PUB TYPE Guides Non-Classroom (055)

This guide describes a process that can be used or adapted by school districts to evaluate standards and guide practitioners in developing locally appropriate benchmarks. The guide is not a training manual that provides a step-by-step guide for undertaking this effort with a group of educators; instead, it suggests an approach and rationale for a review of standards and addresses techniques that might be used when part of the process is adapted for group work at the district level. A content standard is a summary description regarding what it is that students should know and be able to do within a particular discipline. A benchmark is a clear, specific description of knowledge or skill students should acquire by a particular point in their schooling. Performance standards specify how good is "good enough. " The guide discusses all of these ways of measurin