Work on “customizing” the performance standards for use in New York City’s public schools began in December 1998 and continued through to the end of the summer.

The work samples and commentaries form an essential element of the performance standards because they give concrete meaning to the words in the performance descriptions and show the level of performance expected by the standards. The principal goal of the customization process was to replace and supplement the collection of student work samples used to illustrate standard-setting performances in the New Standards™ Performance Standards with work produced by students in New York City’s public schools. To achieve this goal, the Planning Group for Applied Learning cast a wide net in its search for examples of student work that might be considered for inclusion in this volume. The Planning Group organized a series of “town meetings” to which people could come to learn about the Applied Learning standards and about the kinds of student work that were needed to illustrate the standards. Several hundred people attended the meetings, including representatives of community school districts and high school superintendencies, the United Federation of Teachers and Council of Supervisors and Administrators, and representatives from numerous community-based organizations that work with schools on community projects and run project competitions for students. The town meeting process yielded information about schools all over the city where Applied Learning-related projects were planned or underway. Teachers and other representatives of these projects then formed a team that met regularly through the spring and into the summer of 1999 to share their work in progress and study the evidence of students’ project work processes and products. Most of the projects and project excerpts included in this volume were collected from the work of this team.

Deciding what constitutes a standard-setting performance.
The benchmarks against which the project work samples were judged were the work samples that were selected for publication in the New Standards™ Performance Standards to illustrate standard setting-performances in relation to the various parts of the standards. Those work samples were selected through a variety of strategies designed to tap the judgment of teachers and subject experts around the country about the “level of performance” at which the standards should be set at each of the grade levels: elementary, middle, and high.

We define the elementary school level as being the expectations for student performance at approximately the end of fourth grade; middle school level as the expectations at approximately the end of eighth grade; and high school level as the expectations at approximately the end of tenth grade. We used the concept grade level as our reference point because it is in common use and most people understand it. However, “at approximately the end of fourth grade,” for example, begs some questions. Do we mean the level at which our fourth graders currently perform? Or, do we mean the level at which our fourth graders might perform if expectations for their performance were higher and the programs through which they learn were designed to help them meet those higher expectations? And, do we mean the level at which the highest-achieving fourth graders perform or the level at which most fourth graders should perform?

We set the expectations for level of performance in terms of what we should expect of students who work hard in a good program; that is, our expectations assume that students will have tried hard to achieve the standards and they will have studied in a program designed to help them to do so. These performance standards are founded on a firm belief that the great majority of students can achieve them, providing they work hard, they study a curriculum designed to help them achieve the standards that is taught by teachers who have the preparation they need to teach it well, and they have access to the resources they need to succeed. These conditions form an essential part of the New Standards Social Compact which underpins our belief that all students can and should be expected to meet high standards.

Some of the Applied Learning project work samples included in the New Standards™ Performance Standards were also included in the Consultation Draft; some appeared in earlier drafts as well. The appropriateness of these project work samples as illustrating standard-setting performances was the subject of extensive review, through discussions among the New Standards advisory committee for Applied Learning and through round-table discussions among experienced teachers and experts in Applied Learning. Some of the project work samples included in earlier drafts did not pass the scrutiny of these reviews and were not included in the eventual publication. Additional project work samples were identified in the process of consultation and then subjected to the iterative process of review that was used to establish the level at which the standards should be set and the selection of work samples to be used to illustrate the meaning of the standards.

Selecting the work samples included in this New York City edition
The customization group for the New York City edition of the performance standards followed a similar iterative process of review of project work samples to arrive at the selection that is included in this volume. Our goal was to identify nine projects at each grade level (elementary, middle, high) to provide the basis for selecting samples that would reflect the diversity of the communities that make up New York City, to demonstrate different ways of approaching Applied Learning, and to provide examples of work produced in projects related to subjects from across the curriculum.

Throughout the process, we had to remind ourselves continually that work that illustrates standard-setting performances is not the same as “best” work or “most exceptional” work. Some of the project work samples we reviewed exceeded the expectations of the standards. Those work samples do not appear in this collection. We also had to remind ourselves that we were not trying to put together an anthology to celebrate the work students produce, valuable as such anthologies can be. Rather, our purpose was to identify samples of project work that would help to give concrete meaning to the qualities described in the performance descriptions and establish the level of performance we should expect of work that is “good enough” to meet the standards.

We also learned that practice in making judgments about work in relation to the standards pays off. As the number of pieces of student work we had read and reviewed closely grew larger, we became clearer about the meaning of the bullet points in the performance descriptions and more confident of our judgment about the features that need to be demonstrated in work for it to be considered standard setting. Some pieces of work that we judged to be candidates for inclusion in the collection early in the process did not rate among our judgments later on. Equally, there were some pieces of work that we rejected early in the process and brought back for further consideration later on.

Work produced by a diverse range of students.
The work samples in this book reflect the diversity of backgrounds and experiences of the students studying in New York City’s public schools and the communities of which they are a part. The student work illustrating standard-setting performances in Applied Learning comes from schools throughout the city. The work comes from students with a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

In some cases, the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the students are evident in the work samples. In other cases, the students’ work reveals little about who they are. While we worked to ensure that the collection reflected the diversity of our students, we have not made specific reference to these characteristics in the commentaries that accompany the project work samples—not even where the work was produced by students studying in special education settings. Work that illustrates a standard-setting performance is standard setting no matter who produced it. What unites the project work samples is that they all help to illustrate the performance standards by demonstrating standard-setting performances for parts of the standards and demonstrate that all students can produce work that meets high standards.

The comprehensiveness of the work samples.
This volume contains work samples from more than twenty projects. We sought to include work samples that illustrate standard-setting performances for as many of the parts of the standards as possible. The great majority of the project work samples were selected from work produced by New York City students. However, we also selected some of the work samples from the collections previously published in the New Standards™ Performance Standards.

This collection is restricted to project work samples that illustrate standard-setting performances at the benchmark grade levels. However, during the process of collecting and reviewing the work we set aside many further work samples that were not selected for inclusion but which help to focus attention on the kinds of instruction that would help students progress towards the standards. These work samples will be used to support the professional development associated with the Applied Learning standards.

Genuine student work.
In all cases, the project work samples are genuine student work. While they illustrate standard-setting performances for parts of the standards, many samples are far from meeting the Language Arts standard for conventions. Much of the work was produced as part of students’ working documents: project plans, journal entries, “to-do” lists and the like. These kinds of documents are a crucial part of the record of students’ work in Applied Learning. However, they are by their very nature as working documentation often “scrappy” in style, containing errors in spelling and clumsy grammatical constructions, crossings out and incomplete thoughts. Like adults engaged in endeavors similar to the projects in this book, these students did not have any expectation these records of their work would be read closely by others, let alone find their way into a publication of this sort.

We think it is important that the standards are illustrated by means of authentic work samples. Accordingly, we have made no attempt to “doctor” the work in order to remove these imperfections: the work has been included “warts and all.”

The same applies to “finished” work included among the project work samples, such as final drafts of letters and reports. These have been included in the form in which they were produced. As with all kinds of written work, however, it is expected that finished work in Applied Learning will contain virtually error free writing. Where errors appear in finished work we have included a note drawing attention to the nature of the mistakes and commenting on their significance in the context of the work.

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