Designing for Coherence
Coherence is crucial to student learning. We must not leave it to chance.
As educators, we all share a common goal: ensuring that every student reaches their full potential. Achieving that goal requires more than passion and effort; it requires a system whose key components—learning standards, curricula, instruction, assessment, and professional learning—all work together. Too often, they are designed separately, implemented unevenly, and aligned only loosely, if at all. The result is a fragmented experience for teachers and students.
Coherence across these elements isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s essential. Coherence means that every part of the educational system is built on the same foundation: a shared understanding of what it means for students to meet grade-level expectations and how they progress in their learning, both within and across grade levels.
When elements of our educational system cohere, they reinforce and amplify each other, helping educators make better decisions and ultimately better serve students, especially our most vulnerable learners.
Yet coherence is often treated like something we will recognize when we see it. That’s a problem. We rarely define coherence clearly, or design for it intentionally. Without that intentional approach, we can’t support effective teaching and learning.
Defining Coherence: More Than Just Alignment
So what is coherence? It’s more than simply aligning documents or matching up standards with lessons or test blueprints. True coherence exists when learning standards, curricula, instruction, assessment, and professional learning are all grounded in a shared vision of student learning—how it develops, what it looks like across time, and what supports are needed to get there.
The education world has two models of coherence. Curriculum development uses an approach called Understanding by Design (UbD), which starts with the end in mind—what students should ultimately understand and be able to do—and then works backward to create instructional experiences that build toward those goals.
The assessment community uses a similar approach called Principled Assessment Design (PAD). It starts by articulating the progression of learning within a given grade, from novice to proficient, then designs assessments that generate meaningful evidence about students’ locations along that trajectory. Both models reflect a commitment to coherence by prioritizing clarity, consistency, and intentional design from the beginning.
Performance level descriptors (PLDs) are a tool that can anchor coherence across varied systems. Borrowed from PAD, PLDs describe how students’ understanding and skills evolve over time in relation to grade-level learning goals. Think of PLDs as “chunkier” versions of learning progressions—they don’t get into micro-level steps, but they clearly articulate major developmental shifts and milestones in learning.
PLDs provide a common language that assessment designers, curriculum developers, instructional leaders, and professional learning teams can all use. When designed well, PLDs can describe:
- what an appropriate amount of learning looks like in a school year
- how expectations increase across grade levels
- how student thinking should deepen over time
- what constitutes evidence of student learning
When PLDs serve as the foundation of all of our designing within the educational system, coherence becomes possible. Curriculum developers and assessment designers can use the same PLDs to guide their work, while instructional leaders and professional learning providers can use them to help teachers understand where students are and where they’re going. This shared foundation turns coherence from an abstract ideal into something concrete and actionable.
Coherence in Action
Here’s a hypothetical example of coherence in action. Imagine the leadership team in a mid-sized district has decided to adopt a new elementary math curriculum. In a traditional process, one team might select a curriculum, another might choose or design benchmark assessments, and teachers would receive professional development disconnected from both.
But this team takes a different path. They begin by developing a set of PLDs that articulate the progression of student learning in key mathematical concepts from kindergarten through fifth grade, both within and across grades. Alternatively, if the district is in a state with PLDs developed to support both assessment and instruction, they don’t have to start their development from scratch! Either way, these PLDs serve as the foundation for everything that follows.
Curriculum materials are selected based on how well they align with these descriptors. Assessments are developed to measure progress in relation to the PLDs, not just to match standards. Professional learning focuses on helping teachers interpret assessment results through the lens of the PLDs and adjust instruction accordingly.
Over time, coherence becomes observable: teachers across grade levels talk about student learning using the same language. Instruction aligns tightly with assessment, and professional learning helps educators deepen their understanding of how students grow in math. Coherence moves from theory to practice—and students benefit.
Districts across the country offer compelling, successful examples of their hard work to achieve coherence here and there, but partial coherence is not coherence. Enduring change requires a shared conviction across all educators and designers in the system that coherence is indispensable. When everyone who shapes teaching and learning acts from that conviction, coherence stops being an aspiration and becomes something we can see.
The Role of Teachers and Implementation Support
Teachers are the key to translating coherence into student learning. They need sustained professional development that’s grounded in the same vision of learning as the curriculum and assessments. They need time to plan, reflect, and collaborate. They need tools and structures that help them recognize coherence and bring it to life in their classrooms.
Implementation is where coherence succeeds or fails. Too often, implementation is an afterthought, but it must be considered a core part of the system. Without thoughtful planning and support, even the best-designed systems can break down at the point of delivery.
Making Coherence Observable
Coherence is not inherently abstract; it can be observed. In a coherent classroom, instructional activities are aligned to clearly defined learning goals. Assessments provide meaningful data that help teachers understand student progress toward those goals, and where additional support should be targeted. Professional learning sessions reinforce the same instructional priorities. Across a school or district, coherence shows up in common expectations, shared language, and coordinated efforts.
You know an education system is coherent when:
- a 3rd grade teacher can explain how a lesson fits into a broader learning progression
- assessment data helps shape instruction in real time
- professional learning focuses on the same instructional goals as the curriculum and assessments
- students encounter consistent expectations and notions of grade-level rigor, year over year, and across classrooms
- students, teachers, and parents all agree on what constitutes rigorous grade-level work and evidence of student learning
The Payoff
When all of these elements work together, the payoff is significant. A coherent approach removes ambiguity for teachers and students. It supports instructional decisions that are truly aligned with student needs. And it creates a learning environment where every student—regardless of background—has a clear path to grade-level achievement.
The challenges are real, but the rewards are great. Coherence moves classrooms from fragmentation to focus, from contradiction to clarity. It’s not just a better way to design systems—it’s a better way to serve students.
Let’s commit to designing for coherence from the start. Our students deserve nothing less.
Acknowledgment:
Thank you to Ellen Forte, Samantha Sneed-Echebelem, and Mina Naranjo for their insights, and to Education First’s National Forum on the Future of Assessment & Accountability for hosting an important conversation on coherence.
Kristen Huff is head of measurement at Curriculum Associates.