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Illinois ABE/ASE Language Arts Content Standards

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Illinois ABE/ASE Language Arts Content Standards

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A link to the PDF of the standards document on the Excellenceinadulted.org website

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Learn about Universal Design for Learning from these 6 very brief vidoes

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College and Career Readiness Standards in Spanish

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College and Career Readiness Standards in Spanish

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Scroll down near the bottom of this website to find the CCRS in Spanish!

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Why Use Standards?

Standards address the question, "What do adult learners need to know and be able to do so they are prepared to meet employers' expectations for trained workers, succeed in postsecondary education and/or training, and attain the goals they set for themselves?"

The standards give ABE and ESOL teachers a common roadmap for what students must learn in order to be college and career ready. The standards are not curricula themselves. They do give teachers guidelines from which to develop curricula, scope and sequences within curricula, curriculum units, and lesson plans as part of curriculum units.

ACLS is committed to a standards-based system in which curriculum, instruction, and assessment are all aligned to standards and benchmarks or to level-specific standards. Having standards and benchmarks or level-specific standards the same across the state creates equity and sets high expectations for what's taught to adult learners and what's assessed.

Getting Standards Right is Important!

Standards ...

Adapted from National Research Council. 1999. Testing, Teaching, and Learning: A Guide for States and School Districts, page 20. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Programs offering ABE instruction are required to implement curriculum aligned to the Anchor Standards and level-specific standards of the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRSAE). The CCRSAE respond to the critical need of ensuring adult students are able to access family-sustaining employment via postsecondary education and/or training. In 2013, Massachusetts adopted the CCRSAE as the standards describing what all Massachusetts adult education students should know and be able to do.

Programs offering ESOL instruction are required to implement curriculum aligned to the standards and benchmarks of the Massachusetts English Language Proficiency Standards for Adult Education (MA ELPS). The MA ELPS combine college and career readiness skills and language skills into a single set of standards for English language learners.

ABE and ESOL programs are strongly encouraged to use the Massachusetts ABE Science Curriculum Framework, Life Science Strand.

Questions? Please contact Dana Varzan-Parker , Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Specialist in ACLS .

¹ "Leading economists who have examined labor market projections note that key college and career ready knowledge and skills are closely linked to being able to get the training necessary to earn a living wage in high-growth industries. It is crucial, then, that adult education programs provide students the opportunity to acquire these skills to pursue their long-term career aspirations and goals." Pimentel (2013). College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education, page 2.

² The MA ELPS integrate standards from the Massachusetts ABE Curriculum Framework for English for Speakers of Other Languages (2005), the CCRSAE, and the English Language Proficiency Standards for Adult Education (2016).

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massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

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A free readability site - cut and paste any text to get a readability score in multiple measures

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Measure Text Readability - Readability and Keyword Density Analysis and Tools - Unique readability tools to improve your writing! Readable.io

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Once you've scored your text, you'll want to start working to improve it, and we can help there as well. Alongside your readability scores and text analytics, you'll see an advanced highlighting engine showing areas where your text might be improved:

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Determine quantitative measure of text with Lexile.com

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Free site for evaluating text

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Check the readability score of your text

With our free readability checker you can instantly calculate how easily your intended audience will be able to read your written content.

What readability tests does this tool score your text on?

This automatically gives your text the score for the following 8 readability metrics:

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease

Higher scores in this test indicate that the written material is easier to read. This readability score is widely used across many commercial and Governmental sectors.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

Used throughout the field of education and beyond, this test scores your text as a U.S. grade level. This makes it much easier for teachers, librarians, parents and others to correctly assess the overall readability level of their reading materials. It also can be referred to as the number of years of education that are required to properly understand the text.

Gunning Fog Index

This score estimates the number of years of education required by the reader to fully understand the written content. For example, a fog index of 12 would indicate a reading level of a U.S. high school senior, at 18 years old.

