Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Keyword: Curriculum and Instruction

Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge

This document provides sets of clearly articulated guidelines that address issues of concern in the documentation, representation, and utilization of traditional cultural knowledge as they relate to the roles of various participants, including Elders, authors, curriculum developers, classroom teachers, publishers, and researchers. Special attention is given to the educational implications for the integration of indigenous […]

Implementing English Language Arts Common Core State Standards: Close Reading of Text

The Alliance for Excellent Education held a webinar moderated by Bob Wise, president of the Alliance and former governor of West Virginia. Sheila Brown and Lee Kappes, of the Aspen Institute, discussed the use of close reading as a key instructional approach for building students’ abilities to assess, evaluate, and synthesize information from text. Practitioner-leader […]

Models and Modeling: An Introduction

This paper describes how modeling works in concert with all the other science practices in the classroom to promote students’ reasoning and understanding of core science ideas. Modeling usually works in tandem with another practice explanation. These two practices are at the heart of disciplinary work.

Science Offers New Tools for Educators and Students

This resource is an article written for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) online newsletter. Science in the Classroom (SiTC) is an initiative for higher-education science educators, launched in October 2013 with support from the National Science Foundation, designed to help demystify how scientists build a basis for understanding the world. The […]

Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality

Article abstract: “Recent years have seen the convergence of two major policy streams in U.S. K-12 education: standards/accountability and teacher quality reforms. Work in these areas has led to the creation of multiple measures of teacher quality, including measures of their instructional alignment to standards/assessments, observational and student survey measures of pedagogical quality, and measures […]

Dual Language Learners: Effective Instruction in Early Childhood

From the abstract: “Preschool teachers can best educate youngsters learning their home language and English by using children’s primary language where possible, adopting effective practices for building English language skills, and involving families in supporting children’s learning.”