How to Use This Guide

The Educators' Resource Guide to the Alaska Standards is an online resource that will help districts and teachers develop, teach and assess a standards-based curriculum. The Guide is divided into two sections:

1: For Curriculum Developers
This section provides information about the Alaska Content Standards and the Performance Standards. It includes a district standards-based curriculum development process and links to useful resources including the legal references related to the Alaska State standards.

2: For Teachers
This section provides standards information, models of standards-based instruction and resources to help students meet Alaska's Content standards.

The Educators' Resource Guide to the Alaska Standards 2003 is an update to the original Frameworks Project 1997 and was a cooperative project between the Department of Education, the University of Alaska Southeast and the following consortia: Alaska State Writing Consortium, the Alaska State Literacy Association, Alaska Math Consortium and the Alaska Science Consortium.

A Brief History of the Frameworks Project--1997

For a more complete history of the standards and school reform in Alaska see History of the Standards (Flash) or HTML. You can also view the original Frameworks site.

In 1991, Alaska embarked on an educational reform effort, Alaska 2000, which paralleled the national America 2000 educational initiative, later known as Goals 2000. By 1995 this process resulted in the Alaska 2000 Standards in ten content areas. These standards enunciate what an Alaskan student should know, be able to do, and be committed to, and they are an important first step in raising the expectations of our education system. The Alaska Department of Education received grants from the US Department of Education to create frameworks for each of the content areas. A committee of educators and experts wrote each content section. These were reviewed and revised through multiple public input.

"Unlike other Federal assistance, Goals 2000 does not add another program to existing ones; rather, it seeks to blend Federal, State, and local efforts into a cohesive educational approach that will enable all children to attain high standards of performance in the State's academic subjects." Like Goals 2000, Alaska 2000's standards and frameworks suggest not what districts, schools, and teachers can do in addition to their current efforts, but what they can do in place of the status quo.

Frameworks Project 2003