Coleman-Liau Index

This test aims to gauge the U.S. grade level required to understand a passage of text.

SMOG Index Score

This index scores according to the humber of years of education needed by the reader to understand the text. SMOG is actually a fun acronym for Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook.

Automated Readability Index

Like several other readability scoring metrics, the ARI gives an estimation of the U.S. grade level required of the reader.

New Dale Chall Readability Formula

Using large lists of words that are understood by fourth grade students in the U.S, this metric provides the following scoring.

Spache Readability Score

This formula compares a passage of text against a defined list of everyday words. The percentage of words not on that list, and the length of the sentences help determine the approximate reading age.

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With our free readability checker you can instantly calculate how easily your intended audience will be able to read your written content. This automatically gives your text the score for the following 8 readability metrics: Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Higher scores in this test indicate that the written material is easier to read.

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Nonfiction articles at a variety of reading levels

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A wonderful library of free texts with quantitative info provided.

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Variety of fiction and nonfiction texts - searchable by grade level, text type, and content area

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Here is the lesson plan for the RFK speech we used during Standards Proficient training.

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Lesson Plan Remarks on the Assassination of MLK

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Cut and paste your text, choose a grade level, and identify the Tier 2 words with definitions at, below or above that grade

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Vocabulary lessons containing 10 Tier 2 words per unit, with ready-to-use activities and answer keys

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Promoting the Volume of Reading to Build Knowledge

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Promoting the Volume of Reading to Build Knowledge

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Four documents to reference for help in designing effective questions

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Achievethecore.org :: Instructional Content Nav - ELA / Literacy: Text-Dependent Questions

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Seven simple steps to create your own questions for close analytic reading.

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Text and audio of RFK's speech announcing the death of MLK Jr.

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It was supposed to be a routine campaign stop. In a poor section of Indianapolis, 40 years ago Friday, a largely black crowd had waited an hour to hear the presidential candidate speak. The candidate, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, had been warned not to go by the city's police chief.

As his car entered the neighborhood, his police escort left him. Once there, he stood in the back of a flatbed truck. He turned to an aide and asked, "Do they know about Martin Luther King?"

They didn't, and it was left to Kennedy to tell them that King had been shot and killed that night in Memphis, Tenn. The crowd gasped in horror.

Kennedy spoke of King's dedication to "love and to justice between fellow human beings," adding that "he died in the cause of that effort."

And Kennedy sought to heal the racial wounds that were certain to follow by referring to the death of his own brother, President John F. Kennedy.

"For those of you who are black and are tempted to ... be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling," he said. "I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man."

Many other American cities burned after King was killed. But there was no fire in Indianapolis, which heard the words of Robert Kennedy.

A historian says a well-organized black community kept its calm. It's hard to overlook the image of one single man, standing on a flatbed truck, who never looked down at the paper in his hand - only at the faces in the crowd.

"My favorite poem, my - my favorite poet was Aeschylus," Robert Kennedy said, "and he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

Two months later, Robert Kennedy himself was felled by an assassin's bullet.

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Robert Kennedy: Delivering News of King's Death

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When Robert Kennedy spoke to a largely black crowd in Indianapolis, few knew that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening. In delivering the shocking news 40 years ago, Kennedy compared King's death to that of his own brother.

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Content site: Science terms and cell basics lesson

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Content site: Science terms and cell basics lesson

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Web site used as basis for cell lesson, with additional resources

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Website used as basis for Constitutional Convention assignment

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Teaching American History is a free resource that brings together primary documents, continuing education, and community for American history teachers.

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development Revised Spring 2025

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Variety of graphic organizers by grade level and content area

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Text used for Focus on Assignments and Student Work, second activity

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Believing he was exercising freedom of speech, Elonis continued to post intimidating messages on the social media site, expanding his anger with online threats to co-workers as well as his community, such as his call for gun violence at a local elementary school.

