Background
State Content Standards
State Frameworks
State Standards and Frameworks and the Exit Exam
NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), also know as the Nation’s Report Card, is an organization that tracks and compares academic testing on a national basis. There has been much publicity over the last decade as to how poorly California school children have been doing on language arts and math NAEP testing compared to children in other states.
For example, on the 1996 math portion of NAEP,
California fourth
grade children
tested at the very bottom, at the same level as Louisiana, and
slightly higher than Mississippi. In 2000 NAEP math testing, California children
also tested at the bottom, on par with New Mexico, and only higher than
Mississippi. (Link here to
NAEP math and reading results for the year 2000: 2000
math, 2000
reading).
The poor academic performance of California public school children hits every socio-economic group. Rand Corporation researchers compared California children in similar type families at different socio-economic levels to their similar family peers in other states, and they found that even at higher socio-economic levels, California children did not test as academically well as their peers from other states. Click here for the Rand Corporation report.
NAEP report cards that put California at the bottom of the barrel for academic testing received much publicity at the same time as outcries in the press about United States TIMSS results. TIMSS, an acronym for Third International Mathematics and Science Study, is an organization that does international math and science testing. There has been much publicity about United States school children doing very poorly compared to children in other industrialized countries. You can read about TIMSS and the results of its international testing at its website.
So during the mid-1990s, Californians were learning that their state was at the bottom of the bottom, academically. The U.S. was at the bottom of math and science testing compared to other industrialized nations, and California was at the bottom of U.S. academic testing.
At about the same time, professors and teachers at the state’s universities and colleges noticed a decline in the academic abilities of incoming freshmen. As an example, here’s a chart showing a significant increase in entering freshmen needing to take remedial math in the California State University System:
Also during the mid-1990s groups of parents and many in the media were questioning the reading and math programs that were used in some California schools. The subject of "dumbing down" the curriculum was not limited to California. It was much in the media, especially with books like Charles Sykes’ Dumbing Down Our Kids (1996) becoming part of the national conversation.
A controversy arose, especially in the media, concerning curriculum issues. In language arts it has been summed up by the media as "whole language v. phonics." In math it has been called "fuzzy v. direct instruction or ‘drill and kill’." None of these descriptors are particularly illuminating, but the gist of the language arts controversy is that in some schools children were getting explicit instruction in phonics, phonemic awareness and decoding, and in other schools, children were being taught without explicit phonics instruction, phonemic awareness and decoding. In mathematics, the controversy was analogous.
In the midst of these controversies and test results, a group of concerned citizens (including State Board of Education members, politicians in the executive and legislative branches, state college and university professors, and other educators) became very involved in what was going on in math and language arts education. As a result of their involvement and commitment, the direction of K-12 education on the state level drastically changed.
Another Controversy
During the mid 1990s when the changes that led to the current state educational scheme began, there was a controversy over WHAT was taught in the state classrooms in both language arts and math and HOW it was taught.
What one gets in the classroom is a marriage of content and instructional strategy. Even though content and instructional strategy walk hand-in-hand, they are actually two distinct things.
In the chart above, one side says "college prep, AP, etc." This stands for a really rigorous academic program. The other side says "language arts/math for all." This stands for an academic program that every child in the school could master, and it has less required subject matter content to master than the college prep program on the other end of the spectrum.
One can imagine a course of study at either end of the spectrum, or one somewhere in between. These words and the dotted lines between them are supposed to represent "content"----the subject matter content of classes----the material that is learned by the student.
As stated above, academic content is distinguished from instructional strategy. In the chart above, one can see that "constructivist" is on one side and "direct teaching" on the other. These two words have to do with how teaching and learning takes place in the classroom.
In summary, "direct teaching" refers to teaching that is done by the teacher directly to the student. In its extreme, it assumes that children are tabula rasa (a blank slate), and that the teacher is filling a blank slate (a child) with knowledge. On the other side is "constructivism." Constructivist teaching strategies, at their extreme, assume that children can construct the knowledge that they need by discovery activities----the teacher is an observer or facilitator.
CONTROVERSY OVER TEACHING METHODS
Without getting into the merits of either approach, loud complaints were made within California communities during the mid-1990s that California schools had followed a national trend towards "watering down" the curriculum and using extreme constructivist teaching programs for both math and reading----and that the content and teaching strategy employed in these programs were responsible for academic decline. Those on the defensive responded, complaining that the complainers wanted to return to "drill and kill." Without delving any deeper into this acrimonious history, let's turn to December 1997 when the California State Board of Education promulgated new Content Standards for Math and Language Arts.
