Educational Standards and
Curriculum Frameworks for

Reasoning and Thinking


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.

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.)
  
  
• 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.
  
  
  

By State


• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.)
  
  
• 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 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.)
  
  
• 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. 
  
  
• 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.)
  
  

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