The performance standards for English Language Arts define high standards of literacy for American students. The standards focus on what is central to the domain; they are built around reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing; and they acknowledge the importance of conventions, literature, public discourse, and functional documents. The standards were developed with the help of classroom teachers and content experts in concert with both the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
The performance standards represent a balanced view of what students should know and the ways they should demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have acquired in this domain. Students are expected to read both literature and informational texts. They are required to produce writing that is traditionally associated with the classroom, including narratives and reports, and they are also expected to exhibit increasing expertise in producing and critiquing public and functional documents. In addition, students are expected to become proficient speakers, to hone their listening skills, and to develop a critical awareness of viewing patterns and the influence of media on their lives. The work that students produce in both written and spoken formats is expected to be of high quality in terms of rhetorical structures as well as the conventions of the English language.
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The expansion of literacy at the high school level reflects the growing need for students to understand the range of materials they must deal with throughout their lives. Both public documents and functional documents are introduced in the Reading standard at the middle school level, where students are required to demonstrate a familiarity with these kinds of texts. It is important that the middle school standard anticipates the advanced degree of understanding expected at the high school level where students are expected both to critique and produce materials of these kinds.
Reading
The first part of the Reading standard, 
a,
requires students to read a wide range of materials by a range of authors
on different subjects. The requirement here is fairly simple: read twenty-five
books of the quality illustrated in the sample reading list. Too often
students are not given the opportunity to read full length books because
of curricular restraints, a lack of resources, or a lack of access to
books. The missed opportunity results in a tremendous loss of potential
literacy skills that can only be developed when students become habitual
readers. The requirement to read twenty-five books each year provides
all students the opportunity to become habitual readers and represents
a realistic and worthwhile goal that can be reached if students simply
invest the effort. The sample reading lists are included to provide an
indication of the quality and complexity of the materials students are
expected to read at each of the benchmark grade levels. Any or all of
the specific works on the list may be substituted with other works providing
the works that are substituted are of comparable quality and complexity
to those that are replaced.
The second part of the Reading standard, b,
requires students to “go deep” in at least one area of interest.
We know that students who read regularly tend to read what interests them;
note the trends in the work sample, “Reading Log”. This part
of the Reading standard is intended to encourage all students to do what
good readers do and pursue themes, authors, and genres that are of interest
to them.
The third part of the Reading standard, c,
requires students to work with informational materials in order to develop
understanding and expertise about the topics they investigate. This area
of informational materials is of great importance, and for too long it
has been neglected in the school curriculum. Its inclusion as a separate
part of the Reading standard indicates our desire that more attention
be given to reading a broad range of materials written for a variety of
audiences and purposes.
The fourth part of the Reading standard, d,
at the elementary school level requires students to read aloud proficiently.
This requirement is an expectation for elementary school level only.
At the middle school level, there are two further parts of the Reading standard. These require students to demonstrate a familiarity with both public and functional documents. The category of public documents includes speeches, editorials, political advertisements, and other materials that engage a current issue. The category of functional documents consists of what is written or spoken in an attempt to get something done, whether that be a memorandum making a request of someone else, a computer reference manual, or a set of instructions that tell someone how to assemble something or how to carry out a procedure. Familiarity with these kinds of documents in middle school prepares students for a more sophisticated treatment of them in high school where they are identified as standards in their own right.
Writing
The Writing standard, 
,
requires students to demonstrate accomplishment in four types of writing
at the elementary school level: report, response to literature, narrative
account, and narrative procedure. At the middle school level, students
are required to demonstrate accomplishment in an additional type of writing—persuasive
essay. At the high school level there is a further, additional requirement—a
reflective essay. Thus, expectations for the range of types of writing
students will produce increase from elementary school through to high
school. This increase in expectations is also evident in the demands established
by the criteria for each type of writing at each grade level. Each of
the writing types is defined by a distinct set of criteria, though there
is clearly some overlap. The use of criteria specific to the writing types
is meant to ensure that students become familiar with the strategies that
characterize specific writing forms and to encourage students to use these
criteria when they review and revise their work. All of the commentaries
on the work samples related to the Writing standard use the language of
these criteria and make explicit how the student work sample illustrates
an accomplished example. The types of writing included in this standard
are all forms of writing commonly produced both in and out of school.
