Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

New York


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.
  
  
• New York State Board of Regents
  The New York State Board of Regents spells out its six goals for the state's schools in a policy statement called Leadership and Learning. Of the six, the first two deal explicitly with standards. ("All students will meet high standards for academic performance and demonstrate the knowledge and skills required by a dynamic world, " and "All educational institutions will meet Regents high performance standards.")
  
  
• New York State Education Department
  The New York State Education Department has a number of useful pages spread throughout its web site. These include:
  
  • November 1999 links to district and school level results on the state's new high stakes testing program. In this case, the links are for the fourth and eighth grade English language arts and math tests.
  • An EMSC Learning Standards section with links to pages with Adobe Acrobat copies of curriculum standards, frameworks, and resource guides in most subject areas. One of the Acrobat documents is an update on the relationship between the learning standards and the state's new assessment system.
  • The Curriculum/Instruction/Assessment and Regional School/Community Services Division has a site with links to documents about new state tests, the commissioner's teleconference transcripts, explanatory documents in English and Spanish for parents - and more.
  • A Fall 1998 web version of a slide presentation about standards called Overall Strategy for Raising Student Performance.
  • Adobe Acrobat copies of summaries and full-text versions of the new Part 100 Commissioner's Regulations. These regulations form a general link between standards and graduation requirements.
  • Information about the pending Annual Professional Performance Review and Professional Development Plan, that lacks only a September 1999 vote to become a Part 100 mandate. The amendment in effect describes general standards for teacher performance.
  • Results of the new state testing program, with links back to state standards. The Grade 4 ELA page for January 1999 is informative, but huge.
  • A copy of the Board of Regents Task Force on Teaching paper, Teaching to Higher Standards: New York's Commitment.
  • Draft Regulations on the Registration of Teacher Education Programs to Implement New York's Commitment: Teaching to Higher Standards.
  
  
  

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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.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• New York Empire State Partnerships Project
  The Empire State Partnerships Project is a collaborative venture between the State Education Department and the NYS Council on the Arts designed to assist teachers and schools to meet the demands of the state's new learning standards. Its Online Resource Guide contains lists of annotated links to Internet sites dealing with the arts as well as education in general.
  
  
• New York Lower Hudson Regional Information Center
  The Lower Hudson Regional Information Center has set up a Best Practices Database containing teacher-developed projects that are aligned with the new math, science, and technology standards.
  
  
• New York Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES and Regional Information Center
  In collaboration with the New York State Education Department, OCM BOCES (the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES Regional Information Center) maintains a State Learning Standards site that offers quick access to NYS standards, frameworks, and assessment resources for the arts; career development and occupational studies; English language arts; health, physical education, and home economics; math, science, and technology; and social studies. Checking on the Planned Assessment of New York State Standards page on a regular basis may also be a good idea, as the time and grades of their administration still appears open to some changes.
  
  
• New York State School Board Association
  The New York State School Board Association's Download Library contains several articles about the New York State learning standards. Some articles are descriptive while others indicate the Association's stance on standards-related issues.
  
  
• New York State Systemic Initiative
  The New York State Systemic Initiative's site contains instructional resources, news and updates, and links to a wealth of information about science, math, technology, standards, and assessment.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• New York City Educational NETwork
  NYCENet, the New York City Educational NETwork has an Educational Resources page containing links to various city frameworks. In general, the links take you to lists of "curriculum frameworks expectations" for elementary, middle, and high school grades. Each "expectation" has a link to a relevant net site and some brief plans about what students should do at that site. This approach looks very helpful for teachers and most of the sites and plans are good, but teachers should explore the sites ahead of time, do their own detailed planning, and read the cautionary notes that accompany some of the site descriptions.