A Collaborative Project between the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

TEA 09/16/09  The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help states improve the college and career readiness of high school students.  Their evaluation found that Texas is a national leader in policies and actions to increase the readiness of high school graduates for collegiate and career education. No state has more state- level policies and activities associated with implementing a comprehensive statewide readiness agenda.

TEA 09/16/09  SREB made the following recommendations: ◦ Assessment & Performance Standards ◦ Curriculum ◦ Teacher Development ◦ Accountability

TEA 09/16/09  In a joint letter to Commissioner Paredes and Commissioner Scott, Senator Shapiro, Chair, Senate Education Committee and Representative Eissler, Chair, House Public Education Committee, requested that the TEA and the THECB work together to create a plan of action … to further specify the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) in the English language arts and reading and mathematics Texas Essential Knowledge Skills (TEKS).

TEA 09/16/09  Phase I  Phase I: Using the TEKS and the CCRS as the base, analyze the work around the vertical teams’ gap analysis; review descriptions of what it means to be college ready; compare the identified critical college-readiness skills to national college-readiness skills (e.g., SAT, ACT, ADP, etc.); and develop performance expectations associated with each critical college-readiness skill for English III and Algebra II.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for English III College and Career Readiness Standards National College and Career Readiness Standards ( 1 ) Reading/Vocabulary Development. Students understand new vocabulary and use it when reading and writing. Students are expected to: (1E) use general and specialized dictionaries, thesauri, glossaries, histories of language, books of quotations, and other related references (printed or electronic) as needed. II B.3. Use reference guides to confirm the meanings of new words or concepts. CB R 4.3.Student uses strategies to organize, restructure, and synthesize text content; ADP A2 Use general and specialized dictionaries, thesauruses. TEA 09/16/09

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for English III College and Career Readiness Standards Performance Expectations (1) Reading/Vocabulary Development. Students understand new vocabulary and use it when reading and writing. Students are expected to: (1B) analyze textual context (within a sentence and in larger sections of text) to draw conclusions about the nuance in word meanings; II B.1. Identify new words and concepts acquired through study of their relationships to other words and concepts. CDS II A.2. Use a variety of strategies to understand the meanings of new words. As a consistent part of the reading process, the student uses a variety of strategies, including context, to interpret the meanings of unfamiliar words in texts of differing complexity levels. Words may be unfamiliar because they may have multiple meanings or be nuanced, nonliteral, or technical. TEA 09/16/09

 Phase II  Phase II: Validate the performance expectations (in terms of both difficulty of content and quality of student response) associated with each critical college-readiness skill identified for English III and for Algebra II.

TEA 09/16/09  The Objective of the Validation  The Objective of the Validation: Bring together a broader spectrum of high school educators and higher education faculty to review, refine, and validate the identified performance expectations associated with each critical college and career readiness skill.

TEA 09/16/09  These performance expectations will then be used to inform assessment development, teacher preparation, professional development, and instructional materials.