Connecticut's Curriculum Standards Revision

The State Dept of Ed website has draft curriculum standards posted. If you are a Conn parent or educator, you might want to take a look at what they are doing. I haven't looked through these things carefully, but I want to get the links up here. The letter accompanying the draft standards invites feedback. I don't see why only educators should have fun with this, so please do take a look. The standards will be in draft form until December 2007.

Draft Connecticut Pre-K through 8 Math Standards

Draft Connecticut Pre-K through 8 English Language Standards

There is a Feed Back Form for both draft standards here.

The biggest change to the standards is the inclusion of "grade level expectations." These are fairly specific and are a big improvement over the old standards. For example, in 2nd grade, students should be able to order simple fractions, tell time to the 1/2 hour, and know the calendar months in order.

The standards are clear. They may not be very high, but they are at least clear.

But there are still too many standards. The mile wide inch deep criticism is even more apparent when you look at each of the tasks to be mastered along the way. Still too much pattern recognition, probability, and graphing in the earliest grades and not enough emphasis on automaticity with basic math facts and fluency with fractions, decimals, and percents in later elementary grades. It's there, but there's no focus and no sense of what is most critical. Because of the sheer number of standards and expectations, how is a teacher or school to wade through them all? If they give equal emphasis to everything, they will not master anything.

So a mixed bag, but a step in the right direction. If you have the time to look at these things, you might consider downloading the feedback form and e-mailing it in to the State Dept of Ed.

After all, how often does anybody in education ask for your input?