Standards

What is a standard?

Simply put, a standard is an idea used as a measure or model in comparative evaluations. Standards in education measure student competency. They demonstrate what students are expected to learn in each subject and at each grade level.  For many years, there has been a national movement toward consistently using standards, and grading students based on their mastery of a subject accordingly. Nearly every state has adopted the use of english language arts and mathematic standards in the form of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). These, as well as other collections of standards, are being used throughout the domain of education to provide students, parents and educators with constant expectations and systematic grading.

As an educator, you intend to prepare your students for college, careers, and even life; and mastery of each standard has proven to be a herald of your students' success. Classroom is, at its core, a standards-based gradebook which will assist you in managing student learning. With Classroom, you can design, administer, and grade a curriculum that identifies if your students have gained competency in a given standard. Classroom allows you to begin with the end in mind, that is, consider the concepts your students will have to master, those standards on which they will be judged, before you even begin to teach them.

Classroom comes pre-loaded with several standards banks (collections) used in Washington, including the CCSS, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the Essential Academic Learning Requirements and Grade Level Expectations (EALRs & GLEs).

However, Classroom allows districts to load their own standards banks as well, for instance, report card indicators, learning targets or competency categories only, art, music, and physical education requirements, and even non-academic standards, like respect and citizenship. You can even load standards according to school or grade level. If you are interested in loading other standards frameworks, contact support@schooldata.net.

To browse the standards banks in Classroom, select Standards from the directory tree on the left or from the Browse section.

Once you select a bank, you can filter it by subject or grade. For more information read the article Using Filters to Browse Content.

You can also hover over a standard to see its full description.

[Updated: 12/31/14, prh]