice;
medical students are taught how to conduct a physical examina-
learning to teach, prospective teachers
tion and dress a wound; hair stylists learn to precisely cut different would learn to use high-leverage
textures and lengths of hair and to add highlights with care. Guid-
ance for teaching practice, however, is often much less specific. practices to teach high-leverage content,
Saying that teachers should “differentiate instruction” for different much of it derived from the Common
learners or “motivate” students or “connect with students’ every-
day experience” is to articulate principles or goals, not the detailed Core State Standards.
skills and steps required to achieve them.
In decomposing and naming high-leverage practices around understanding, conduct a class discussion, or call a parent about
which consensus could be built, another problem that must be a difficult situation.
faced is the content- and context-specific nature of teaching. In contrast, a high-leverage practice is the ability to recognize
Regarding the content-specific nature of teaching,12 take, for key patterns of thinking, ideas, and misconceptions that students
example, the asking of questions. Precision about the purposes in a specific grade level typically have when they encounter a
and framing of questions, as well as their real-time posing and given idea. Elementary mathematics teachers should be able to
sequencing, is a high-leverage practice. So is eliciting and inter- examine students’ solutions to a complex subtraction problem
preting students’ understanding. However, both of these practices and recognize how students arrived at their answers (right or
are tied intimately to specific subject-matter content. A good wrong). Teachers must be able to probe whether correct answers
question in a history class is not the same as one in a mathematics represent valid understanding, and have good sense about when
lesson. History teachers ask students to evaluate the credibility of to check. Middle school English teachers should be able to recog-
different sources and consider factors that shape their reliability. nize why some populations of students consistently use forms of
Mathematics teachers request and support mathematical expla- subject-verb agreement that differ from academic English, and
nations, which are not the same as either historical or scientific they should have effective strategies for teaching students how
explanations. Asking students to explain why an odd number plus and when to use academic English. Elementary science teachers
an odd number always equals an even number is different from should know that the process of photosynthesis frequently con-
asking a question about sources or about experimental results. fuses fifth-graders, and they should understand why. Not all com-
Designing a prompt to assess students’ developing abilities to mon patterns of student thinking involve errors; teachers should
write a comparative essay is different from constructing a task to be able to recognize common ways that students think about
elicit students’ learning about a specific scientific idea, such as content, including predictable developments they make as they
force or light. grow. For example, when young children begin to “count on” (i.e.,
Regarding the context-specific nature of teaching, a key issue know instantly that there are nine items when one is added to a
is the unique cultural context of each classroom. Leading a whole- set of eight that they have already counted, as compared with their
class discussion of themes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved depends earlier practice of counting all over again), teachers should imme-
on context: because students’ experiences and relationships to diately recognize this significant step. Teachers should also have
the text differ, the instructional work is not the same in a suburban relevant cultural and social knowledge. For instance, urban Afri-
Connecticut classroom as in a classroom in rural Mississippi. can American adolescents are likely to have deep experience of
Students are likely to interpret the text differently, to interact dif- word play that can enhance their ability to engage in complex
ferently with it and one another, and to react in distinctive ways literary analysis,13 and middle schoolers’ social preoccupations
to its language and imagery. Consequently, the resources avail- (Continued on page 38)

AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011 21

T
eachers’ capacity to teach in in each school subject area that are essen-
classrooms and work collabora- tial for a beginning teacher to know well.
tively in professional communi- High-leverage content is foundational to
ties has been built systematically the ideas and skills of the K–12 curricula in
through academic teacher education. A this country, is taught in some form or
smart strategy is to invest in quality at the another across most published textbooks
point of entry into teacher education. The and curricula, and appears frequently. In
Finnish example suggests that a critical addition, high-leverage content is funda-
condition for attracting the most able mental to students’ learning and often
young people is that teaching be an inde- intentionally causes difficulty if not taught well. It also is
pendent and respected profession rather left blank often known only superficially by prospec-
than just a technical implementation of tive teachers, or is entirely new to them.*
externally mandated standards and tests. Examples of high-leverage content in ele-
Teachers’ strong competence and pre- mentary mathematics, for example, might
paredness are the prerequisites for the include place value; computational proce-
professional autonomy that makes teach- dures with whole numbers, decimals, and
ing a valued career. ☐ fractions; and mathematical explanation
and representation. In secondary English
Endnotes language arts, it could include writing a
1. Andrew Hargreaves, Gabor Halasz, and Beatriz Pont, coherent essay, and reading and analyzing
“The Finnish Approach to System Leadership,” in Improving
School Leadership, Volume 2: Case Studies on System Romeo and Juliet and Invisible Man.
Leadership, ed. Beatriz Pont, Deborah Nusche, and David
Hopkins (Paris: OECD, 2008), 69–109.
Common Core for Teaching With a practice-focused curriculum for
2. Pasi Sahlberg, “Educational Change in Finland,” in (Continued from page 21) learning to teach, prospective teachers
Second International Handbook of Educational Change, ed. would learn to use specific, high-leverage
Andy Hargreaves, Ann Lieberman, Michael Fullan, and David
Hopkins (New York: Springer, 2010), 323–348. can be harnessed for productive collective practices to teach specific, high-leverage
3. Statistics Finland, “Education,” www.stat.fi/til/kou_en. work. content, much of it derived from the Com-
html, accessed September 4, 2010.
In addition to high-leverage practices, mon Core State Standards. They would also
4. Marjukka Liiten, “Ykkössuosikki: Opettajan Ammatti”
[Top Favorite: Teaching Profession], Helsingin Sanomat, we need to identify the content knowledge learn how to enact professional norms and
February 11, 2004. most important to competent beginning commitments in the context of instruction
5. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, Education at a Glance, 2010: OECD Indicators teaching and find ways to articulate profes- (not just to talk about them). Although the
(Paris: OECD, 2010). sional orientations and commitments. full curriculum would vary in some ways
6. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Although instructional practice should be from program to program, the focus on
Development, Education at a Glance, 2010.
7. OAJ, Teacher Education in Finland (Helsinki, Finland: OAJ, at the center, a common core for teaching high-leverage practices and content would
2008), www.oaj.fi/pls/portal/docs/page/oaj_internet/01fi/05t practice would include explicit learning not. Our field has shied away from this kind
iedotteet/03julkaisut/opekoulutuseng.pdf, accessed January
26, 2011. goals that encompass the range of skills, of common core curriculum for new teach-
8. Ministry of Education, Opettajankoulutus 2020 [Teacher knowledge, understandings, orientations, ers for decades, with troubling results.
Education 2020], Committee Report 2007 (Helsinki, Finland:
Ministry of Education, 2007), 44. and commitments that underlie respon- There has never been a better time to
9. Ian Westbury, Sven-Erik Hansen, Pertti Kansanen, and Ole sible teaching. An important aspect of the change than now.
Björkvist, “Teacher Education for Research-Based Practice in curriculum for learning to teach would be

W
Expanded Roles: Finland’s Experience,” Scandinavian Journal
of Educational Research 49, no. 5 (2005): 475–485; and the special kinds of content knowledge e hear a great deal about
Ritva Jakku-Sihvonen and Hannele Niemi, eds., Research-
Based Teacher Education in Finland: Reflections by Finnish needed for teaching.14 how much more respected
Teacher Educators, Research Report 25 (Turku, Finland: Teaching is always about teaching and supported teaching is
Finnish Educational Research Association, 2006).
10. Juhani Jussila and Seppo Saari, eds., Teacher Education
something. Although the lack of a common in other countries than in
as a Future-Molding Factor: International Evaluation of curriculum in the United States has often the United States. Here, teaching is para-
Teacher Education in Finnish Universities (Helsinki, Finland:
Higher Education Evaluation Council, 2000). discouraged teacher educators from focus- doxically both romanticized and dis-
11. European Commission, Common European Principles for ing beginners’ training on any particular dained. More important, though, is that
Teacher Competences and Qualifications (Brussels: academic content, the advent of the Com- teaching is broadly underestimated and
Directorate-General for Education and Culture, 2004).
12. Ministry of Education, Ensuring Professional Competence mon Core State Standards makes it possi- teacher education, both “traditional” and
and Improving Opportunities for Continuing Education in ble to identify specific instructional “alternative,” is the object of significant
Education, Committee Report 2009 (Helsinki, Finland:
Ministry of Education, 2009), 16. practices, and specific topics and texts criticism. Demanding that the public
13. Erkki Aho, Kari Pitkänen, and Pasi Sahlberg, Policy within school subject areas, that could respect teachers or defending the status
Development and Reform Principles of Basic and Secondary
Education in Finland Since 1968 (Washington, DC: World serve as the foci of a redesigned profes- quo, however, will not lead to improved
Bank, 2006). sional curriculum for learning to teach systems for the development of responsi-
14. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and responsibly. One way to approach choos- ble instructional practice.
Development, Education at a Glance, 2010.
15. Pasi Sahlberg, “Education Policies for Raising Student ing this content is to think again in terms of Our goal is to support the demanding
Learning: The Finnish Approach,” Journal of Education Policy what is “high leverage” for beginning
22, no. 2 (2007): 147–171. *This definition of high-leverage content derives from
16. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
teachers. “High-leverage content” com- the work of the Mathematics Methods Planning Group
Development, Education at a Glance, 2010. prises those texts, topics, ideas, and skills at the University of Michigan School of Education.

38 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2011

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