Speaking, Listening, and Viewing
The speaking and listening parts of the Speaking, Listening, and Viewing
standard, 
,
are organized around a variety of social situations: one-to-one interaction,
group discussion, and oral presentation. The viewing part of this standard
asks for evidence of an awareness of media influences. The attention to
viewing represents a growing awareness that the media play an integral
part in most students’ lives and that students require increasingly
sophisticated tools for dealing with media influences.
Conventions, Grammar, and Usage of the English
Language
The Conventions, Grammar, and Usage of the English Language standard,
, is listed
as a separate standard even though the parts of the standard are always
assessed in either a written or spoken context. The first part of the
standard indicates the expectation that students should be able to represent
themselves appropriately using standard English. The second part of the
standard reflects the understanding that high quality work most often
comes about as a result of a sustained effort represented by numerous
drafts of a particular piece of work. In classrooms where high quality
work is consistently produced, the revision process is most often an integral
part of the curriculum.
Literature
The Literature standard, 
,
like the Conventions standard, is listed separately even though it could
easily be broken into two pieces and placed respectively within the Reading
and Writing standards. However, for many people who go through school,
the study of literature is the only situation in which they have the chance
to explore the big ideas and the themes that emerge from social and political
conflict, both in their own writing and in the writing of others. An understanding
of these ideas and themes is integral for students who will one day be
responsible for the negotiation of meaning important to a democracy. The
first part of the Literature standard asks students to explore and critique
the writing of others with these kinds of critical skills in mind. The
second part of the standard asks students to produce literature with the
hope that doing this will help students better understand the world that
shapes both their literature and the literature of professional writers.
The final two standards, Public Documents and Functional Documents, are identified as distinct standards at the high school level only.
Public Documents
The Public Documents standard, 
,
addresses the increasing need to prepare students to deal with the complexities
involved in being a citizen in a democracy by focusing on those texts
that address issues in the public sphere. Integral to active citizenship
is an understanding of both the issues being addressed and the methods
by which these issues are presented. Students need to be able to examine
critically the evidence presented to them, determine the types of evidence
that are acceptable in formulating various arguments, and to make informed
judgments about issues that impact them. To do so, students must learn
to read with a critical eye the arguments made by other people. The first
part of the Public Documents standard asks students to offer a critique
of a document that addresses a current issue; the second part asks students
to write responsibly about an issue currently being debated in the public
sphere.
Functional Documents
The Functional Documents standard, 
,
recognizes the increasing need people have to communicate with one another.
In the emerging literacy of a technological world, documents such as the
instructions for programming a VCR, computer manuals, and corporate memoranda
each serve the purpose of helping someone get something done. Students
who will be asked to function efficiently in such a world need to be adept
with the literacy such a world brings, which means they need to become
skilled at “reading” materials such as charts and graphs, reference
materials for large, complex procedures, and memoranda and other correspondence
that contain the information they need to do their jobs successfully.
Students must also understand how to participate in such a world as contributors,
whether that means producing a set of instructions or communicating a
body of data graphically. The first part of the Functional Documents standard
asks students to critique a functional document in terms of its effectiveness
in accomplishing its purpose; the second part asks students to successfully
prepare a document that has as its primary purpose the goal of getting
something done.
There are different kinds of performance standards
in English Language Arts.
As you read these performance standards, you will notice that the standards
are not all the same. The most obvious difference is in the way in which
the performance descriptions for the standards are written. We did not
impose a single style on the way in which the standards were written although
we probably intended to do so when we began work. The reason we abandoned
the idea of a single style is that, during the course of the development
process, it became increasingly apparent that the various standards are
different in nature and have different purposes that lend themselves to
different kinds of presentation. But the style we have adopted for each
standard is not entirely idiosyncratic. There are some patterns that help
make sense of the different styles and of the nature and purposes of the
standards for which those styles have been used.
