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Measuring Up in a Flat World

Shaping a New Curriculum

Using a mixture of traditional, digital technology, and 21st century crucial skills, West Virginia has created its own state-level model for a new core curriculum and is currently in the process of designing assessments to measure the new elements.

“We are revising our objectives and creating a new assessment built around more rigorous content standards,” says Brenda Williams, exec utive director for the state’s office of technology. “We’ve incorporated ICT literacy with learning skills standards and core content.” The state development team adopted the Inter national Society for Technology in Education’s National Education Technology Standards to define ICT literacy and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ 21st Century Learning Framework as an implementation strategy.
“The revised content standards are much more focused and defined according to performance task and expectation,” says Dr. Jorea Marple, assistant state superintendent of schools for curriculum and instruction. “We actually reduced the number of objectives and made them clearer.”

For example, a current reading policy states: “develop an outline using prepared notes to write a paragraph.” The proposed policy says: “using student-prepared notes, create an outline and use it to develop a written and/or oral presentation using computer-generated graphics (e.g., tables, charts, graphs).”

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