Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

Minnesota


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.
  
  
• Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning
  Minnesota's Department of Children, Families and Learning maintains an extensive set of pages about its Graduation Standards. The site contains brief explanations for students, parents, teachers, and administrators of the new standards and their associated tests in ten learning areas (reading and listening, writing and speaking, the arts and literature, inquiry, scientific applications, people and cultures, decision making, resource management, and world languages). More extended explanations of these areas appear on a High Standards page. The site also offers sample performance packages (instructional activities tied to particular standards) for selected subjects. It provides a link to Chapter 3501 of the department's rules (which define graduation standards and related requirements). And it offers a Graduation Standard Newsletter with fairly up-to-date information about standards and testing and what they all mean.
  
  

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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 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.
  
  
• Mankato Area Public Schools
  Doug Johnson and Eric Bartleson, in association with the Mankato Area Public Schools, have developed a very useful set of Rubrics for Leadership that spell out what administrators should know about and be able to do with technology. The rubrics page contains a January 1999 draft.
  
  
• Minneapolis Public Schools
  The Minneapolis Public Schools has placed many of its Curriculum Standards on the district's web site. A typical set of standards lists major and minor headings, grouped according to student age (5-9, 9-14, and 14-18).
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• SciMathMN
  SciMathMN, a "statewide, public/private partnership which advocates and supports standards-based systemic improvements" in math and science education, offers a variety of resources for parents and educators. These include a one page review of the status of the state's standards, Adobe Acrobat copies of the math and science standards (as well as ordering information for printed versions), and copies of a newsletter and several reports.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• Web66
  Web66, through its Mustang site, has published an early, somewhat out-of-date version of the Minnesota State Graduation Standards on a Required Profile of Learning page. (Thanks go to Stephen E. Collins of Mustang for the update.)