Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks for

Art and Music


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 July 19, 2000.] -> Return to the Standards index page.

By Organization


• 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.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL)
  The Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory is one of the best places to go on the net for educational resources, particularly in the area of standards and frameworks. (Thanks go to Therese Sarah, formerly of McREL, for keeping me updated.) Some of its best offerings include:
  
  • Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education, by John S. Kendall and Robert J. Marzano. It collates and annotates standards projects from throughout the country in each of 14 content areas.
  • Eight Questions You Should Ask Before Implementing Standards-Based Education at the Local Level, by Robert J. Marzano. It lays out options and makes helpful recommendations about everything from what standards schools should draw on (state, national, other) to methods of evaluation.
  • Designing a Sustainable Standards-based Assessment System, by Don Burger.
  • The Eisenhower High Plains Consortium for Mathematics and Science has a Summary of Analyzed State Curriculum Frameworks - an analysis of math and science frameworks from 33 states.
  
  
  
• National Arts Education Association
  The National Arts Education Association offers various documents for sale from its Publication List. These include Standards for Art Teacher Preparation, The National Visual Arts Standards, and Purposes, Principles, and Standards for School Art Programs.
  
  
• National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
  The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent organization working to develop professional standards for teachers. Its site currently offers a policy statement and five propositions that form the rationale for the creation of such standards, a desciption of the process used for standards development, and summaries of the standards already prepared (full text copies must be ordered from the board). Standards documents currently completed or in preparation include general ones for teachers of all ages and content-specific ones for English, math, science, social studies, the arts, vocational education, ESL, and special needs students. 
  
  
• National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
  The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education page on standards has links to several key documents. First is its 1997, Standards for Identifying and Supporting Quality Professional Development Schools, along with a second report that specifically relates to technology. Second, anticipated revisions in that document appear in an Adobe Acrobat file called May 2000 Revised Standards. Third are new standards for elementary education programs. Fourth is a set of draft standards for professional development schools. And fifth is a page of links to program guidelines for seventeen specific subject and professional areas, developed in conjunction with related professional organizations. These areas include computing technology education, early childhood education, educational communications, educational leadership, English language arts, elementary education, health education, mathematics education, middle level education, physical education, reading education, school library media specialist, school psychology, science education, social studies education, special education, and technology eduction. 
  
  
• National Dance Association
  In a section of its web site, called Publications and Resources, the National Dance Association has ordering information for the national standards for dance education and the opportunity-to-learn standards in dance education.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• ArtsEdge Curriculum Connection
  ArtsEdge (from the Kennedy Center) (the "National Arts and Education Information Network") maintains a Curriculum Design Resource page that offers the National Arts Standards, standards from more than a dozen states, and with links to such related resources as assessments and curriculum planning tools.
  
  

By State


• Alabama
  The Alabama Department of Education's course of study documents can be downloaded in rtf versions or as zipped files from its Classroom Improvement page. Documents include the mid-1990s courses, recent changes, and assessment information.
  
  
• Alaska
  Alaska does not require that its schools follow mandated standards but it does have voluntary standards in the areas of the arts, English/language arts, foreign language, health, math, science, social studies (broken out into geography, government and citizenship, and history), and technology. A Content Standards for Alaska Students page, prepared by the state's Department of Education, lists the areas and offers links to separate pages for each. These pages contain several relevant content standards and associated general performance indicators. The site also contains a draft of the state's library and information literacy standards.
  
  
• Alaska
  A draft of the state's Arts Framework was placed online in October 1996, containing an introduction dealing with the use of the frameworks and the curriculum development process, several draft standards and their relationship with national standards, and assessment guidelines. (Thanks to Therese Sarah, formerly of McREL, for this update.]
  
  
• Arizona
  The DOE's Arizona Standards site offers sections on standards for the arts, foreign language, health, language arts, math, physical education, science, technology, and workplace skills. A typical section contains a rationale and four to seven standards, along with performance objectives for various grade levels. Social studies was added shortly after its adoption in March 2000. Meanwhile, the technology standards are still in draft form. This standards site also has links to student guides, a writing rubric, and "Standards Cards" (Adobe Acrobat copies of standards for language arts, math, science, social studies, and the workplace) Finally, a Arizona Academic Standards, Functional Level for Students with Significant Disabilities document that tries to define basic functioning levels in different subject areas. [Thanks to Brian Hamilton of ACT, John Kendall of McREL, Julia Menkee of MediaSeek, John Kotcho of the Nautilus Elementary School, Karen Birgam Martin, and Dr. Peggy George, principal of the Orangewood Elementary School for these updates.]
  
