The Texas Adult Education Content Standards & Benchmarks

Letter from the Guest Editor

Dear Readers,
I know many of you attended the Texas Adult Education Standards Project (TAESP) Conference in Austin this past June. It was at that conference that Texas’ new adult education standards and benchmarks were unveiled. Ken Appelt, TCALL’s Professional Development Specialist, returned from that conference inspired, engaged, motivated, and eager to help teachers and administrators get the standards and benchmarks fully implemented across the state. He also had a clear vision for how this edition of Literacy Links could serve as a guide and a resource. Therefore, I am pleased to announce Ken Appelt as the guest editor of this edition of Literacy Links. I am hoping that our future issues of Literacy Links will have guest editors that can help shape the articles, offer new perspectives, and directly involve others in the work of TCALL. While we have a few guest editors lined up for the upcoming issues, we are actively searching for more. If you are interested in being a future guest editor of a Literacy Links issue, please contact Peggy Sue Durbin (pdurbin@tamu.edu).

As hundreds of teachers, administrators, volunteers, and staff across the state become educated in Texas’ new standards and benchmarks, I hope that this issue will become a beloved resource.

As always happy reading,

Dr. Dominique T. Chlup
Director of TCALL & Principal Investigator on the Clearinghouse Project

The Literacy Links staff had already decided to dedicate the fall issue to the new Texas standards and benchmarks. As I rode home from the Austin conference, I wondered what we could put into Literacy Links that would help teachers and administrators effectively use standards and benchmarks in their classrooms and programs. I wanted Texas adult educators to have a resource to turn to when questions arose, one that would provide a deeper understanding of how the Texas standards and benchmarks were developed, in the voices of the practitioners who worked to write them.

Over the summer of 2007, nearly 3,000 teachers received the Implementation Guide and training on how to use standards and benchmarks to plan effective lessons for their classrooms. These teachers would need implementation support over the coming months. All of the authors in this issue share their insights, their wisdom, and their voices, drawing upon their personal experiences serving as members of the benchmark writing teams and as Standards Specialists. Thank you all for writing and sharing your experiences with the rest of Texas!

I begin this issue by delving into the terminology of standard-based education; I hope my article will serve as a resource to clear up any vocabulary difficulties. Dr. Lesley Tomaszewski, one of the project staff members who helped guide the TAESP from beginning to end, shares her insight into the history of the early phases of developing standards and benchmarks for Texas. Next, Beth Thompson, Even Start and Family Literacy Coordinator for Texas LEARNS, discusses the importance of the standards and benchmarks for Even Start and family literacy instructors.

To learn how well the new Texas standards and benchmarks support work readiness training, read the article by workplace education consultant Barbara Tondre. Then Eduardo Honold, director of the Far West GREAT Center, tells of Texas’ participation as one of six states in the federal standards implementation project known as Standards-in-Action. John Hodges was on the math writing team; his article is full of insights gleaned during the two rounds of field tests. Don’t miss Nancy Jordan’s “insider’s view” of serving on the writing team for the reading and writing benchmarks. Angela Johnson‘s article describes the importance of aligning the levels of the benchmarks to support student transition to post-secondary studies.

You will enjoy Nancy Dunlap’s witty story of serving as the skeptic of the math writing team. Of course one of the critical implementation areas is using standards and benchmarks to plan lessons. For help with lesson planning, read the good advice in Melanie Mayeaux’s article. Finally, Literacy Links features a Q & A with our state director, Joanie Rethlake, responding to the most frequent questions on implementation of the new standards and benchmarks.

From everyone at TCALL and the Texas Adult Education Standards Project, we wish you success.

Ken Appelt
TCALL Professional Development Specialist