About Student Standards

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A Common Set of Expectations For Students, Districts

A great educational system begins with a clear and rigorous set of standards that educators use to help ensure that all students are college, career and citizen ready. Standards provide a set of common expectations for school districts across the state. 

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Required Standards

Iowa Academic Standards

Academic standards outline what students should know and be able to do. They are clear and rigorous expectations educators use to help ensure that all students are college, career, and citizen ready. All students in Iowa are required to learn the Iowa Academic Standards.

Standards for Student Populations

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These standards are recommended but not required for districts to use in developing curriculum in grades K-12.

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Standards, Curriculum: Complementary But Not the Same

Standards and curriculum are sometimes used synonymously, but they are not the same. While standards outline what students know and should be able to do, curriculum is the detailed and purposeful learning plan to ensure all students can demonstrate mastery of the standards.

The Iowa Academic Standards set high-level expectations for students to learn within a district or school curriculum. These standards describe the content, skills, and concepts that students should learn, but they do not prescribe particular curriculum such as lessons, instructional materials, teaching techniques, or activities. The district or school curriculum should describe how educators will teach students the standards. Decisions about curriculum and instruction are made locally by individual school districts, school leadership, and teachers. The Iowa Department of Education does not mandate the curriculum used within a local district or school.

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Iowa Academic Standards Revision Process

A rigorous public input and review process is a crucial component of developing high-quality academic standards. In Iowa, the Iowa Department of Education (Department) follows Executive Order 83, which mandates a process for the citizenry to review and provide feedback on the Iowa Academic Standards on a continual basis. Therefore, the Iowa Academic Standards, both required and recommended, continually undergo public input, vetting and scrutiny before being officially recommended for adoption to the Iowa State Board of Education.

The Department has a four-phase comprehensive and rigorous process for regularly updating the state’s academic standards. They are:

Phase 1: Create a Draft Set of Revised Standards

This phase focuses on revising the existing standards. A standards revision team is established by application. The team then creates a draft standards document that is shared with the public for feedback.

Phase 2: Stakeholder Feedback

The draft revised standards are shared with the public and feedback is sought. Three forms of feedback are used. First, the Department distributes a survey to seek broad public feedback. Second, the Department hosts forums to allow open comments about the standards. Finally, the Department conducts focus groups with key stakeholders (e.g. administrators, professional organization leadership, teachers, etc.). All of the feedback data is then used to make adjustments to the standards.

Phase 3: Revise Standards Based on Feedback

A standards review team is established to examine the stakeholder feedback and make changes to the standards based on that feedback. A final draft of the standards is put together to take to the State Board for approval. 

Phase 4: State Board Approval

A report including the standards process and draft standards are brought before the state board for potential approval.

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Iowa Academic Standards Are High Quality

The Iowa Academic Standards provide the framework that guides instructional decisions at the local level and because of this their quality is important. Throughout the standards adoption process, the Iowa Department of Education ensures that standards meet high expectations. Standards are evaluated to ensure they are challenging, measurable, focused, coherent, relevant, and specific.

Challenging

Standards must build in complexity so that by the end of high school, students are prepared for post-secondary education and the workforce. Standards outline the level of thinking that is appropriate for the content and expected developmental level. At the same time, it must be considered that students develop skills and conceptual understandings at different rates.

Measurable

Standards provide yearly expectations against which student progress toward learning goals can be measured. Teachers need a clear sense of what students must know and be able to do in order to measure their progress. Content area standards support consistent assessment of student learning across schools and districts.

Focused

The Iowa Academic Standards are aimed at preparing students for the rigorous challenges in postsecondary education and careers. They demonstrate priorities about the concepts and skills that are required learning in our K-12 system. These are the minimal expectations all students are required to know and able to do.

Coherent

Standards are coherent across grade levels and spans and the document is organized in a way that creates a unified structure, devoid of gaps in learning expectations.

Relevant

Student learning of content standards is most effective when it is relevant, connecting knowledge and skills to real-world applications in preparation for careers, college, and civic life.

Specific

The standards are precise and provide enough detail to set the level of performance expected without being overly prescriptive.

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Implementation Resources For The Academic Standards

Implementation Plans

Implementation of standards is a multi-year process beginning with awareness and exploration and ending with ensuring all students have the opportunity to learn the standards. Depending on the extent of the changes in the standards and the related instructional shifts, it is not uncommon for full implementation to take several years. Districts have fully implemented the standards when all aspects of curriculum, instruction and assessment are designed to ensure all students can meet all standards. 

Examples of implementation plans include:

Parent Guides

Parents and guardians play an important role in supporting their children’s success in learning the standards. The Department has created parent guides for students in K-12 in the areas of English/Language Arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and 21st Century Skills. These guides are available in both English and Spanish versions. Adult supports are included as a component of the Iowa Early Learning Standards.

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The History of the Iowa Academic Standards

Model Core

The Iowa Core began with a legislative effort to set consistent expectations for high schools across the state. In 2005, the state legislature passed Senate File 245, which required the Department of Education to develop a set of expectations for high school students. The Department convened work teams of Area Education Agency consultants, Department content consultants, district curriculum directors, and teachers to identify the essential concepts and skills in the content areas of Literacy, Mathematics and Science. (For more information, see May 2006 Model Core Curriculum for Iowa High Schools Report to the State Board). Two years later, additional legislation was passed (Senate File 588 ) that extended the work to include kindergarten through eighth grade and added the content areas of social studies and 21st Century skills. (See April 2008 Iowa Core Curriculum Report to the State Board (2008-04-04))

Iowa Core

In 2008, the governor signed Senate File 2216 into law, which required full implementation of the Iowa Core by all public and accredited nonpublic schools. (See February 2009 Iowa Core Curriculum Report to the State Board (2009-02-11))

As Iowa worked to develop and implement the Iowa Core, a group of states, led by their education chiefs and governors, joined to develop a set of common standards in English/language arts and mathematics. These standards, called the Common Core State Standards, were designed with three principles in mind: the standards had to be based on evidence of college and career readiness, they had to have a focus to give teachers the time to teach and students the time to learn, and they had to maintain local flexibility and teacher judgment.

Drafts of the standards were released in November 2009 and a final draft was issued in June 2010.

In the spring of 2010, the Iowa State Board of Education began studying the Common Core State Standards. The State Board discovered much common ground and few differences between the Common Core standards and the Iowa Core in literacy and mathematics. Also, it had become clear there would be more resources developed and available to support teachers in implementing the Common Core State Standards. As a result, the State Board adopted the Common Core, which, with some information added specifically about essential concepts and skills, became the new content of the Iowa Core in literacy and mathematics.

Executive Order 83. In 2014, the governor penned Executive Order 83, which requires the Department to establish a cycle of review for the standards that must include public comment. The intent of this order was to ensure that Iowans, not the federal government, determine the content of Iowa’s standards. This also gives the Department authority to revise the standards to ensure they best meet the learning needs of Iowa’s students.

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