“The fourth principle, then, is that the task predicts
performance. What determines what students know and are
able to do is not what the curriculum says they are
supposed to do, nor even what the teacher thinks he or she is asking students to do. What predicts performance is what students are actually doing. The single biggest observational discipline we have to teach people in our networks is to look on top of the desk, rather than at the teacher in front of the room. The only way to find out what students are actually doing is to observe what they
are doing, not, unfortunately, to ask teachers what
students have done after the fact, and even less to look at the results of student work after they have engaged in the task. What was interesting about our observation was that for a brief moment, for this particular task, we, the observers, actually knew more about what was going on the
in these classrooms than the teachers did. This is an unsettling commentary on the instructional culture of American schooling.”

So, here’s my question: If someone walked into our classrooms and asked our students, “What are you learning?” (Not what are you doing) what would their answer be?