  
• Arkansas
  The Arkansas Department of Education has a section of its site called Introduction to the Frameworks. This contains copies of standards documents for the arts, language arts (1999 revision), foreign language, health, math (1999 revision), physical education, science (1999 revision), and social studies. The older documents typically list 3 to 5 content strands for a subject areas with each of those having a dozen or so student learning expectations listed for grades K-4, 5 to 8, and 9 to 12. The more recent documents also contain sample curricular material.
  
  
• California
  The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing offers a wealth of information about teacher certification requirements and procedures. Its section on Standards for Educator Preparation and Competence includes links to teaching credential standards in general and to specific subject area and specialist standards. (Thanks to Bob Salley of CTC for this information.)
  
  
• California
  The California Department of Education offers a set of pages devoted to the Challenge Standards for Student Success. Available for all major subject areas, the documents (available as Adobe Acrobat files) contain draft grade level standards, examples of appropriate student work that meets the demands of the standards, and sample activities. The site also has links to departmental resources (including a listserv), a bibliography, and a listing of relevant Internet sites.
  
  
• California
  On its State Board of Education page, the California Department of Education has posted the November 23, 2022 draft edition of the state's K-12 Mathematics Framework. (The February 2, 2023 version of the California Mathematics Academic Content Standards remains on line as well). In October it posted a document containing a lengthy list of Language Arts Standards. It has also put up approved "Edits" for the social studies and science documents, along with pre-publication versions of both sets of standards. Meanwhile, the Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission web site has links to both the math framework and to a smattering of documents related to the draft reading/language arts, foreign language, arts, health, and history frameworks.
  
  
• California
  The California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse maintains an impressive and comprehensive databaseof more than 3700 instructional materials linked to state standards and curriculum frameworks. You can search the database by keyword, subject, platorm, or grade level - or dig down into the areas of ELA, math, science, or social studies and do a search on individual standards. The results generally lead you to highly rated software titles (the rating criteria are described on the web site). (Thanks to Laurie Swiryn of Cuesta Technologies for information about this link.)
  
  
• Colorado
  The Department of Education's K-12 Academic Standards page offers on line and Adobe Acrobat versions of standards documents in the areas of the arts (separate documents for music and the visual arts, both adopted in 1997), reading and writing (1995), foreign language (1997), math (1995), physical education (1997), science (1995), and social studies (separate documents for geography and history, both adopted in 1995; additional documents for civics and economics, both adopted in 1998). A typical html document contains a general introduction that offers a rationale for learning about the subject, followed by the standards themselves. Each standard has several subcategories which are, in turn, elaborated upon for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Meanwhile, the state's Information Literacy Guidelines for libraries and technology instruction are available elsewhere on the department's web site.
  
  
• Colorado
  In late 1998, the department published an online version of its Standards and Assessment Resource Bank. The resource bank contains articles, reports, assessments, lessons (including ones developed by area school districts), and other material relevant to the state's standards. A helpful mid-1999 addition is a newsletter about standards along with a growing body of instructional resources.
  
  
• Connecticut
  The Department of Education's BEST (Beginning Educator Support and Training Program) page contains links to the state's teacher standards in the areas of the arts, elementary education, English Language Arts, math, physical education, science, social studies, and special education. A typical document contains various brief statements that generally define standards in such areas as content knowledge, effective instruction, and assessment. The page also contains a list of standards for school leadership and separate links to standards for school principals. The state's Common Core of Learning and K-12 framework can be downloaded as Adobe Acrobat files from a separate BEST page. (Thanks to Julia Menkee of MediaSeek Technologies for information about this link.)
  
  
• DC
  The curriculum section of the District of Columbia Public Schools web site contains a brief statement about the city's Content Standards. It lists completed and pending work in different content areas.
  
