Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

Oregon


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.
  
  
• Oregon State Education Department
  The Oregon State Education Department has published a Oregon Goals 2000 State Plan - Executive Summary, which contains a description of the state plan, assessment strategies, and the plan's likely impact on local communities.
  
  
• Oregon State Education Department
  The Oregon State Education Department's Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Field Services has an academic standards page with Adobe Acrobat versions of the state K-12 standards and benchmarks for English, math, science, and social studies; a page describing progress toward the development of arts standards; and an Adobe Acrobat file called Teaching and Learning to Standards that contains standards and benchmarks for various subject areas.
  
  

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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.
  
  
• George Mason University
  At the end of November 1999, the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University issued a Position Paper on the Standards of Learning for the state of Virginia. The paper calls on the state to reconsider the way it goes about constructing, using, and enforcing its high stakes testing program.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• Oregon Educational Media Association
  The Oregon Educational Media Association has prepared Information Literacy Guidelines for the Oregon Common Curriculum Goals in English/Language Arts as well as for some portions of the arts, health, math, science, and social studies. The guidelines correlate these standards and goals to the draft Information Literacy Standards developed by AASL and AECT. (Thanks to Janet Murray of the Milken Educator Virtual Workspace for this information.)
  
  
• Oregon Educational Technology Consortium
  The Oregon Educational Technology Consortium (OETC) has published a set of District Technology Program Guidelines that includes content and benchmark standards and a recommended assessment system. (Thanks to Amanda Jaffe-Katz of Technion alerting me that this site had been updated.)
  
  
• Oregon Public Education Network Clearinghouse
  The Oregon Public Education Network Clearinghouse maintains an Oregon School Reform site containing valuable resources related to state standards as well as to PASS. The Oregon Content Standards page, in particular, has a rich offering - including links to a searchable data base containing common curriculum goals, content standards, and benchmarks for various key grade levels in several different subjects. 
  
  
• Oregon University System
  Oregon's Proficiency-based Admission Standards System, or PASS, contains that state's approach to standards development. PASS grew out of a legislative change in high school graduation requirements from traditional methods, such as Carnegie units, to demonstrations of mastery in certain subject areas. The Oregon University System offered to prepare standards that would guide college admission and created a group, made up of college and high school staff, that prepared PASS. While the group's work focuses on what is expected of students going to one of Oregon's colleges (and not necessarily what is expected of all high school students), the implication of this project is that all Oregon high schools should follow it. A Proficiency Standards page offers access to standards, performance indicators, teacher tools, and other resources in the areas of the arts, English, math, science, second languages, and social science. In addition, an Aligned Standards page offers Adobe Acrobat copies of documents that show the alignment of the PASS Proficiency Standards with the CIM and CAM standards. The State Board adoped the Aligned Standards in March 1998 and they took effect in September of that year. (Thanks to Robert Roberts, PASS Technology Coordinator, for on update on PASS.)
  
  
• 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.)