Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks from

Texas


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.
  
  
• Texas Education Agency
  The Texas Education Agency published final versions of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in September 1997. Organized into two "clusters," the TEKS contain basic understandings, knowledge and skills expectations, and performance descriptions for each content area. TEKS can be read on screen, searched, or downloaded as Word 6 files. There is a Q&A section of the site that tries to deal with some of the criticisms that have been raised about standards and frameworks throughout the country. The site also offers a very useful TEKS Search page you can use to find any instance of any word or phrase in any TEKS documents. TEKS documets are available for the arts, English language arts, foreign language, health, home economics, math, occupational education (including separate files on agricultural science, business education, career orientation, health science technology, marketing education, trade and industrial education), physical education, science, social studies, Spanish and ESL, and technology. (Thanks to Therese Sarah, formerly of McREL, for some of this update.)
  
  

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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).
  
  
• Education Week
  The November 12 issue of Education Week and the November/December 1997 issue of Teacher Magazine featured an article called Double Standards about conflict in Texas over the TEKS.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Health Science Technology Education
  The Health Science Technology Education program at Texas A&M; University developed the TEKS in that area. The HSTE site provides relevant course guides and links to some related Internet resources. Pages dealing with standards and frameworks are under development. (Thanks to Renee Krzypkowskiof HSTE for this information.)
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• South Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium
  The South Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium has a Technology Standards for Educators page containing links to state documents from Delaware, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
  
  
• Texas Alternative Document Drafters
  A Texas Alternative Document Draft has been written by a group of people who believe that the Texas English language arts standards have set off in the wrong direction. They argue that standards need to state explicitly what students and teachers are expected to know or do, to focus on content and not process, and to teach reading through a heavy emphasis on phonics. [Thanks to Donna Garner and Jimmy Kilpatrick for alerting me to this site.]
  
  
• Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts
  The Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts seeks to serve as a source of exemplary lessons and other instructional material for teachers to use when implementing the new TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). It has some resources currently on line and plans to incorporate a lot more - including work that teachers can submit through this site. (Thanks to [email protected] for this information.)
  
  
• Texas Mathematics TEKS Toolkit
  The Mathematics TEKS Toolkit provides easily accessible copies of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for math arranged both by grade level and content strand, a comparison of the TEKS and the Essential Elements, sample activities tied to specific parts of the TEKS, and an excellect selection of other resources. [My thanks to Phil Larson of Bob Jones University Press for link information.]
  
  
• Texas Social Studies Center for Educator Development
  The Social Studies Center for Educator Development (SSCED) has a well-designed and cross-referenced version of the Texas social studies TEKS, along with links to various resources in such areas of lesson plans, technology, and assessment. <(Thanks go to Sarah Bednarz, Department of Geography at Texas A&M; University, for site update information.)
  
  
• Texas State Library
  Texas has developed library standards through the Texas State Library rather than the Texas Education Agency. The School Library Standards for Texas (adopted on May 19, 2023 by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission) contain recommendations about what a library should look like, how it should be staffed, and the kind of resources it should offer. (Thanks to Jeanette Larson of the Library Development Division, Texas State Library for this information.)
  
  
• Texas Statewide Systemic Initiative
  The Texas Statewide Systemic Initiative offers newsletters, training information, and other imaterial designed to help teachers impelement the TEKS. The site also has links to TEKS toolkits in math and science that it is developing for the state. (Thanks go to Cathy Seeley, Director of Policy and Professional Development of the Texas SSI, for this information.)
  
  
• 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.)