His Facebook profile included the following disclaimer: "All content posted to and by this account is strictly for entertainment purposes only and does not represent the views, beliefs, or values held by Anthony Elonis, the person, LOL."

Despite the disclaimer, Elonis was convicted of a federal offense and sentenced to more than three years in prison.

Panelists at a Feb. 6 Midyear Meeting program, " Free Speech and Accountability on Social Media: Where to Draw the Line?" sponsored by the ABA Criminal Justice Section, discussed the case, Elonis v. United States, which is being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Elonis is challenging his conviction, arguing First Amendment protection. His defense claims that the comments were satire and black humor, which should be given poetic license, and that Internet users may vent online if they state that they have no intention of acting upon their threats.

According to panelistJeffrey R. Dion, deputy executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, if the Supreme Court overturns Elonis' conviction, it would invalidate a majority of stalking statutes in the United States.

"One of our biggest concerns in this case is that the standard they are looking at, on whether or not you have to look at the defendant's subjective intent versus the reasonable-person standard ... is that it is similar to the standards that are used in a majority of the states in stalking cases," he said.

Dion further said that threats cause harm, regardless of whether the intention to carry out the threat is real or not. "Victims are deprived of freedom and their lives are disrupted when they feel they can't go to the grocery store, or they can't drive their regular route to work, or they can't let their kids walk to school by themselves because of the fear placed by this person's threat."

"In assessing the nature of the threat and the impact of the threat, context is everything," he explained.

However,Rusty Hardin, a criminal defense lawyer in Houston, warned against dismissing the intention of the offender and encouraged the traditional application of criminal law. He said that a person's intention can help distinguish between legitimate free speech and criminal conduct.

"Was [the threat] directed toward a particular person or a particular group that the person already has a grievance with? That helps you sort through the issue of what their true intent was," Hardin said. "If it is somebody that is talking to the public at large, but nobody in mind, then it is just simply offensive speech. I think it is probably protected, no matter how offensive we think it is."

Dion said that the basic principles of criminal law should be applicable to new forms of communication, like social media. In his view, posting a threatening message on Facebook is no different than printing the same message on a newspaper advertisement, both of which would have the same detrimental effect on the targeted victim, and should therefore not be protected as free speech.

"One of the things I think is important to refrain from-- and what unfortunately a lot of states have done--is they try to create new laws and new statutes specifically for social media," Dion said. "We should have a basic standard that we can apply to all types of media and all types of communication-because we don't have a 'telephonic' stalking law, we don't have a 'stalking-by-smoke-signal' law."

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in December and a decision on the case is expected by the time the high court ends its term in June.

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ABA panelists debate free speech limits on social media

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Believing he was exercising freedom of speech, Elonis continued to post intimidating messages on the social media site, expanding his anger with online threats to co-workers as well as his community, such as his call for gun violence at a local elementary school.

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Detailed writing rubrics for grade levels 3-11

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West Virginia Writing Rubrics will be an invaluable guide to West Virginia teachers in the development, improvement, and evaluation of student writing as they employ the 21st century skills of student-centered learning by providing students, teachers, and parents the power to understand and evaluate the process.

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Lesson plan doc used by some Illinois programs

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Lesson plan doc for standards training FY22

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Useful rubric for writing activities done in small groups or with partners

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Visit this document to learn more detail about the EES and how those skills can be embedded into your instruction.

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Visit the cast.org site to learn more about UDL principles.

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Learn about CAST’s Universal Design for Learning framework, fostering inclusive educational experiences and improving learning outcomes for all learners.

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development - Spring 2025

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development - Spring 2025

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Checklist to Guide LA Activity Development Revised Spring 2025

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Activity #2 - Florida and the Civil War.docx

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Activity #3 - Characteristics of Resilient People

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Your browser does not support the video tag.

I encourage my team to keep learning. Ideas in different topics or fields can often inspire new ideas and broaden the potential solution space.

Lilian Weng Applied AI at OpenAI

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Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity