Developing Educational Standards

Developing Educational Standards - Art and Music

Art and Music

Developing Educational Standards is maintained by Charles Hill and the Wappingers Central School District in New York. Your help with updates or corrections is greatly appreciated. [This page was last updated on December 20, 2001]

DES Index page
DES list of State Education Departments

By Organization | By State | By Country |

American Music Conference
The American Music Conference has a copy of the National Music Standards on its Our Schools page.
ArtsEdge Curriculum Connection
The Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge maintains a Standards and Exemplars section that offers the National Arts Standards, links to resources related to state standards, and links to exemplary standards-focused school programs.
Council for Basic Education
The Council for Basic Education's has played a major role in reviewing, analyzing, and developing a number of standards-focused projects. Described in more detail on CBE's Policy, Standards, and Instruction site, these have included such current projects as math frameworks for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, studies of core subject area standards for Nevada, a review of the Sunshine State Standards in Florida, and the development of school district standards in Maryland and Ohio. Past projects have included partnerships with various foundations and publications; reviews of state standards for Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia; and school district reviews in California, Illinois Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. In addition, CBE has worked with ASCD to compile state standards in Standards for Excellence in Education and with the Johnson Foundation to sponsor several Wingspread conferences on standards, assessment, and instructional practice (the conference proceedings are on line in Adobe Acrobat format). Finally, the CBE site offers several documents that help explain what the standards movement is all about.
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. Some of its best offerings include:
- Content Knowledge - 3rd Edition, - a compilation of standards from a variety of state and national projects, searchable by subject, grade, and keyword. McREL also has a similar set of Career Standareds.
- The McREL Standards Consortium - a collaboration between McREL and close to 20 schools from throughout the country that are looking to focus instruction on standards.
- A variety of Content Standards guides and studies, most of which you can download as text or Adobe Acrobat files.
Music Achievement Council
The Music Achievement Council has a colorful two-page Adobe Acrobat version of the national music standards on its "Tips" page.
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 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 contains the following results (and the year last administered): the arts (1997), civics (1998), geography (1994; the 2001 results are being analyzed), math (2000), reading (2000), science (1996;the 2000 results are due in the fall of 2001), US history (1994; the 2001 results are being analyzed), and writing (1998).
National Association for Music Education
The < National Association for Music Education has a resources page that contains the nine must standards and links to more than half a dozen supporting documents or sites.
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent organization working to develop professional standards for teachers in 31 fields. 27 of which were finished by March 2001. The standards section of this site offers a rationale for the standards, a description of the development process, and links to Adobe Acrobat versions of all standards documents. These include one or more documents for art, career education, ESL, ELA, early and middle childhood educaiton, library media, music, PE, science, social studies, and world languages. Standards for guidance, health, and early/middle level language arts and middle level science are under development.
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's site on standards offers three key sets of documents. The first is NCATE's core standards, called "Professional Standards for the Accreditation of Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education" (May 2000). The second are program standards for seventeen specific subject and professional areas, developed in conjunction with related professional organizations (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). The third is the council's "Standards for Professional Development Schools" (released October 2001), where PDS embodies a collaboration between schools and teacher training institutions that provides a clinical setting for student teachers to learn their craft.
National Education Goals Panel
The National Education Goals Panel was set up to monitor progress towards achieving America's Education Goals. Using its Interactive Data Center, you can see how your state is doing, compare a state to the nation, or set up state-to-state comparisons. The site also has a Standards and Assessments publications page with free ordering instructions and download links for quite a few documents. In addition, you can sign up to receive weekly and monthly email updates of what the panel sees as progress toward achieving the national goals.
US Department of Defense Education Activity
The Department of Defense Education Activity has published curriculum standards for the arts, foreign language, health and PE, language arts, math, science, and social studies. Documents can be downloaded in both Adobe Acrobat and MS Word formats.
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. 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.

