Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks for

Library Media


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 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.)
  
  
• American Association of School Librarians
  The web site of the American Association of School Librarians, an affiliate of the American Library Association, has a section devoted to the K-12 Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning. In addition to the standards, the site contains some supporting documents, links to a PowerPoint presentation, and ordering information.
  
  
• Association of College and Research Libraries
  The Association of College and Research Libraries, an affiliate of the American Library Association, has released a December 1999 draft of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Intended for college use as they prepare their own students for lifelong learning, these standards build on and extend the K-12 standards developed jointly by the ALA and the AECT. The draft document lists five standards, with performance indicators and outcomes for each.
  
  
• Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
  In April 1999, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board released Being Fluent with Information Technology. Its authors say it describes "the knowledge and understanding that individuals need to use today's information technology effectively and to adapt to and learn about tomorrow's information technology" - in other words, adult standards for information technology. The Board is a component of the National Research Council which is, itself, a part of The National Academies.
  
  
• 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 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. 
  
  

By State


• 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.
  
  
• 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 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.
  
  
• 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. 
  
  
• Massachusetts
  The Professional Standards Committee of the Massachusetts School Library Media Association has prepared a Standards for School Library Media Centers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, now available on the DOE page. The document contains recommendations about library media center staffing levels, collections, and budgets; various library media standards; and sample policies on such of topics as student use of the Internet. (Thanks to Margaret Hallisey, 1996-97 President of the MSLMA for alerting me to this document.)
  
  
• 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).
  
  
• Montana
  The Montana Office of Public Instruction offers an Education Standards link that leads to Adobe Acrobat copies of current and draft standards in several fields. As of November 1999, these included health, literature, media literacy, science, speaking, technology, world languages, and writing. A typical document contains content and performance standards, a rationale for each, and benchmarks for the ends of grades 4, 8, and 12. The OPI has also put an assessment handbook on line. A separate curriculum link leads to curriculum guides for library and information skills, social studies, science, health, and communications arts.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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 Eisenhower National Clearinghouse has placed the North Dakota Curriculum Frameworks Volume I: Language Arts, Library Media, Mathematics, Science, Social studies (1993) on line. These links take you to an introductory page. If you want to see the relevant framework, go to the bottom of the page and click on the table of contents button located there.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Texas
  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.)
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• Washington
  Prepared by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Washington Library Media Association in 1996, the state's Essential Skills for Information Literacy briefly defines six essential skills and benchmarks them at three different levels (roughly speaking, the fourth, seventh, and tenth grades). (Thanks to Janet Murray of the Milken Educator Virtual Workspace for this information.)
  
  
• 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.