The Texas Adult Education Content Standards & Benchmarks

Texas LEARNS Q & A:
Standards Implementation and State Policy

QUESTION: Will the Texas Adult Education Content Standards and Benchmarks for ABE/ASE and ESL Learners become mandatory?

ANSWER: The short answer is, not in the near future. In the longer term, many factors will affect the answer to this question.

• Many programs around the state are now implementing the standards in their programs, and others plan to try them out at limited sites or among certain populations. Texas LEARNS will need feedback from these programs as to how it’s working. If programs really see a benefit in standards implementation and there comes to be a groundswell of local program support for making the standards mandatory across the WIA-funded programs, it’s more likely to happen.
• Directions in national policy and accountability requirements may or may not influence state policy in the direction of making the standards uniform and required across the state.
• A statewide requirement such as standards implementation would have to be written into grant requirements. Until WIA is reauthorized, it’s unlikely that a major new requirement such as this would be implemented. At that point, grants will be competitive and a number of changes in grant requirements may occur along with changes in federal policy that could come with reauthorization.
• Texas is participating in a special project initiative called Standards-in-Action (SIA). The application to participate in the project was competitive and Texas LEARNS feels honored to have been chosen to participate. The SIA team has representation from two content standards writing team members and one local program director. Assisting states with “implementation” and “local program buy-in” of recently developed content standards is the objective of the project. Texas LEARNS will seek federal guidance (through this project) in answering this question.

QUESTION: Would some programs benefit more from standards implementation than other programs?

ANSWER: Yes. If a program is already performing well, standards implementation may not be an urgent need. However, for a program that is having performance problems, a performance improvement plan may well include implementing the Texas Adult Education Content Standards and Benchmarks for ABE/ASE and ESL Learners.

QUESTION: If standards are ever required statewide, or if a particular program has implemented standards as part of a local program improvement plan, how would a program document that they are using the standards in instruction?

ANSWER: The “paper trail” Texas LEARNS would look for monitoring a program might include students’ individual portfolios that document their progress on benchmarks, such as work samples or quizzes. (That same kind of student portfolio evidence of progress on the benchmarks could also be used as support for a local program decision to post-test a particular student before the standard expectation of 60 hours of instruction have taken place.) Teacher lesson plans could document that instructional planning is accounting for the standards. In addition to specific standards-related training events as they are documented in TEAMS, local programs’ professional development plans and teacher preservice and inservice agendas could also indicate that instructional staff is being trained on standards implementation. Records of teacher evaluation including classroom observation could also document standards mplementation.