Content Standards

Without content standards, students would just be learning a random string of information. With standards, information would be taught in succession and lessons would relate to each other. Standards are needed because they also help form a time table for the teacher. With standards, teachers would know how much time to spend on a lesson, and when to teach the lesson. Standards also allow teachers to focus on specific elements of math and science like counting by tens, multiplication and division, the planets, and the properties of water. With standards, all the students are being taught the same information, so they're getting the same education and learning the same things. The content standards are important since they insure that material is being taught in the classroom. Since there is content to be covered, the teacher knows that there is lots of work to be done and time will not be wasted. The one thing I don't like about content standards of today is that they focus on the volume of content instead of the mastery of the content.

Instructional standards are very important because they determine what a student will know and will have accomplished by the end of the lesson. Instructional standards allow for student goals and insure that they have learned certain things from the lesson. The instructional standards also serve as a guide for the teacher. If the students have not met the instructional standards, something is wrong with the lesson. The teacher will go back and reteach the lesson in a way that will help students meet the instructional standards. The teacher will not continue to the next activity or lesson until the standards are met. For math and science, instructional standards are important since there is normally more than one way to solve a problem or conduct an experiment. Students also need to know why they're doing what they're doing, they should not just be copying the teacher or going through a mechanical process. It's important to have these standards, but they're worthless if the teacher won't follow up on them. I didn't meet instructional math standards when I was young, and left unchecked I'm still a bad math student today.