Indiana's Surveys of Enacted Curriculum Project

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Additional information can also be found on the websites of the SEC Collaborative partners: Council of Chief State School Officers Wisconsin Center for Education Research Learning Point Associates/NCREL Questions? Contact Michael Roach at 317-234-0325.

The Surveys of Enacted Curriculum are research-based tools that help schools collect, report, and use data on what content is taught and how it is taught. The surveys and reporting tools provide an objective approach for analyzing instruction in relation to content standards.

Data and reports from the SEC system are intended to assist educators in several ways:

• Alignment among instruction, standards, and assessments
• Improvement of instruction within and across grade levels
• Tracking school performance against standards
• Needs assessment and program evaluation
• Interpreting assessment results with instructional data
• Identify professional development needs and evaluate progress in those areas.

The primary instruments of the SEC are the instructional practices survey and the instructional content survey. The instructional practices survey asks questions about classroom activities, homework, assessments, teacher training, and teacher opinions; it also contains a section on professional development that could be used to identify needs. The instructional content survey asks about teacher expectations of student performance and the amount of time spent on the curriculum topics taught during the school year. When used together, the surveys are a powerful instrument to look at both what is taught and how it is taught.

SEC reports include a series of data charts and graphs for reporting the data back to schools, teachers, and leaders. The data are represented in scales and maps that can then be used to analyze instruction relative to curriculum, standards, and assessments. The data reports are designed to be user-friendly and functional, allowing teachers and administrators to create custom individual and group reports and comparisons.