  
• Delaware
  Reflecting the growing national emphasis on standards, the Delaware Department of Education's home page offers quite a bit of information about academic standards and student assessment. Want to know how a particular school did on its tests? Go to the online profiles and see for yourself how its students fared on the State Content Standards. Alterntively, you can visit the state student testing program Online Reports for easy and comprehensible access to disaggregated data. Meanwhile, a Professional and Curriculum Standards link takes you to standards, assessments, and sample activities (organized by grade and subject) for English language arts, math, science, and social studies (all published in 1995), the arts and foreign language (1997), and business (1998).
  
  
• Florida
  The Sunshine State Standards, approved by the State Board of Education on May 29, 1996, are available on the Florida Department of Education's web site in the areas of the arts (dance, music, theatre, visual arts), English/language arts, foreign language, health, math, physical education, science, and social studies. Standards for each area are divided into four grade level groupings (Pre-K to 2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12), with a web page devoted to each. A typical page contains major subject area topics with relevant standards and their subcategories elaborated upon underneath. This site also offers a page of questions and answers; a "curriculum planning tool" (downloadable in Mac and PC formats) that contains all the benchmarks for each of its standards and, on a separate page, related teacher developed learning activities; and a major section on the applied technology components of the state's curriculum and standards.
  
  
• Florida
  Florida Gulf Coast University School of Education has set up a SunshineStateStandards.net with links to the sunshine standards for language arts, science, social studies, math, foreign language, the arts, health, and physical education. Clicking on a link takes you to a page with that subject's standards along with clickable links to benchmarks for grades pre-K to 2, 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12. Some of the benchmarks have links to relevant lesson plans.
  
  
• Georgia
  The Deaprtment of Education, in collaboration with several other groups, has created a Quality Core Curriculum and Georgia Learning Connections web site that weaves the standards in the Quality Core Curriculum together with an extensive set of instructional resources. The site's centerpiece involves its powerful search capabilities. You can search by subject, grade level, and keyword and get results that include relevant standards along with links to some combination of lesson plans, web resources, and assessments. This latter set of resources appears extensive and is growing regularly. The QCC Standards (or portions thereof) for agriculture, fine arts, foreign language and ESL, guidance and counseling, health and physical education, information literacy, language arts, math, science, social studies, and technology and career education (draft) can also be viewed individually on their own separate pages. 
  
  
• Hawaii
  The Hawaii Department of Education's ,a href="http://www.hcps.k12.hi.us/">Content and Performance Standards site has Adobe Acrobat copies of the state's content standards and benchmarks for grades K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12 in the areas of career and life skills, education technology, fine arts, health, language arts, math, physical education, science, social studies, and world languages. Additionally, the department's Assessment Resource Center Hawai'i, or ARCH, contains a considerable body of resources - among which are several Adobe Acrobat files related to standards and assessments. (Thanks to Neil Pateman of the University of Hawaii for a link update.]
  
  
• Idaho
  The Idaho Department of Education released Draft II of its proposed exiting standards for high school students in October 1998 as a huge, 2+ meg Adobe Acrobat file. Additionally, an Exiting Standards Committee page provides links to a mission statement, a definition of "exiting standards," and several lists of meeting dates. The department's web site also has Scope and Sequence Guides for K-6 arts, health, language arts, math, physical education, science, and social studies as self-extracting Word Perfect documents. (Thanks to Thomas Jenkins of the Idaho Department of Education for the update.)
  
  
• Illinois
  The Illinois State Board of Education's Learning Standards site contains an introduction, background, questions and answers, standards tools (forms intended to help districts align local standards with those form the state), and 1997 versions of standards for ELA, math, science and technology, social science, physical education and health, fine arts, and foreign languages. Selecting one of the standards links leads to more refined topical choices which, in turn, lead to specific goals and performance outcomes statements. The standards can be searched, as a group, for specific words or phrases - though it appears that search rights are restricted in some, unspecified way.
  
