Education Content Standards

Content Standards Links

Understanding Content Standards

Australia
Northern Territory
NSW
Queensland
South Australia
Tasmania
Victoria
Western Australia

Canada
Alberta
British Columbia
Ontario
Pan-Canadian
Quebec

India
National Curriculum (Review)

New Zealand
National Curriculum

South Africa
National Curriculum Statements and Vocational

UK
National Curriculum

Standards, Testing & Accountability
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute publishes a number of articles about the adoption of standards.

Guide to Building Visual Arts Lessons
This Guide is a tool to help educators and curriculum developers create curricula that reflect a comprehensive approach to learning and teaching in and through art. From the Getty Museum.

Mathematics Teachers’ Familiarity With Standards and Their Instructional Practices: 1995 and 1999
This study shows that more teachers became familiar with state standards, and changed the way they taught math.

McREL Content Standards
If you are looking for a thorough, yet simple guide for what your children can understand within age ranges rather than grades, this is a good place to start.

Why Use Government Standards In Homeschooling?

by Ann Zeise

Yes, I know, I know. I don’t pay much attention to the state government “Content” sites. We like to do “child led” learning, as I know many of you do, too. So why have the government content standards linked on a homeschooling website? Why do homeschoolers bother to look at my page of links to these government websites?

• Some new homeschoolers are concerned about what a child should learn and when.
• The Content Standard sites help new homeschoolers understand that it is concepts to be learned that matter, not specific books read.
• Some are just worried about what order some concepts should be realistically introduced.
• Some families plan to homeschool for brief amounts of time, while they are going through some transition, intending to go back to a school system in a few months.
• It is handy for those who must file a plan of some kind to use these “content” sites to pull from. Homeschoolers who must file an annual “curriculum” plan seem to think this means to list the books they’ll use. They can easily copy off one of these state plans and turn it in, whether or not they intend to follow it, it gives them something concrete.
• Some just need to file reports and need some “educationalese” to interpret what they’ve been doing to some bureaucrat.
• Some who still have children in public schools can take a look at these pages and learn just how poor their own schools are doing compared to their government’s own mandated plan, and may start to consider to homeschool as a result.
• Some may want to contrast the standards with their family standards for excellence.
• Many read the standards, and check off what their child already knows, realize that assigning a grade level to their children is absurd, and never look at the “Content” pages again!
• Writers of homeschooling essays may want to use the Content Standards for their research.
• Developers of educational material for homeschoolers may want to use the standards when creating their materials to ensure that the curriculum will be age-appropriate.
• I use the so-called “standards” to point out to people that if no two states or provinces in several countries can agree on what a child should learn and when, then they have a legal leg to stand on if they want to teach their child something different and not at grade level.”
• Curing Scope and Sequence Syndrome

Why am I homeschooling? I want to prepare my children to be competent and independent adults, fully capable of being a productive member of society. I want them to know what they believe, but especially why they believe it.” ~Joy

The “Content” page is here to use as you will. Call it a “crutch,” if you will, for newbies until they learn the real joy of “free range” homeschooling by trusting their children.