I have been with The Standards Company for only a month or so. At the
present moment I am getting familiar with the terminology of Oklahoma,
Nevada and the national (NCTM) standards.

When comparing the three standards, I noticed that the terminology is
different. An example from the Nevada and national standards is
’rounding’ (that is, 19 would be rounded to 20). Consider how rounding
is treated between the two. The national standards state that students
should learn to “understand the place-value structure of the base-ten
number system and be able to represent and compare whole numbers and
decimals”. However, the corresponding Nevada standard – “select and
round to the appropriate significant digit” – actually mentions the
term ’round’.

To align standards, we use software developed in-house called Ruby which
allows us to add our own key words to the search tool used to look up
standards. For example, I would add the key word “round” to the NCTM
standard so that future searches of the word “round” would generate that
particular standard. I would also be tempted to add the term “place
value” to the Nevada standard for much the same reason.

This raises an interesting issue that appears in student alignment work
in every discipline, although in different ways: If a particular activity
is not stated in the standards, is the overall activity standards-based?
Each situation is different and requires a close examination of the concepts
and skills needed to perform the work. In this example, the act of rounding
requires a knowledge of place value, so the standard describes a prerequisite
for performing the activity described in the student work. But does that make the
assignment grade-level, or above grade-level? These are tough questions
that we discuss continuously in preparation for any new state that the
company contracts to research student work. (We use a private discussion
board to carry on our conversations, but that is another blog entry.)

So learning the the terminology between the different standards is key.
Over the time that I have been with The Standards Company, I have
started to learn the terminology and where certain student assignments
would align to in each state. I foresee this being easier in time,
as I strengthen my knowledge of the standards.