  
• Indiana
  The Indiana Department of Education's section on Indiana Academic Standards offers a number of documents and instructrional resources. Major ones include:Indiana Academic Standards 1999 (Adobe Acrobat copies of grade level booklets for parents about ELA and math standards, specific high school math courses, and answers to sample math standards assessment questions); Science - Standards 2000 draft (background information, a review form for reader comments, and Adobe Acrobat copies of grade level guides); Math draft - Standards 2000 draft (Adobe Acrobat copies of grade level guides); and English/Language Arts - Adopted June 2000 (Adobe Acrobat copies of grade level guides).
  
  An additional resource, the Electronic Library, has links to other proficiency guides (generally course descriptions and content standards) for the Arts (published in 2000, separate drafts for visual arts and music); Business Technology Education (1999); Family and Consumer Sciences (1998); Foreign Languages (1999, draft); Health Education (1998); Physical Education (1998, draft); Social Studies Proficiency Guide (1997).(Thanks to Therese Sarah for this information.)
  
  
• Kansas
  The Kansas Department of Education's Assessments and Standards page offers standards documents for language arts, math, music, science, and social studies - along with assessments information and results of the 1999 state tests in math and reading. Each curriculum link leads to a dedicated page containing a copy of the current standards document (in Adobe Acrobat form) and a slight amount of supplementary material. Publication dates on the standards documents (as of February 2000) were June 1998 for reading and writing, March 1999 for math, August 1998 for music, Decenber 1999 for science, and July 1999 (5th draft) for social studies.
  
  
• Kentucky
  The education department's Core Content for Assessment site contains several documents each for reading, writing, math, science, social studies, arts and humanities, and vocational studies. These September 1999 "core content" documents contain descriptions of knowledge in each subject area that is so central to the state's vision of education that questions about that knowledge will be included on the state's tests. (In that sense, the core content represents a narrower vision of learning standards than is found in the state's frameworks. ) A second, "crosswalk" document, compares versions 1 and 3 of the core content. [Thanks to Greg Wiseman, of Foley Middle School in Berea, Kentucky, for letting me know this was on line.]
  
  
• Louisiana
  The Louisiana Department of Education's web site has links to many topics related to standards, from an extensive secton on state assessment, to a section on Content Standards, to a relatively new site called Making Connections. The content standards page presents the standards for the arts, ELA, foreign language, math, science, and social studies along with lists of relevant benchmarks. A separate page contains brief descriptions of five "foundation skills." Each of the six core documents can be downloaded in MS Word format. Meanwhile, the Making Connections site significantly extends the scope of the standards page by adding searchable links to relevant lesson plans, Internet resources, software, and state assessments. The lessons appear carefully constructed, with special attention paid to linking them to the standards, technology guideline, and interdisciplinary connections. (Thanks to Richard D. Harris for information about this link.)
  
  
• Maine
  The Maine Department of Education has published final versions of the State of Maine Learning Results. These are separate text and MS Word documents containing the May 1997 versions of the Learning Results in the areas of career preparation, English language arts, health and physical education, math, modern and classical languages, science and technology, social studies, and visual and performing arts. A typical document breaks a subject area down into different categories and lists various student expectations, by grade level, for each. Some documents also have supplementary material included. A separate Learning Results Team page contains information about and links to related planning, implementation, and assessment resources.
  
  
• Massachusetts
  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.
  
  
• Michigan
  Michigan originally approved a set of Core Curriculum Content Standards in August, 1994 containing content standards and performance benchmarks. During the 1995-96 legislative session, the legislature amended the school code, removing the mandate the districts use the state's standards and replacing it with a requirement that each district implement their own - which could be those from the state. In May 1996, the Michigan Department of Education issued a set of Questions and Answers for the Revised School Code dealing with the many changes coming from the legislature.

  The Michigan Department of Education Curriculum Development Program has the original Model Content Standards for Curriculum in the areas of language arts, math, occupational education, science, social studies, and technology. Each link takes you to a page listing the relevant standards, with each standard having a link to a slightly more elaborate version, broken down by general grade level. The bottom of the page also has links to a vision statement in each curricular area as well as to sample assessment questions. A related site maintained by the Curriculum Development Unit also has links to the frameworks as well as to content specific and assessment resources in most subject areas. Meanwhile, Draft documents in the areas of Arts Education, Career and Employability Skills, English Language Arts, Health Education, Life Management Education, Mathematics, Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Technology, and World Languages are linked to the department's gopher site. A typical document contains an overview, the standards (with brief sample performance tasks or student expectations for early elementary, later elementary, middle school, and high school years), and cross-references to documents from other disciplines. (The CoreCurriculum Content Standards can also be downloaded as a single, 547k file.) 
  