By State | By Organization | By Country |

Alabama
The Classroom Improvement Information portion of the Alabama Department of Education's site contains information about state standards within various assessment and course of study documents on the site. (Thanks go to Robert E. Keith, Web Developer for the Alabama Department of Education for a link correction.)
Alaska
The Standards portion of the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development's site contains content standards documents that are brief and do not address specific grade levels. It adopted its standards in the mid-1990s as �voluntary guidelines� for schools. In 1999 it adopted more specific performance standards for language arts and math. In 1994 the state created teacher standards. These were amended in 1997, the same year the state adopted standards for administrators.
Arizona
The Academic Standards and Accountability portion of the Arizona Department of Education's site contains content standards (adopted at various times between 1996 and 2000), AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) information and support material, and various test results. The Department�s home page has up-to-date information about what is happening with AIMS.
Arkansas
The Standards portion of the Arkansas Department of Education's site contains current frameworks that specify content standards for grades 4, 8, and 12. Online documents contain benchmarks and 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 Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources portion of this site contains frameworks, addenda, instructiThe Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources portion of the California Department of Education's site contains frameworks, addenda, instructional materials, and assessment information; links to related state sites - including the California State Board of Education [], which has copies for the standards documents for ELA, math, science, and social studies. See also "Standards-Based Reform in California" [] for updates, assessment information, and other resources.ased Reform in California" [] for updates, assessment information, and other resources.
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 Colorado K-12 Academic Standards portion of the Colorado Department of Education's site contains model content standards for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Performance expectations are available for about half the subject areas, as of mid-2001. Links to lesson plans appear on a Standards in Action page while links to test results appear on a Student Assessment page.
Connecticut
The Bureau of Curriculum and Instruction portion of the Connecticut Department of Education's site contains standards, frameworks, and some curricular material for the various subjects dealt with in Connecticut's Common Core of Learning (revised 1998) and for the professional knowledge and specialized instructional skills expected of educators by the state's Common Core of Teaching (1999). The department's site also offers Student Assessment information and reports.
Delaware
The DOE Professional and Curriculum Standards portion of the Delaware Department of Education's site contains frameworks, content standards, and sample activities (often searchable by grade) in most subject areas. The site also has links to standards for both teachers and administrators.
Florida
The Sunshine State Standards portion of the Florida Department of Education's site contains the standards in Adobe Acrobat format, along with links to course descriptions for grades 6 through high school and to downloadable "Curriculum Planning Tools" that contain both the standards and the course descriptions. Florida adopted its standards in 1996 in preK-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 configurations. It later added grade level expectations in the four core subject areas, intending to use those from grades 3-10 to drive upcoming state assessments in ELA and math (and, possibly later, science and social studies).
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 Georgia Learning Connection portion of the Georgia Department of Education's site contains features links to various ways of using the QCC (Quality Core Curriculum), including a searchable database of standards, web resources, and lesson plans. The most recent QCC revision took place in 2000 and appears to be ongoing.
Hawaii
The Standards-Based Reform in Hawaii portion of the Hawai'i Department of Education's site contains links to various state documents and sites, including "Hawaii Content and Performance Standards" and "HCPS Performance Indicators," both of which provide Adobe Acrobat documents.
Idaho
The Achievement Standards portion of the Idaho Department of Education's site contains standards documents and curriculum guides, including draft documents, to help local districts achieve a state mandate that students meet standards that are at least as rigorous as those set by the state.
Illinois
The Illinois Learning Standards portion of the Illinois State Board of Education's site contains background information on the 1997 standards, the standards themselves, performance indicators (http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ils/descriptors.htm), learning resources, discussion groups, assessment information, and more.
Indiana
The Indiana Standards portion of the Indiana Department of Education's site contains standards adopted in 2000 for the arts, ELA, math, science, and second languages. PE standards are in draft form. Social studies standards should appear 2001. Documents generally contain basic standards and some curricular suggestions.
Kansas
The Assessments and Standards portion of the Kansas State Department of Education's site contains links to content-specific standards (including both original documents and recent modifications), indicators, and assessment information (including sample problems).
Kentucky
The Division of Curriculum Development portion of the Kentucky Department of Education's site contains links to most state curriculum frameworks - along with course outlines, description of the "core content" in each subject area, and supplementary information about such topics as assessment and questionning techniques.
Louisiana
The Division of Student Standards and Assessments portion of the Louisiana Department of Education's site contains standards and benchmarks for the arts, language arts, second language, math, science, and social studies.
Maine
The State of Maine Learning Results portion of the Maine Department of Education's site contains links to state standards along with an online newsletter, a forum, and information about state assessments. Maine's school districts are expected to wrap their instructional programs around the 1996 standards defined by the Learning Results.
Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks portion of the Massachusetts Department of Education's site contains current frameworks and framework drafts (ELA and Science/Technology, as of Spring 2001), updates, archives, and supplements. The last of these include a social studies guide for preK-4 and a framework for character education.
Michigan
The Office of School Excellence portion of the Michigan Department of Education's site contains links to the Michigan Curriculum Framework and its content standards and benchmarks in various subject areas.
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
The Minnesota Electronic Curriculum Repository portion of the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning's site contains links to content standards, learning activities, rubrics, and assessments. A separate Graduation Standards page explains and illustrates the state's basic and comprehensive assessment programs.
Mississippi
The K12 Curriculum Framework portion of the Mississippi Department of Education's site contains grade level curriculum frameworks that includes competencies, benchmarks, instructional strategies, and assessment ideas. The science framework was updated in April 2001.
Missouri
The Curriculum Services portion of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's site contains the 1996 "Show-Me Standards" for fine arts, language arts, health and PE, math, science, and social studies (see, also, the original state plan); curriculum frameworks for these subjects; and links to library media standards. Business education performance standards appear on a resources page maintained by the Division of Vocational and Adult Education.
