Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

California


Developing Educational Standards is an annotated list of Internet sites with K-12 educational standards and curriculum frameworks documents, maintained by Charles Hill and the Putnam Valley Schools in New York. Your help with updates or corrections is greatly appreciated. [This page was last updated on July 19, 2000.] -> Return to the Standards index page.




The Developing Educational Standards list of State Education Departments



• National Assessment of Educational Progress
  The National Assessment of Educational Progress, operated by the US Department of Education, bills itself as The Nation's Report Card. While not explicitly tied to particular national or state standards, its reports provide a way of looking at student progress across the country in the eight subject areas the NAEP covers. These are the arts, civics, geography, math, reading, science, US history, and writing. Each subject has its own page that contains findings from related assessments, answers to basic questions about assessment, and standards and frameworks links. The NAEP site currently features results from its 1998 civics and writing assessments. Other assessments include the arts (last given in 1997), geography (last given in 1994; planned for Spring 2001), math (last given in 1996; planned for 2000), reading (last given in 1998), science (last given in 1996; planned for 2000), and US history (last given in 1994; planned for Spring 2001).
  
  
• National Education Goals Panel
  The National Education Goals Panel was set up to monitor progress towards Goals 2000 and to "assess and report state and national progress toward achieving the National Education Goals." From this site you can examine the eight national education goals set up by Congress and state governors, review national and state "scorecards" for 1998 and 1999 that provide data for 34 different progress indicators, and compare the results for up to three states at a time. The site also has a publications page with free ordering instructions and download links for quite a few documents. [Thanks to Kirk Winters of the USDOE for keeping people informed about this and other DOE-related programs via his regular mailings.)
  
  
• US Department of Education
  The US Department of Education has its own search site that allows you to search the department, any of its agency web sites (NCES, for example), or a Cross-Site index page that can access some 150 DOE-connected sites. It also maintains a searchable set of research summaries of ERIC Digests from 1992 to the present. Typing in the word "standards" turns up documents about such topics as social studies, the public perception of standards, and standardized tests.
  
  
• California Department of Education
  The California Department of Education offers a set of pages devoted to the Challenge Standards for Student Success. Available for all major subject areas, the documents (available as Adobe Acrobat files) contain draft grade level standards, examples of appropriate student work that meets the demands of the standards, and sample activities. The site also has links to departmental resources (including a listserv), a bibliography, and a listing of relevant Internet sites.
  
  
• California Department of Education
  On its State Board of Education page, the California Department of Education has posted the November 23, 2022 draft edition of the state's K-12 Mathematics Framework. (The February 2, 2023 version of the California Mathematics Academic Content Standards remains on line as well). In October it posted a document containing a lengthy list of Language Arts Standards. It has also put up approved "Edits" for the social studies and science documents, along with pre-publication versions of both sets of standards. Meanwhile, the Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission web site has links to both the math framework and to a smattering of documents related to the draft reading/language arts, foreign language, arts, health, and history frameworks.
  
  

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• Academic Content Standards
  The Academic Content Standards Site, set up by Stan Metzenberg of California State University at Northridge, organizes the state ELA, math, science, and social science standards by grade level. Presented in an easy to use format, the site should help teachers quickly find the standards that will affect their teaching most directly.
  
  
• American Federation of Teachers
  The AFT's web site pages has several major sections devoted to standards. Academic Standards contains links to various AFT documents and newspaper colums about standards, including the November 1999 version of the AFT's Making Standards Matter. Like its predecessors, this report stakes a position about what it is that standards ought to be like and assesses the quality of each state's standards and frameworks. A second AFT page has information about the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, including an AFT policy brief along with quides and other information about the NBPT. Lastly, the AFT has published several Adobe Acrobat versions of documents about both teaching and content standards that are available on a Policy Briefs page.
  
  
• American Music Conference
  The American Music Conference has links to a wide range of standards documents, FAQ's, and press releases. It also maintains a State by State Overview of Arts Standards Implementation that is very helpful to anyone looking for state level information.
  
  
• Association of California School Administrators
  The Association of California School Administrators has published several articles about standards.
  
  
• California Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards
  The Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, a 1997 entrant into the field of standards development, prepared a set of K-12 content and performance standards in the areas of reading, writing, math,science, and social studies. The state adopted other revised standards between December 1997 and October 1998. As a result, the commission went out of business on December 31, 1998. (It was located at http://www.ca.gov/goldstandards/index.html.)
  