  

• Minnesota
  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).
  
  
• Minnesota
  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.
  
  
• Mississippi
  The Department of Education has a site with brief descriptions of curriculum frameworks in nine subject areas. Some of these descriptions offer links to more extensive documents that offer comprehensive information about the frameworks, their rationales, benchmarks, and specific instructional and resource recommendations; several lead to little more than course descriptions. Individual documents (and their dates of publication or update) are available for the arts (1996), business (1997), health (1996), language arts (1996), math (1994), physical education (no date listed), science (1996), social studies (1998), and technology (1997). The Department of Education has also published the state's 1995 Mississippi Standards for School Leaders. [My thanks to Julia Menkee of MediaSeek Technologies for update information for this site.]
  
  
• Mississippi
  The Department of Education has published the state's 1995 Mississippi Standards for School Leaders.
  
  
• MississippiWashington
  The Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction's web site has relevant sections scattered throughout its pages. AnEssential Academic Learning Requirements link provides access to documents that list standards and benchmarks for the arts, ELA, health, math, science, and social studies. The OSPI Order Form for Publications page allows you to purchase or download several math and reading frameworks documents, intended to help teachers prepare their instruction. Meanwhile, seven technology learning goals appear on a Learning Goals (the state's K-12 Technology Plan is also on line). (Thanks to Celine McKeon of CLM and Company for a link update.)
  
  
• Missouri
  The Show-Me Standards contain links to "Performance Standards" and "Knowledge Standards." The former are four goals that deal with gathering and using information, communicating effectively, solving problems, and acting as responsible members of society. The latter link to specific subject area standards pages that briefly list general goals in the areas of communications arts, fine arts, health and physical education, math, science, and social studies. (Thanks to Lisa Walters of DESE for this link update.) A Frameworks page has links to Adobe Acrobat copies of the major strands of state frameworks for those content areas. In addition, an Assessment page has information about state testing procedures in general and links to assessments in major content areas. (Thanks to Elaine Talbert for these last two link updates.)
  
  
• Nebraska
  The Nebraska Department of Education offers links to an Academic Standards page along with separate links to Adobe Acrobat versions of a Final Report regarding the alignment of certain national tests to the state's content standards. The standards page provides access to web and Adobe Acrobat versions of state standards for reading and writing, math, science, and social studies. A typical document presents an overview, a description of main themes, and sets of standards grouped by grade level (K-1, 2-4, 5-8, and 9-12). The standards page also has links to a definition and rationale statement from the State Board (called "A Special Message About Standards) and to an "Overview of Teacher/Administrator Education and Certification" that links standards and certification together. Finally, various curriculum departments maintain very helpful web sites that contain copies of their standards and frameworks, along with various curriculum resources. These sites include one for Reading and Writing Curriculum and Instruction (Thanks to [email protected] for information about this link), Business Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, Foreign Language, Health, Industrial Technology, Mathematics, Social Studies, Education Technology (which includes separate competencies in technology for educators and students), and the Visual and Performing Arts.
  
  
• Nevada
  The Nevada State Education Department's New Academic Standards page describes the state's standards development process and has links to 1998 documents for ELA, math, and science. The documents contain various content standards along with grids that list performance requirements for different grade levels. Copies of the January 2000 content and performance standards documents for the arts, foreign language, health, physical education, social studies, and technology are also on line. All document are available in both html and MS Word versions. An Adobe Acrobat copy of the State Plan to Implement Technology to Support Student Learning appears on the state's Commission on Educational Technology page.)
  
  
• New Jersey
  The Education Department has a Standards and Assessment page containing links to the New Jersey core curriculum content standards and the state frameworks, support resources called FANS ("Families Achieving the New Standards"), and various assessment reports and explanatory documents. The core curriculum content standards link leads to a rationale and list of standards in various subject areas, with most standards having a page that briefly describes the standard and offers progress indicators for grades 4, 8, and 12. The frameworks link leads to the final frameworks for language arts, math, science, visual and performing arts, and world languages - and to a draft framework for social studies. (Thanks to Grant Wiggins of the Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure for a link update.)
  
