To assist teachers as they implement college- and career-readiness standards in the classroom, C-SAIL developed and tested a new, virtual coaching program.

The Feedback on Alignment and Support for Teachers (FAST) Program used the tools from the Measurement Study to support teachers in better understanding their state’s college-and career-ready standards and providing instruction aligned to those standards. The effectiveness of the program was tested in a randomized controlled trial.

The Program

The FAST Program includes three components:

• Personalized Coaching. Teachers meet with FAST coaches, who are experts in math or ELA, in one-hour meetings both individually and as part of school-based, grade-level collaborative academic study teams (CASTs) to discuss the content of their instruction and identify ways to strengthen the alignment of their instruction to state standards. 
• Tools to Support Reflection. Teachers use instructional logs and video recordings of instruction to support reflection on the alignment of their instruction to state standards during individual coaching sessions. The FAST framework, which is based on the Survey of Enacted Curriculum (SEC), provides teachers a means of analyzing alignment. 
• Library of Resources. Teachers have access to an online library of resources to support them in designing instruction aligned to state standards for all students. Teachers and FAST coaches examine these resources together during their meetings. 

The Study

We studied the impact of the FAST Program on fourth-grade math and fifth-grade ELA teachers’ instruction and their students’ achievement using a school-level randomized controlled trial. The study addressed the following three research questions (RQs):

1. How was the FAST program implemented?
2. Did the FAST program lead to greater alignment of teachers’ content coverage with state standards?
3. Did the FAST program lead to increased student achievement as measured by state assessments?

Briefs

FAST Impact Brief: The Impact of a Virtual Coaching Program to Improve Instructional Alignment to State Standards

Toni M. Smith, Michael S. Garet, Mengli Song, Drew Atchison, AIR
Andrew Porter, University of Pennsylvania
June 2021

FAST Validity Study Brief: The Validity of Measures of Alignment with State Standards Based on Surveys of Enacted Curriculum

Drew Atchison, Michael S. Garet, Toni M. Smith, Mengli Song  
June 2021