DECEMBER 1997 - MATH AND LANGUAGE ARTS STANDARDS
New Content Standards in Math and Language Arts were promulgated in December 1997. The California High School Exit Exam aligns to these Math and Language Arts Content Standards. The most difficult questions in the math portion of the Exam align to Eighth Grade Math Content Standards, and the most difficult questions on the English/Language Arts portion align to Tenth Grade Standards.
Link to the current California Math Standards.
Link to the current California Language Arts Standards.
[We are not going into a detailed review or history of the Language Arts or Math Content Standards here. Last year the Education Committee gave a presentation on the History of the Math Standards that is more complete. If you are interested in learning more about the history of the California Math Standards, please link here to the website that was created following the December 2000 presentation.]
What was significant about the 1997 California Math and Language Arts Content Standards is that they avoided the entire instructional strategy debate described above. The Content Standards describe only what subject matter content a child should be taught for a particular grade level and in a particular subject. The Content Standards do not describe how the subject should be taught.
However, a new controversy arose because the new Content Standards, especially the math standards, were considered extremely difficult. The most significant and most talked about change was the requirement that Algebra 1 be taught in the eighth grade.
Before the advent of the 1997 California Content Standards, many school districts did not require that students take Algebra 1 in order to receive a high school diploma. Since Algebra is universally considered to be a gatekeeper to college admission, high schools were de facto divided into college prep (students who took Algebra) and students who were not headed for college (students who did not take Algebra 1). By including Algebra 1 as an eighth grade math standard, the state was in essence telling school districts throughout the state that all children, no matter what their socio-economic or racial background, should be prepared to take Algebra 1. Prior to the state's inclusion of Algebra 1 as a state requirement, minority and low income students filled the ranks of those students who were NOT taking Algebra 1 and not heading off to college.
Ironically, the 1997 Content Standards in both Math and Language Arts were both criticized and applauded for being extremely rigorous. The rigor and academic nature of the Content Standards have been well documented. The Fordham Foundation examined state standards all over America and Japan, and found the California standards to be one of the highest. Reviews of the 1997 California Language Arts Standards have also found them to be extremely demanding and rigorous.
So, keep in mind as we move forward that in December 1997, California had done something revolutionary by including Algebra 1 in the eighth grade Math Content Standards. And it is extraordinary that Algebra 1, the college prep gatekeeping course, became a requirement for a public high school diploma. Prior to this inclusion of Algebra 1, neither the state nor most school districts made Algebra 1 a graduation requirement.
The December 1997 Language Arts Standards were revolutionary because they required a knowledge of phonics, phonemic awareness and decoding in early grade levels---thus ending the debate over whether children need explicit phonics instruction to learn to read. Although many schools and school districts (like Los Altos) had never abandoned explicit phonics instruction, others in the state had. These other districts would be encouraged to follow state standards by some of the other state measures described in this website, like monies for standards-aligned instructional materials and academic testing award monies.
There was a large public outcry when the Math and Language Arts Content Standards were first promulgated. Two of the reasons were that there seemed to be so many standards, and there was no mention of instructional strategy (teaching methods). In 1998, a year after the Content Standards were promulgated, the State Board of Education promulgated the Frameworks. The Frameworks suggest instructional strategy and identify key standards.
Please review the table of contents and a few pages from each, and you will have a greater understanding of each Framework.
The Mathematics Content Standards and Framework are published as one book that contains them both. Sometimes the Content Standards are referred to as the Frameworks and vice versa. Don’t be confused. "Standards" are content and "Frameworks" are teaching method and emphasis. The Content Standards simply enumerate the Standards for each grade level, and the Framework discusses the Standards, suggesting teaching strategy and identifying key standards.
STATE STANDARDS AND FRAMEWORKS AND THE EXIT EXAM
The Exit Exam aligns with state standards. It is actually a minimal competency exam, testing whether children have mastered the eighth grade math standards (Algebra 1) and the tenth grade English/Language Arts Standards. The Exit Exam is given for the first time in the tenth grade, thus encouraging some children who are not ready for Algebra 1 in the eighth grade to take a two year pre-Algebra course and take Algebra 1 in the ninth grade----right before they take the mandatory Exit Exam.
The state's position is that children will easily pass the exam if they have a standards-based education from kindergarten through the tenth grade and master the content described in the grade level standards.