  
• New Mexico
  The Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations (CESDP) at New Mexico Highlands University maintains an excellent New Mexico Standards site. Redesigned in 1999, its subject area pages typicallly contain links to standards and benchmarks, sample lessons, relevant Internet resources, and performance standards. In most cases you can view all of these items on line and download an Adobe Acrobat version of the standards. Also on line is an informative Standards Primer with information about state standards, curriculum, and assessment.
  
  
• New York
  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.
  
  
• New York
  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
  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
  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.
  
  
  
• North Carolina
  The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's innovative Curriculum Matrix page shows a list of subjects reading down and various grade levels reading across. Clicking on any intersection takes you to a page with standards and frameworks for that subject and grade - along with links to online resources and relevant publications (the latter are for sale by the department). The department also has pages devoted to assessment and to its new (in 1999) Accountability Standards - statements of what students must do in order to gain promotion from grades 3, 5, 8, and 12.
  
  
• North Dakota
  The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction's Challenging State Standards page has links to Adobe Acrobat versions of content standards for ELA, math, science, social studies and health; to performance standards for ELA; and to assessment information for all areas. Notes on the page indicate that the Year 2000 will bring forth documents for the Arts and physical education. Documents for world languages and technology will come the following year. A typical document contains benchmarks, content knowledge expectations, and sample activites for a variety of standards for grades K-5, 5-8, and 9-12. [My thanks to Todd E. Byrd of the Kaplan Companies for a link update for this site.]
  
  
• Ohio
  The Department of Education's Ohio Standards page now contains only one link - to an April 1998 document that basically says that the implemenation of state standards is at a political standstill. 
  
  
• Oklahoma
  The Oklahoma State Department of Education has a page about the state's Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) documents. First used in the 1993-94 school years, these contain statements of what students should know or be able to describe, explain, or perform at a particular grade level. Local districts are expected to construct their own curricula from these statements. The SDE web site has separate Adobe Acrobat files for each of the "core" curriculum subjects of language arts, math, science, social studies, the arts, and languages and for the "integrated" curriculum subjects of health and safety, information literacy, instructional technology, and technology education. PASS is reviewed every three years and was most recently revised in July 1999. [My thanks to Billy King of the Oklahoma Department of Vocational-Technical Education for an update on this site.]
  
  
• Oregon
  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
  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
  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.
  
  
• Oregon
  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.)
  
  
• Pennsylvania
  The Pennsylvania Department of Education offers a Proposed Academic Standards page that provides access to background information about state standards, a comparison of the proposed standards to the ill-fated OBE proposal of several years ago, links to Adobe Acrobat versions of the final standards for language arts and math, and Adobe Acrobat copies of the proposed standards for the environment and ecology, science and technology, economics, and civics and government. Standards in the areas of health, the arts, family and consumer science, career education, world languages, and several of the social studies are apparently still under review and do not appear on the department's web site. Also worth noting, the department has put online the contents of the PSSA Classroom Connections CD that it has been using to train teachers in strategies for aligning instruction with the commonwealth's new standards for writing, reading, and math.
  
  
• South Carolina
  The South Carolina Curriculum page has links to documents for foreign language (approved January 1999), health and safety education (November 1999 draft), math, reading/ELA, science (approved January 2000), social studies (December 1999 draft), and the visual and performing arts (January 1999 draft). All documents are quite extensive and frequently offer instructional and assessment information and resources. In addition, the state has published curriculum frameworks for foreign language and physical education. The field review draft version of the physical education framework contains a link to the pre-K to grade 12 standards. Technology standards appear as elements in the documents for the major subject areas. In addition, the state's October 1998 technology plan, called Connecting Learners has a major section on standards and the key role technology plays in developing information literacy.
  
  
• Tennessee
  The Tennessee Department of Education has a page of Curriculum Frameworks for the major subject areas. Each area is divided into grade groupings (K-2. 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and K-12). A click on the link within a grouping takes you to a framework page that lists the relevant standards and associated general expectations for students. High school listings are more complex than those for earlier grades and tend to look like course descriptions. (Thanks to Pam Burish, 1995 Tennessee Teacher of the Year, for this update.)
  