We have identified four categories or kinds of standards, distinguished by their relationship to products of student learning and by the range of evidence required to demonstrate achievement of the standards. The distinctions are broad rather than neat, and we have sought only to define them generally rather than precisely. These differences among the standards have consequences for what it means to “meet a standard” and, therefore, for the ways in which we can use samples of student work to illustrate standard-setting performances.
Standards that describe a piece of work or a performance
One kind of standard is characterized by ,
Writing. Each part of this standard literally describes a piece of work
that students are expected to produce and the knowledge and skills that
should be evident in that work. For this kind of standard there is a one
to one relationship between each part of the standard and a piece of work.
Standards that fit this category are parts of b,
c,
d
(at the elementary school level), ,
, b,
b,
and b.
Standards of this kind have several features:
- A single piece of work can meet the standard. In fact all of the requirements
of the standard usually must be evident in a single piece of work for
it to be judged as meeting the standard.
- The qualities that must be evident in a piece of work for it to meet the standard can be stated explicitly and are listed in bullet points as part of the bold-typed performance description. These qualities can be thought of as assessment criteria or as a rubric for work that meets the standard.
Standards that describe conceptual understanding
A second kind of standard is characterized by a,
Respond to non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and drama using interpretive,
critical, and evaluative processes. This standard describes conceptual
understanding. Other standards that fit this category are a
and a
at the high school level, and d
and e
at the middle school level.
These standards have several features:
- The standard is made up of a number of distinct parts. It is most
unlikely that any single piece of work will demonstrate all parts of
the standard. In fact, it is common for a single piece of work to relate
only to some aspects of one part of the standard. Thus, the standard
can usually only be met by multiple pieces of work.
- Conceptual understanding is developmental. Any one piece of work may contain elements of conceptual understanding that are below what is expected for the benchmark grade level and elements that either meet or exceed what is expected for the benchmark grade level. Judging whether the work is “good enough” often means making an on-balance judgment.
Standards that describe skills and tools
The third kind of standard is made up of the standards that describe skills
and tools. It is characterized by ,
Conventions, Grammar, and Usage of the English Language.
These standards have several features:
- As with the standards that describe conceptual understanding it is
most unlikely that any single piece of work will demonstrate all parts
of the standard. In fact, it is common for a single piece of work to
relate only to some aspects of one part of the standard. Thus, the standard
can only be met by multiple pieces of evidence.
- Also, like conceptual understanding, use of skills and tools is developmental.
Any one piece of work may contain evidence of use of skills and tools
that are below what is expected for the benchmark grade level and evidence
of use that either meet or exceed what is expected for the benchmark
grade level. Judging whether the work is “good enough” often
means making an on-balance judgment.
- What distinguishes these standards from the other kinds is the body of evidence needed to demonstrate that the standard has been met. Here, sufficiency refers not only to the idea of coverage but also to a notion of consistency of application. We want to be confident that the work in question is representative of a body of work.
Ideally, work that provides evidence for these standards also provides
evidence for other standards. This is the case for all of the work samples
in this book that illustrate parts of .
Standards that describe an accomplishment based
on effort
The fourth category is closely related to the first, standards that describe
a piece of work or a performance; it could be regarded as a sub-category
of those standards. It is characterized by 
a,
Read at least twenty-five books or book equivalents each year.
This part of the Reading standard is designed to encourage and reward effort. It is designed on the principles similar to those that apply to the merit badges that have long formed a part of the system of encouragement and rewards for young people in community youth organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. The twenty-five book requirement is designed to encourage students to develop a habit of reading by requiring that they read a lot. The requirement is challenging, especially since the reading is expected to be of the quality of the materials included in the sample reading list, but it is also confined. This part of the standard is not made more complex by requirements for evidence of depth of reading and comprehension. The message is: if you invest the effort, you will meet the requirement.