Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

Massachusetts


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 February 7, 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.
  
  
• Massachusetts Department of Education
  The Massachusetts frameworks fit within a five year master plan for the state's Education Reform Initiatives. A Common Core of Learning page provides some background for the state's changes while a Curriculum Frameworks page offers links to some Common Chapters (containing a rationale and general information about the meaning and nature of frameworks) as well as to documents for the arts, English language arts, health, math, science and technology, history and social science, and world languages. (According to a January 1996 memo from the commissioner of education, the health education framework encompasses the curriculum areas of health, family and consumer science, and physical education - with each district being responsible for determining how much attention is to go to each one.) An EDReform section of the DOE site presents similar information in an organized and very useful way - particularly if you are using a frames-capable browser. While there, click on the related documents button for additional information. Meanwhile, the new statewide assessment program is described on a Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System site. It has links to statewide, district, and school level results from the MCAS (including the December 1998 reports) along with a wide range of material that supplements or explains the system.
  
  
• Massachusetts Department of Education
  As an adjunct to the commonwealth's somewhat controversial new teacher requirements, the Department of Education has set up a Massachusetts Teacher Tests site with news releases and some explanatory information about the teaching frameworks and assessments. These include an October 1998 Q&A; document, a statement of test objectives, and various test results.
  
  

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• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Mass Insight Education and Research Institute
  The Mass Insight Education and Research Institute seeks to have the private sector and public officials collaborate on issues that affect them both. One of its major topics is standards and, in particular, the way that Massachusetts is and ought to be assisting schools to help students meet the demands of new high stakes tests. The web site describes some of this not-for-profit corporation's members, programs, and recommendations. [My thanks to Andy Calkins, Mass Insight's Executive Director, for an update on this site.]
  
  
• Massachusetts School Library Media Association
  The Professional Standards Committee of the Massachusetts School Library Media Association has prepared a Standards for School Library Media Centers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now available on the DOE page. The document contains recommendations about library media center staffing levels, collections, and budgets; various library media standards; and sample policies on such of topics as student use of the Internet. (Thanks to Margaret Hallisey, 1996-97 President of the MSLMA for alerting me to this document.)
  
  
• 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.)