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Michigan High School Content
Standards Approved
MIRS, April 11, 2006
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Following adoption of curriculum content standards and
expectations for kindergarten through eighth grade two years
ago, the state Board of Education today adopted high school
content standards and expectations in English, language arts and
math.
The board approved a draft version last November. Today's final
approval follows a review by educators, professional
organizations and community members.
The standards and expectations, designed to guide a "rigorous"
high school experience are a culmination of work by the
Department of Education's Office of School Improvement and the
Achieve, Inc. in an effort to align the expectations with
national standards and assessments.
The English Language Arts expectation portion contains four
"strands" dealing with writing, speaking and expressing; reading
listening and viewing; literature and culture; and language.
Each of the strands contains multiple standards.
The mathematics area also contains four “strands” - quantitative
literacy; algebra and functions; geometry and trigonometry; and
statistics and probability.
Dr. Yvonne Caamal CANUL, of the Department of Education's Office
of School Improvement, said a public rollout of the content
standards and expectations would begin later this month with
dissemination of all the content standards in August.
Dr. Joan Ferrini-MUNDY, of Michigan State University, who
chaired the mathematics work group, told board members the
"power of the document is not the paper but in conversations
that will be held at the local level."
Although the board adopted the content standards and
expectations today, Dr. Rebecca SIPE, of Eastern Michigan
University, who chaired the English and Language Arts work
group, said she hoped they were doing so with the expectation
that discussions over what the core standards and extended
standards are will continue.
Board member Elizabeth BAUER expressed concern over some of the
changes that were made from the draft to the final document.
"There is a lot of flutter that the creativity of teaching is
going away," Bauer said. "I don't want us to be a mirror of
national standards."
Board member John AUSTIN said everything that Achieve wanted
taken out wasn't thrown out. "This is a tremendous, tremendous
piece of work," Austin said. "We are going to raise the bar."
Board President Kathleen STRAUS said she was pleased the
document goes beyond standardization. "We shouldn't lose sight
that our creativity is the envy of the world, that we are going
beyond national standards tests."
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