Common Core Benchmarks

This year our school is going through another WASC Accreditation and so we're focusing a lot on benchmark exams. We didn't have benchmarks in the past because we were such a small school, but now that we're increasing in numbers, we want to make sure that all our students are receiving the same level of instruction.

We also decided to make our benchmark exams align with the new Common Core standards. Since these standards will be coming into play in 2014-2015, we thought it'd be smart to create our benchmarks align with them now. This will give us a year or two to start incorporating the common core standards and become familiar with using them to guide our teaching.

Starting last school year our departments started creating the benchmark exams, and we finally finished! Even though I'm not the department chair, I love organizing and designing cute stuff, so I offered to put all the English benchmark tests for each grade in a binder. This will provide easy access for the WASC people when they want to see proof of our benchmarks!

Love my cute Common Core Benchmark binder!!

Comment Starter: Do you guys do benchmark assessments? Are yours Common Core aligned?

Have a great day back from your 3-day weekend!

Ms. W