Evaluation of a teacher -created, team -implemented, standards-based, interdisciplinary curriculum plan

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a teacher created, team implemented, standards-based, interdisciplinary curriculum plan would improve student achievement at a specific middle school. The curriculum plan was designed by a site-based curriculum writing team that worked within a deliberative framework. The team reviewed relevant curriculum theory, all curricular requisites, and available resources. The developed curriculum plan included a skills strand and a content strand with specific sequencing geared toward the abilities and deficiencies of the school population. After staff training, the curriculum plan was implemented at the school site during the 2002--2003 school-year.;An empirical study was designed to measure the effectiveness of the curriculum plan. Students were randomly placed on instructional teams composed of a common language arts, math, science and social studies teacher. The degree of use of the curriculum plan was considered an independent variable in a regression study organized to determine if use of the plan could predict improved student performance on standardized tests.;Teachers were administered surveys designed to measure their degree of use of curricular practices and students were issued surveys to measure their perceptions of the team experience. Various relationships were examined to eliminate the possibility that individual constructs of the curriculum plan yielded gains in student achievement.;The data revealed that use of the school generated curriculum plan could predict improved performance on the state-mandated, Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT), in the area of reading. The collective wisdom and effort used in generating the plan and subsequently, implementing the plan yielded gains in student achievement while individual efforts including use of standards in curriculum and even team efforts of using interdisciplinary concepts in curriculum did not predict success on the FCAT.