Standards and Curriculum |
Status of All North Dakota CTE Standards |
Why Standards Exist
The North Dakota Department for Career and Technical Education is committed to developing standards
to ensure that each program area offers courses that allow students to acquire essential knowledge
and skills.
What Standards Are
Standards identify what students are expected to know and be able to do--the content they are expected to acquire, the skills they are
expected to attain, and the intellectual qualities and habits of mind they are expected to develop. With the standards in place, schools
can create, implement, and strengthen a Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum to prepare students for entry into industry sectors
and for postsecondary education.
How Standards Are Created
The standards process begins with a review of national and industry standards. Several parties, including the state CTE program area
supervisor(s), secondary teachers, counselors, postsecondary teachers, business and industry representatives, and the Research & Curriculum
Administrator for CTE, work together to write the standards. The standards are written to ensure that when the students complete their
courses they have the knowledge and skills needed in business and industry.
How State Academic Standards Are Integrated
The final step of the standards writing process involves "cross walking" the standards with academic areas such as English/Language Arts,
Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Library/Technology Literacy. Cross walks provide CTE teachers the resources necessary to teach
and integrate related state academic standards to students. The most current drafts of the state academic documents, produced by the North
Dakota Department of Public Instruction, are used in the cross walking process. These state standards are available at:
http://www.dpi.state.nd.us/standard/content.shtm.
How the Standards Are Organized
- Listed at the top of the standards documents, the content standards are the general statements of what students need to know and be able to do.
- Topics are listed below the standards and further clarify a specific area of the standard.
- Student competencies, listed below the topics, are the specific learning expectations for students. The student competencies are categorized into three divisions: Introductory, Core and Advanced.
What the Levels of Student Competencies Mean
| Advanced (Reflection) | ||
| Learners at this level analyze, synthesize, judge, assess and evaluate knowledge in accord with their own goals, values, and beliefs, and/or real situations. | ||
| Core(Application) | ||
| Learners at this level experience acquired knowledge by applying it to familiar situations and to themselves. | ||
| Introductory (Knolwedge Acquisition) | ||
| Learners at this level experience acquired knowledge by applying it to familiar situations and to themselves. | ||
Keys to Employability
Listed within each standard as a tool for teachers to think about are the "soft" skills needed today, called the Keys to Employablility.
The skills, in no particular order, are deemed equally important. The eight skills are based on materials gathered from the Secretary's
Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), the North Dakota Career Resource Network, and the National Career Development Guidelines.
| Basic Skills | Interpersonal |
| Thinking Skills | Information |
| Personal Qualities | Systems |
| Resources | Technology |
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