Colleagues,

Our Content Standards discussion continues through Friday.  I have  
some more questions (see below) for guests and subscribers. I wonder  
if there are some people with questions that they feel are "too  
basic" such as "How do I find out what my state's Content Standards  
are, or if my state even has them?"  No question about content  
standards is too basic. This is the place to ask it.

I want to hear from teachers and administrators who are (or are not)  
implementing content standards. Jon Engel (Thank you, Jon) spoke for  
teachers who might be skeptical. Perhaps there are some teachers who  
are skeptical that would be willing to speak for themselves now that  
Jon has broached this.

Here are three more questions that were sent to me, for our guests  
and others :

“Part-time teachers and planning time:  Teachers tell us that  
developing lesson plans from standards takes more time because they  
have to spend time learning the standards, aligning their activities  
to those standards, and filling out more paper work to demonstrate  
compliance.  What are states implementing standards doing to  
alleviate the pressure on already burdened adult education teachers  
(low wages, low job security, part-time, no benefits, little or no  
prep time, etc.)?”

“National standards: As a standards writer, I was struck by the wide  
diversity of approaches to adult education content standards across  
states (ranging from the very prescriptive and specific to the very  
broad and general).  While I understand we live in a federal system  
in which states can do whatever they deem best for their students,  
isn’t there a value in having a broader national discussion about  
what our adult students should be able to know and do in order to be  
successful members of society or, at a very minimum, shouldn’t we  
have a common understanding about how content standards are going to  
be used?”

“Assessment:  While states have been encouraged to develop widely  
different content standards, the majority continue to use a very  
limited set of approved standardized assessments that may or may not  
be very closely aligned to those standards.  If due to increasingly  
tight financial constraints states are generally unable to develop  
NRS-approved standardized tests that are aligned with their  
standards, is it reasonable to expect that their content standards  
will have an impact on instruction and student performance?  Do  
teachers really have an incentive to teach from those standards if  
what they are teaching is not going to show up in the TABE or BEST  
Plus or CASAS?  Are there plans to develop such tests?”

David J. Rosen
Special Topics Discussion Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net