Detailed Information about the State Standards Database
The State Standards Database was developed to present the specific knowledge and skills which have been identified by states as important for prekindergarten education. The database was created by the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) for the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER).
States have devoted much effort to the development of standards for early childhood education, yet no consensus is clear regarding what form standards should take or how they should be used. The result is that the character, scope, and level of detail provided in standards often vary significantly among states and subject areas. This database provides a common format for both categorizing and representing this content.
The State Standards Database contains an analysis of states' content standards.
Though performance standards and curriculum goals were not directly included, analysts attempted to make a fair inference from them to create additional content and content description. For every state that was identified as having prekindergarten standards, relevant content statements were extracted and reviewed for the topics that they addressed. These topics guided the creation of specific benchmark statements, which content statements were assigned to. The benchmarks themselves were then organized under more general standards statements to help divide the subject area into a small number of useful categories.
Data Usage and Interpretation
Content statements from states' standards documents are categorized within a hierarchical structure of domains, standards, and benchmarks:
- Domains are the seven general subject areas which statements may belong to.
- Standards are familiar categories within a domain and help organize a collection of closely related benchmarks.
- Benchmarks describe either student knowledge or skill; they do not describe student performance, student activities, or goals of the curriculum.
- Statements are excerpts from states' standards documents which represent content standards.
The standards database can be viewed by browsing either standards by state or standards by domain. Viewing a state displays its standards organized in a hierarchy. Browsing standards by domain displays the complete hierarchy of categories and shows which states implement them. Clicking any item in the state view will switch to the hierarchy view to show more detail. Clicking a state in the hierarchy view will display its standards.
Some states are not included because their standards were not appropriate to the study. These states are classified into five categories:
- States with no standards.
- States with standards being developed (available in under a year).
- States with standards being developed but being added soon (have partial data for).
- States with standards from pre-k to 3/4.
- States which use Head Start standards.
The information in this database is accurate based on available information as of September 2003.
Please see the state standards page for a listing of states currently in the database.