To Dr. Mike Riley, a good education rests on a cohesive curriculum. Riley is Superintendent of the Bellevue School District in Bellevue, Washington, a community of 100,000 people located 10 miles east of Seattle. Bellevue School District has 27 schools that serve more than 16,000 students. Since taking the helm of the district 11 years ago, Riley has maintained a single focus: to provide every student with a top-notch college preparatory education. To support that goal, he has overseen the creation of a district-wide curriculum, provided continuous teaching and technology support for teachers, and incorporated an abundance of early and individualized support for struggling students.

"The culture of our profession is one that honors local control and individual autonomy," Riley says. "The result for many kids has been an education filled with gaps and redundancies. In our district, we realized the importance of curriculum in building knowledge over time and the necessity for all of us to work together to make that happen."

Riley focused on creating a district-wide curriculum that is very clear about what kids need to learn at each grade level. The district hired a dedicated curriculum development staff of 11 people that spent approximately 10 years crafting a curriculum for kindergarten through twelfth grade. A separate team of 19 curriculum coaches helps teachers implement the curriculum in their classrooms.

Even though the curriculum is standardized, curriculum developers and teachers are continuously making improvements and additions, and the district struggles to keep its 1,200 teachers synchronized and up to date. The curriculum was maintained in three-ring binders that were distributed to all staff members and updated through e-mail messages, mailings, and trainings.

"Teachers were making changes all the time, because something didn't work or kids didn't understand a concept," says Wendy Powell, Eighth Grade Science Teacher at Chinook Middle School. "E-mail messages were piling up, and it was difficult to keep your curriculum notebook updated. Over time, each teacher had their own notebook with changes."

"Our curriculum is a work in progress," explains Eric Ferguson, Technology Curriculum Manager for Bellevue School District. "We're always revising and adding lessons, and it was a chore to do with paper."

Another problem was lack of accessibility and transparency of assessment data, which made it difficult for teachers to know how they were doing in meeting curriculum standards. Assessment test scores were distributed to teachers, but they couldn't compare their kids' performance to others in the district or to their previous year's performance. "We collected assessment results, but they sat in a box and were analyzed by very few people," Ferguson says.

In addition to wanting teachers to be consistent and in touch with one another as a district teaching team, Riley wanted teachers to have the tools they needed to be effective and efficient in the classroom--and in communicating with parents. "Educators have been told that technology will change their profession, and most teachers think that this means giving computers to kids," Riley says. "But we realized about five years ago that technology ought to be an adult tool to help us do our jobs better, to make teachers more effective. This isn't to say that kids don't need technology, too. But ever since we've focused on getting the best resources to our teachers, it's opened our imagination."

In September 2005, Riley and the IT staff at Bellevue School District took the big step of putting the district curriculum online by taking advantage of recent innovations in Microsoft software. "We had begun a partnership with Microsoft about six years before, working on a data warehouse," Ferguson explains. "In the process, we installed Microsoft software for our databases and other back-end systems, as well as for e-mail messaging, Web collaboration, and desktop productivity. Ease of use was very important in our choice, and the Microsoft Office suite is what our teachers are familiar with." The district has 6,000 desktop and portable computers and more than 130 server computers running Microsoft software.

The district's public Curriculum Web site (curriculum.bsd405.org) provides detailed information about courses, units, and lessons at every grade and subject level, and it provides a host of resources to support instruction. The district is gradually building out the site as it works through copyright and other issues.

"Curriculum Web gives us the flexibility to add resources at any time, share teaching tips, and change the curriculum over time, ensuring that everyone's getting the same changes simultaneously," Riley says. "The curriculum becomes more creative and more fluid, without losing consistency."

"Our Curriculum Web is a place for staff, students, and parents to see what we're teaching at every grade level. It creates an opportunity to see the year at a glance and to deep-dive on individual units, topics, and lesson goals," adds Ferguson. "Parents can see how content connects from one year to the next or get a sneak peek at classes coming up in middle school and high school."

"Recently, the district math curriculum developer added two lessons that could strengthen the unit I was teaching. I received the e-mail message notifying me of the new lessons posted to the Curriculum Web. I was then able to review the lessons that afternoon so that I could teach them the next day," says Jennifer Buker, Fifth Grade Teacher at Enatai Elementary School.

In 2006, the district took the next step of helping teachers create their own Web pages, where they can communicate with students and parents and post homework, calendars, tutorials, and learning resources. The district next used Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to create Web-based collaboration sites for each school. Posting educational and administrative updates centrally to a school Web site eliminates a lot of e-mail messages that were clogging teacher inboxes and consuming valuable time. Many teachers make their school Web site their home page and check it daily.

The district next rolled out software that teachers use to post grades online and analyze students' performance. "Our electronic data analyzer scoops up the grades that teachers post and makes them available online to everyone in the district," Riley says. "Every teacher can run their own analyses to see how their students are doing relative to others teaching the same subject or to see how their kids did in previous years on the same material."

The district also outfitted most classrooms with SMART Board interactive whiteboards, which enable teachers to capture notes they've written and share them with students. "When I ask, 'Who wants the notes from today's class?' hands shoot up," says Powell. Document cameras attached to the SMART Board enable teachers to display books, demonstrations, and student work to the entire class.

With its strong focus on a centralized curriculum and tools for teacher effectiveness, Bellevue School District has provided improved clarity about what teachers should be teaching. The district has also gained open accessibility to assessment data for continuous improvement, more effective teaching, and convenient engagement with parents.

Riley says that the district has done more curriculum development in the past year than it did in the previous five years, since the curricula became a public, online document. "Curriculum Web has been a huge deal for us and caused a huge cultural shift," he says. "As soon as the site went up, we saw that our curriculum wasn't as complete as we thought it was. Some departments realized that their curricula were not as well developed as others'. But having everything out there for everyone to see has driven improvement at a level and pace that would have been impossible before."

"The Curriculum Web makes me feel more capable as a first-year teacher," Buker says. "It is clear what I need to be teaching so that my students can attain the learning objective. All the lesson plans and materials are readily accessible."

Adds Powell, "We can all go to one place and see what we're supposed to be teaching and take advantage of improvements made by all the teachers in the district. It's a much richer resource, plus it's dynamic. I can access it from home or anywhere."

"If a third-grade student is having trouble grasping a math concept, the teacher can quickly reference the corresponding second-grade concept and try that," says Nicole Hepworth, Elementary Technology and Curriculum Coach for Medina Elementary and Sherwood Forest Elementary Schools.

Adds Amy Bertram Winstanley, Fifth Grade Teacher at Enatai Elementary School, "I used to feel like I was drowning in paperwork and books, but I can always find resources online. Having curriculum resources online is a timesaver, because it's all organized for me."

Riley says that making assessment data available district-wide has been another huge shift, one that made some teachers nervous at first. "When you move curriculum and assessment data online, the private act of teaching becomes very public," he says. "Everything's exposed; one teacher may realize that their students are scoring lower than other teachers'. At some times, it's depressing. But the point is that the problems were always there, and now we can see and tackle them. We're surfacing issues all across the district."

For example, Hepworth says, "I can compile and analyze the various reading scores for all kindergartners in the district, find the median, and better determine where all kindergarten students are reading at a particular time of the year. We can share this information with teachers, so they can look at how their students are doing in comparison to all kindergartners. This has the potential to help teachers identify needed interventions and come together to brainstorm strategies in a timely manner."

Putting the curriculum and assessment data online and equipping teachers with Web sites and classroom technology tools were the foundation for Bellevue School District; now teachers have started experimenting. Buker uses her SMART Board to capture her notes connected with various units so she can use them again in subsequent years. "I save the questions students ask or the notes from the dialogue we've had in class for nearly every lesson I teach. I can reference these notes later, to see where students had problems and know how I can better support them," she says. "Teachers can even upload their SMART Board files onto the school intranet to make them accessible to other teachers."

High school math teacher Jeff Mason videotapes his lectures and posts them on his Web page for students and parents to review at home. He uses Microsoft software to index the lessons so students can fast-forward to the explanation they need to see.

Bellevue parents can now see how their kids are doing in school, in any subject, at any time. They also have a better understanding of what they're learning and how it's being taught, so they can help them at home. Some teachers have posted electronic quizzes on their Web pages. If a student misses a question, the quiz links them to an online tutorial on that topic. Parents use the online resources, too, to help their kids with homework. Says Ferguson, "One parent said, 'I'm starting to get this technology thing. My daughter watched the online tutorial several times and was finally able to do her homework.'"

Adds Powell, "I teach eighth grade students, who typically don’t talk to their parents. I can send an e-mail to parents saying,'Ask your kids about the balloon demo we did today.' It starts a dialog between parents and kids." On her Web site, Powell has all homework assignments and copies of any worksheets handed out. "Kids can't say they lost it. They can go online and print another. It keeps everyone accountable," she says.

"Successful teaching is a triangle between the student, teacher, and parent," concludes Riley. "Transparency has swung the door wide open for parents to enter the classroom and kids to maintain a link to the classroom from home. We're building a bridge between school and home and creating the discussion between the parent and the child."

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