Content Standards standardize what students are learning in a specific subject in a specific grade. My mentor is on her second year teaching Language Arts with a prescribed curriculum to meet content standards. She says it is necessary to make sure all the students in the grade are coming out with the same knowledge, regardless of the teacher (if there is more than one teacher for the content in the grade). She also said she likes it because it holds teachers accountable (to parents, administrators) instead of just doing their own thing whether or not it is keeping kids on track with what they should be learning. In order to measure whether content standards are being met, benchmarks are put in place, like stepping stones, a student has to be steady on the first stone before jumping to second and so on. It creates a sequential, structured process for learning new information and is consistent with using ZPD. -Kara DeVriendt