Montana
The Montana Content and Performance Standards portion of the Montana Office of Public Instruction's site contains standards in Adobe Acrobat format, benchmarked at the end of grades 4, 8, and 12.
Nevada
The New Academic Standards portion of the Nevada Department of Education's site contains grade level content and performance standards, developed between 1997 and 2000.
New Jersey
The Standards and Assessments portion of the New Jersey Department of Education's site contains the 1996 New Jersey "Core Curriculum Content Standards"; searchable state frameworks (most documents acquired through a search are in Adobe Acrobat format); assessment information and special education assessment accommodations.
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 Mexico
The NM Content Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards portion of the New Mexico State Department of Education's site contains standards and benchmarks for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12.
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 Academy for Teaching and Learning promotes the development of standards-based student "learning experiences" and the assessment of the plans that underly those experiences through a peer review process. This site has the basic NY standards and is building a searchable database that will link learning experiences with state standards.
New York
The Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary and Continuing Education portion of the New York State Education Department's site contains links to learning standards, frameworks, assessment samplers, and resource guides in the core subjects. Most documents are in Adobe Acrobat format. One of the most recent is a September 2001 Educational Framework for Interscholastic Athletic Programs. A second fall document seeks to provide an overview of the framework implementation process. Meanwhile, studies of what has worked and what still needs work regarding classroom implementation of the state's standards appear on a separateResearch and Evaluation page.
North Carolina
The North Carolina Standard Course of Study portion of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's site contains course goals and objectives, presented by grade level, along with links to background information and online resources.
North Dakota
The State Standards portion of the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction's site contains content standards for the arts, language arts, health and PE, math, science, and social studies. Second languag content standards should be published in 2001 while standards for media/technology literacy are expected in 2002. The site also has performance standards for half of these subjects and standards-based assessments for math (pending) and language arts.
Ohio
The Academic Content Standards portion of the Ohio Department of Education's site contains both older and newer information. In 1997, the state began identifying the "common expectations" in the arts, ELA, math, science, second language, and social studies. In 2000, the governor called for their review and transformation into standards. Drafts for math and ELA have been published. The process of creating drafts in the other areas (which now includes technology) is still under development.
Oklahoma
The Priority Academic Student Skills portion of the Oklahoma State Department of Education's site contains the 2000 revision of the state's curriculum aligned, where possible, with national standards. Documents are available as web pages or Adobe Acrobat files.
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 CIM Standards portion of the Oregon Department of Education's site contains inks to various standards documents, some of which are searchable (via the Teaching and Learning to Standards page) and most of which are in Adobe Acrobat format. Oregon recommends that high school students earn a Certificate of Mastery (CIM) to show they have met state standards in math, language arts, and science - and, in later years, in the arts, second language, social science, and physical education.
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
In 1999, Pennsylvania began a major revision to its academic standards. Proposed social studies, FACS, health and PE, arts and humanities, and science and technology standards can be downloaded from a Proposed Academic Standards site. The new, adopted ELA and math standards are incorporated into and can be downloaded from Chapter 4 of State Board of Education Regulations. Career Education and world languages standards appear to be under development.
Rhode Island
The Standards, Instruction, and Student Assessment portion of the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's site contains recommended content and performance standards for the Arts, ELA, FACS, health, math, and science.
South Carolina
standards and frameworks, assessment information, and resource links. Revised versions of the health, PE, science, and social studies standards were online in 2000. The revised math standards went online in January 2001. There is also a Condensed Version ... for Parents of the ELA and math standards.
South Dakota
The Content Standards portion of the South Dakota Department of Education and Cultural Affairs's site contains content standards, generally grouped by grade, for the arts, ELA, health, math, PE, science, second language, and social studies.
Tennessee
The Curriculum Frameworks portion of the Tennessee Department of Education's site contains standards and progress indicators, grouped by grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
Texas
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills portion of the Texas Education Agency's site contains TEKS for high school courses and for each grade from kindergarten through grade 5, for ELA, math, science, social studies, second language, health and PE, fine arts, various career education programs, FACS, and technology.
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.)
Utah
The Curriculum Educational Resources portion of the Utah State Office of Education's site contains core curriculum, including content standards and (in some cases) links to related lessons in the areas of the arts, second language, health and PE, educational technology, ELA, library media, math, science, social studies, FACS, and occupational educaiton.
Vermont
The Vermont's Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities portion of the Vermont Department of Education's site contains a searchable online database of standards in the areas of communication, reasoning and problem solving, personal development, civic and social responsibility, arts, ELA, social studies, math, science, and technology.
Virginia
The Standards of Learning portion of the Virginia Department of Education's site contains standards, sample curricula, resource guides and links for the arts, computer technology, driver education, ELA, health, math, PE, science, second language, social studies.
Washington
The Essential Academic Learning Requirements portion of the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction's site contains standards, benchmarked at grades 4, 7 and 10, in the fields of the arts, ELA, health and fitness, math, science, and social studies.
West Virginia
The Instructional goals and Objectives portion of the West Virginia Department of Education's site contains course expectations for kindergarten through the 8th grade in ELA, math, science, and social studies; for grades 5-12 second language; and for high school courses in ELA, math, health and PE, science, social studies, and the arts.
Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards portion of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's site contains web pages for the ELA, math, science, and social studies standards; links to Adobe Acrobat files for all others.
Wyoming
The State Standards portion of the Wyoming Department of Education's site contains content and performance standards, benchmarked to grades four, eight, and eleven, for ELA, health, math, PE, science, second language, and social studies; draft standards for career education and fine arts. Most are available only in Adobe Acrobat format.

By Country | By Organization | By State |

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)

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