NYS Standards Review 2010

Guiding questions

Questions to address when reviewing various standards documents, from Arnold Serotsky

• What are they based on?
• Who wrote/developed them?
• What was theprocess?
• How are they organized?
• How interdisciplinary are they (STEM)?
• How challenging are they (cognitive levels)?
• Do they support hands-on? Inquiry? Problem Based?
• Do they inlude scinece skills? History? Career stuff?
• Are they free from biases (ethnic, gender, racial, geographic)
• What is there format? (outcome/objectiveformat)
• Are they measurable? Do they include assessment specifics?
• Do they include implementationspecifics?
• Do they include Professional Development specifics?

More questions from Jennifer Baxter

• How clearly written and "user friendly" is it? Is it easily understood by anyone (i.e. any classroom teacher)?
• Is it written in a developmentally appropriate manner? (primary vs. upper elementary)

Looking at other states

This from Jennifer Baxter on test results from other states

Looking at states' rankings from the NAEP tests in 2000 and 2005. Not the most current data, but interesting nonetheless. Nearby states that scored in the top 25% were Vermont and Massachusetts. Virginia also consistently scored high. See chapter 8 of the Science and Engineering Indicators: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics