Achieve+Review+Criteria

** 1. Rigor —** What is the intellectual demand of the standards? Rigor is the quintessential hallmark of exemplary standards. It is the measure of how cl osely a set of standards represents the content and cognitive demand necessary for students to succeed in credit-bearing college courses without remediation and in entry-level, quality, high-growth jobs. ** 2. Coherence **** — ** Do the standards convey a unified vision of the discipline, do they establish connections among the major areas of study, and do they show a meaningful progression of content across the grades? The way in which a state’s Standards are categorized and broken out into supporting strands should reflect a coherent structure of the discipline and/or reveal significant relationships among the strands and how the study of one complements the study of another**.** If Standards suggest a progression, the progression should be meaningful and appropriate across the grades/grade spans. ** 3. **** Focus — ** Have choices been made about what is most important for students to learn, and is the amount of content manageable? High quality standards establish priorities about the concepts and skills that should be acquired by graduation from high school. Choices should be based on the knowledge and skills essential for students to succeed in post-secondary education and at work. A sharpened focus also helps ensure that the cumulative knowledge and skills students are expected to learn is manageable. ** 4. **** Specificity — ** Are the standards specific enough to convey the level of performance expected of students? Quality standards are precise and provide sufficient detail to convey the level of performance expected without being overly prescriptive. Standards that maintain a relatively consistent level of precision (“grain size”) are easier to understand and use. Those that are overly broad or vague leave too much open to interpretation, increasing the likelihood that students will be held to different levels of performance, while atomistic standards encourage a checklist approach to teaching and learning that undermines students’ overall understanding of the discipline. **Also, standards that contain multiple expectations may be hard to translate into specific performances**. ** 5. **** Clarity/Accessibility — ** Are the standards clearly written and presented in an error-free, legible, easy-to-use format that is accessible to the general public? Clarity requires more than just plain and jargon-free prose that is free of errors. The Standards must also be communicated in language that can gain widespread acceptance, not only by post-secondary faculty, but also by employers, teachers, parents, school boards, legislators, and others who have a stake in schooling. A straightforward, functional format facilitates user access. ** 6. **** Measurability — ** Is each standard measurable, observable, or verifiable in some way? The Standards should make use of performance verbs that call for students to demonstrate knowledge and skills, and should avoid using those that refer to learning activities, such as examine, investigate, and explore, or to cognitive processes, such as appreciate.
 * Criteria and Definitions for Use in Reviewing Standards * **

* Adapted from the Criteria and Definitions used by Achieve to review the 2006 Florida Reading Language Arts Standards