  
• California Commission on Teacher Credentialing
  The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing offers a wealth of information about teacher certification requirements and procedures. Its section on Standards for Educator Preparation and Competence includes links to teaching credential standards in general and to specific subject area and specialist standards. (Thanks to Bob Salley of CTC for this information.)
  
  
• California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse
  The California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse maintains an impressive and comprehensive databaseof more than 3700 instructional materials linked to state standards and curriculum frameworks. You can search the database by keyword, subject, platorm, or grade level - or dig down into the areas of ELA, math, science, or social studies and do a search on individual standards. The results generally lead you to highly rated software titles (the rating criteria are described on the web site). (Thanks to Laurie Swiryn of Cuesta Technologies for information about this link.)
  
  
• Center for Education Reform
  The Center for Education Reform, founded in 1993, conducts research and publishes studies and advocacy pieces dealing with such prominent educational issues as charter schools and standards. Its section on Academic Standards and Curriculum offers a page with links to the "Report Cards" issued by many states, a page of frequently asked questions about standards, and links to various articles and books on related topics. The center also hosts the Education Leaders Council.
  
  
• Center for School Reform
  The Center for School Reform publishes research and advocacy reports on such topics as charter schools, educational funding, and standards. It has published an extensive report on Developing and Implementing Academic Standards intendend to help readers assess the quality of and compliance with standards.
  
  
• Council for Basic Education
  The Council for Basic Education has set one of its goals as being reviewing various standards projects while a related goal is to help develop standards at a local level. With a motto of "Championing High Academic Standards for All Students," the CBE maintains an Academic Standards page that lists its current and past standards projects in various states and districts (it helps them review and assess their standards), provides answers for various frequently asked questions, and presents links to several articles. Elsewhere on its site it sells a kit to help districts with their standards, shows the findings of a 1998 poll it conducted about the public's view of standards, describes the Standards-based Teacher Education Project that aims to help colleges prepare k-12 teachers to work with standards, and presents Schools Around the World, an examination of the educational systems (including the role of standards) of nine countries.
  
  
• Council of Chief State School Officers
  The Council of Chief State School Officers' site offers resources on a wide range of educational issues. Those directly relevant to standards and frameworks are grouped on a Standards and Assessments page. They include surveys of state progress on standards and examples of standards and benchmarks in math and science. They also have articles dealing with standards for teachers and school leaders. Recent documents include a December 1998 report on education policies in each state as they relate to standards and other issues, a 1997 report on math and scienct content standards, and several reports on model standards for beginning teachers. 
  
  
• Education Week
  Education Week (along with its sister publication, Teacher Magazine) offers selected articles, an archive, and a particularly impressive section called Issues that contains links to pages with articles dedicated to all the major current educational issues including assessment and standards. In addition, Education Week has published special reports about standards, frameworks, assessments, and their associated travails. Highlights of its online holdings include a special January 1999 issue, Quality Counts, that reviews and draws conclusions about the status of current educational programs , including standards initiatives; a 1997 version of this study; and a Fall 1998 series of articles called Applying Standards about various reviews of state and national standards. (Education Week also did a story on the Putnam Valley Schools and the web site you are currently using in its March 20, 2023 issue called Web Site on K-12 Standards Efforts Lauded).
  
  
• FairTest
  FairTest, an advocacy group that opposes "the abuses, misues and flaws" of standardized tests, offers a survey of state assessment systems for purchase and for online use. Its web site also has a large amount of information about tests and testing throughout the country.
  
  
• National Association for Music Education
  The Online Publication and Guides section of the National Association for Music Education's web site offers a variety of excellent resources dealing with music standards. These include the National Music Standards themselves (in both English and Spanish), opportunity-to-learn standardsfor music, and several articles or position papers that explore or explain standards related issues. (Thanks to Peggy Senko, the association's Director of Publications, for information about this link.)
  
  
• Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
  The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, successor to the Educational Excellence Network, sponsors studies and programs that advance its mission to advance educational standards and create a core curriculum. Among the many reports and resources on its site are a January 2000 report on The State of State Standards 2000, edited by Chester Finn. A large document (over 500k), it assesses standards by subject area (English, history, geography, math, and science) and by state. It concludes that standards have improved slighltly from an assessment made in 1997 but that they are still relatively poor. A second document released in January 2000 examines standards of teacher preparation in New Jersey in light of that state's alternative certification program. A Standards, Testing and Accountability page lists a number of other reports prepared for the foundation. (Thanks to Therese Sarah, editor of Lesson Stop, for this update.)