Overview

When we designed this course, we surveyed subject matter experts (SMEs) in adult education about where we should focus our instructional design service efforts to support the need for adult basic education. The adult education SMEs were unanimous in recommended that we focus on designing and developing instructional materials for adult education that align with the U.S. College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) for Adult Education (Links to an external site.).

What are the College and Career Readiness Standards?

As described within the abstract of the CCRS report:

"In this report, readers will find a set of college and career readiness standards that reflect the content most relevant to preparing adult students for success in colleges, technical training programs, work and citizenship—in the areas of English language arts/literacy and mathematics."

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What are educational standards? Educational standards are simply desired learning outcomes. They offer benchmarks for what skills and knowledge a learners should possess at a given grade (or learning) level. The College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) were released in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Vocational and Adult Education (Links to an external site.) as a guide for adult education programs that prepare learners for post-secondary college and career training. The CCRS act as guideposts in Adult Education, and are meant to be used as a tool to focus on specific skills and knowledge adult learners should possess.

These educational standards assist programs with Adult Education curriculum development, guide instructors, and provide learning goals for basic skills instruction and critical thinking skills to prepare learners for high school equivalency exams, postsecondary education, and employment. Likewise, you can use the CCRS to help you refine the learning objectives for your instruction.

Before you move on ...

Please note that the CCRS report is a HUGE 140+ page document, and it is NOT our request or intent that you read the report cover to cover. Rather, the CCRS report is to be used as a reference guide as you define the learning objectives for your instruction. In prior course, students became overwhelmed with the CCRS report, and how to use it as a guide. Therefore, please take a moment to read the brief CCRS overviews provided in this module for both the English Language Arts / Literacy and Math subjects.

Refine your Learning Objectives with the CCRS Report

The following offers a decision tree for using the CCRS to refine your learning objectives:

Based on whether your lesson focuses on Math or English Language Arts / Literacy subject areas, you will select a domain (for Math) or strand / sub-strand (for English Language Arts / Literacy) and refer to the applicable English Language Arts / Literacy or Math section of the report. There you will skim the tables to find applicable standard(s) for the skills addressed your lesson. Note that the standards vary based on the grade level of the learner.

For Example

In the prior design practice exercise, we identified a need for instruction for Geoff to improve his reading and comprehension skills. Therefore, reading (a CCRS strand under English Language Arts / Literacy) will be the focus. Given Geoff's ability to read at a 6th grade level, the applicable Grade Level grouping is Grade D (Low Adult Secondary).

As presented in the figure above, on page 15 of the CCRS, one of several applicable desired learning outcomes for the lesson could be:

CCRS Anchor 2: "Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze the development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas."
In addition, specific to his Grade Level D "... provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments"