Washington State Education Goals, EALRs, Frameworks, Benchmarks, and GLEs

At the core of what teacher's are expected to help their students achieve in Washington State are the Essential Academic Learning Requirements. Before looking at these, let's take a step back and look at the 1993 Education Act and the four state education goals that provide the backdrop for the EALRs.

1993 Basic Education Act

“… to provide students with the opportunity to become responsible citizens, to contribute to their own economic well-being, and to that of their families and communities, and to enjoy productive and satisfying lives.”

State Education Goals

• Read with comprehension, write with skill, and communicate effectively and responsibly in a variety of ways and settings;
• Know and apply the core concepts and principles of mathematics; social, physical, and life sciences; civics and history; geography; arts; and health and fitness;
• Think analytically, logically, and creatively, and to integrate experience and knowledge to form reasoned judgments and solve problems; and
• Understand the importance of work and how performance,
  effort, and decisions directly affect future career and
  educational opportunities.

EALRs have been written for 8 subject areas – these are meant to get at the core of what students will learn and be able to do K-12 in that subject area -- without being too wordy. To make the EALRs more user friendly for teachers and to better specify the relation between the EALRS and the WASL, benchmarks were written for most of the EALRS, providing more detail about what the EALRS would look like in WASL grades (generally 4, 7 and 10). Most recently, Grade Level Expectations have been written for some of the EALRS specifying details for those EALRS at every grade level

The EALRS, GLEs and benchmarks are all available on the OSPI website at http://www.k12.wa.us/CurriculumInstruct/default.aspx

You can also quickly find the EALRs on the MIT website under "sites of interest".

http://www.evergreen.edu/mit/inside/ealrs/

You will be using a table in Word to organize your exploration of the EALRS and doing, simultaneously, a self assessment of your content preparation in relation to those EALRS. If you are not already comfortable using tables in Word, this exercise will give you an opportunity to become comfortable with them. You can find the table you will be using for the exercise at:

http://www.evergreen.edu/mit/inside/ealrs/ under "EALR Self-Assessment Form"

Open that form and save it to your folder on Calwah.

There is a partially completed table at that same site that may help you understand what is expected.