Standards and benchmarks help schools create learning goals, maintain students’ results, and track students’ progress towards those learning targets. By reporting on those learning targets families get a detailed view about where their child is in his/her grade level progress.
Before a school can begin creating learning goal definitions using standards and benchmarks, understanding the terminology and how it applies to the concepts of standards and benchmarks is important to ensure your team is on the same page.
To view terminology and definitions, log in to jmc Office and head over to Standards and Benchmarks > Definitions.
Subject Areas: the grade level that you are creating assessments for (ie. Kdgn, Grade 1, Grade 2, etc.)
Standards: the course/class subject for a group of benchmarks (ie. Reading, Math, Science, etc.)
Standard Instances: the courses or grade levels that will assess specific standards
Benchmark Groups: the category for the benchmarks (ie. Subject, All Grades, Iowa Core, a certain combination of grade levels, etc.)
Benchmarks: individual assessable benchmarks within a standard
Benchmark Instances: courses or grade levels that will assess specific benchmarks
Result Symbols and Cutoffs: the results rubric that the teacher is able to use to assess standards and benchmarks