Overcoming Challenges of Standards Alignment

Challenges to Reviewing the Alignment of a Material

In section one, above, we introduced the three Cs of a standard . In order to be aligned to a standard, a citation must address the content , context, and cognitive rigor of the standard. With practice, identifying the three Cs of the standards becomes relatively easy. The real challenge is determining whether a citation is aligned to the standard. Learning List reviewers have reviewed hundreds of thousands of citations for alignment to multiple states’ standards and national standards. Here are some alignment challenges our reviewers commonly encounter and strategies for overcoming them.

Content Challenges

Content Challenge #1 : The citation does not address all of the standard’s content. Many standards are written as compound and complex sentences. Such standards contain several nouns. For example:

Domain: Geometry

Cluster: Reason with shapes and their attributes

Standard : 3.G.1. Understand that shapes in different categories (e.g., rhombuses, rectangles, and others) may share attributes (e.g., having four sides), and that the shared attributes can define a larger category (e.g., quadrilaterals). Recognize rhombuses, rectangles, and squares as examples of quadrilaterals , and draw examples of quadrilaterals that do not belong to any of these subcategories . The content of this standard is: shapes in different categories may share attributes ; shapes’ shared attributes can define a larger category; rhombuses, rectangles, and squares are examples of quadrilaterals; examples of other quadrilaterals .