  
• Texas
  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.)
  
  
• Utah
  The Utah Education Network has thestandards for the state's Core Curriculum on line. A Core Curriculum/Course Descriptions page has links to documents for major subject areas, with individual documents for grades K to 6 and documents for the secondary grades that are either grouped by grade or by topic. A typical document describes a course, lists core standards, and briefly describes student objectives that meet each standard. UEN also has a very strong set of links to Internet resources as well as to its own set of lesson plans (including a searchable Curriculum Database). A similar set of core curriculum resources is available from the Utah Department of Education's Curriculum and Instruction Homepage (some of which include links back to UEN's pages). Additional information in the areas of occupational, family and consumer sciences, and technology education appear on the Applied Technology Education page.(Thanks go to Ginny Gale from the UtahLink/Utah Education Network, June Matheson from the Utah State Office of Education, and Virgil Jacobsen from the Alpine School District in American Fork, Utah for UEN updates.)
  
  
• Vermont
  Vermont standards are organized into the seven topical areas of Communications (reading, writing, listening, expression, and information technology); Reasoning and Problem Solving; Personal Development (generally health and physical education); Civic/Social Responsibility; Arts, Language, and Literature (including foreign language); History and Social Sciences; and Science, Mathematics, and Technology. The Vermont State Education Department has a Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities page that has links to all of the state's frameworks - individually (as html pages) or as a group (in an Adobe Acrobat file). Each framework lists pre-K to grade 12 standards and, in most cases, some briefly-stated general ways of knowing when a student has met those standard at different levels (generally, but not always, pre-K to grade 4, grades 5 to 8, and grades 9 to 12). The Flood Brook Union School has its own copies of the frameworks online on its VeeOne page. So does the Addison Central Supervisory Union. (Thanks to Gregg Martin of the Addison Central Supervisory Union for this information about these two school sites.)
  
  
• West Virginia
  The West Virginia Department of Education's Instructional Goals and Objectives page provides access to the state's courses of study for different grades. Individual grade level pages for grades K to 8 contain lists of skills and knowledge students should master in the areas of the arts, language arts, math, science, and social studies (with technology being woven into each of those areas). For grades 9 to 12, the focus is on subject area pages in the fields of the arts, language arts, driver education, foreign language, health, math, vocational education, physical education, science, and social studies. (Thanks go to Darby Shafer, Coordinator of the WVDE/IBM Reinventing Education Grant, for the update.)
  
  
• Wisconsin
  The Department of Public Instruction has published copies of the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards on its web site. The standards for language arts, math, science, and social studies can be viewed online. The others must be downloaded as Adobe Acrobat files. A typical document contains the relevant content standards, rationales, specific performance standards for grades 4, 8, and 12, and a sample proficiency standard. A separate page describes the state's Proficiency Standards along with proficiency category information for language arts, math, science, and social studies.
  
  

Other Countries


• Canada (Alberta)
  The Alberta Department of Learning/A>'s section on Student Programs contains links to outcomes and programs of study in most subject areas. Further information about standards and assessment appears on the Teaching page. Finally, an Information and Communication Technology contains outcomes, a curriculum scheduled for June 2000 implementation, and a significant body of resources related both the technological and the library media side of information.
  
  
• Canada (British Columbia)
  Curriculum and Resources BranchBritish Columbia Ministry of Education lists a variety of reports on curriculum and assessment on a Publications page. (Of particular interest are task reports for math and social studies, both released fairly recently). A separate Prescribed Learning Outcomes page contains outcomes links for most subject areas.
  
  
• Canada (Ontario)
  The Ontario Ministryof Education and Training maintains a Curriculum and Policy Documents page with links to recent versions of its grades 1-8 standards and curriculum guides for the arts (1998), health and physical education (1998), French (1998), science and technology (1998), language (1997), and mathematics (1997). Subject area documents contain introductory material and knowledge and skill expectations for each grade level. Online versions of the documents tend to be large (200-400 K) and take a while to load onto a computer screen. You can download Adobe Acrobat versions by clicking on a link at the top of each subject area page. (Thanks to Bill Grobe for this information)