My school is a Title 1 school performing at the bottom five percent of middle schools in Georgia. Poverty and lack of access to equitable resources also plague our school district. Most of our school population are African American and Hispanic students. These groups are also our lowest-performing students on standardized and benchmark testing. Our school has adopted the Teacher Clarity concept. This concept focuses on three key elements: What, Why, and How. The "What" details what specific thing the student will learn. The "Why" provides a real-world scenario to pique student interest. The "How" breaks down the "What" into precise tasks to complete for students to master the target. I have chosen to buy into the concept of Teacher Clarity. As a teacher, it allows me to focus precisely on the standard being taught and gives the students a chance to know exactly what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how students will show they have met the target for that day. Through my data collection and analysis, I am attempting to show how Teacher Clarity can improve student performance. This will indicate a significant difference when Teacher Clarity is implemented into the curriculum taught by analyzing pre and post-test results.

Methodology

The data presented was collected from my third block class which has 14 students. I gave the students a pre-test over Expressions, Equations, and the Number System. The pre and post-test had 23 questions directly aligned with the standards being taught. There were different questions on each test, but they were all aligned to the same standards. There is only one variable and one treatment condition. The pre-test was given with no prior instruction over the content being tested. The post-test assessed student knowledge of the standards taught which are directly aligned with the pre-test. The condition was the implementation of Teacher Clarity.

Scores

Student Pre-Test Post-Test

1 19 43

2 0 58

3 18 62

4 38 96

5 3 56

6 29 96

7 17 73

8 35 88

9 27 92

10 19 71

11 3 77

12 17 65

13 23 73

14 19 63