The following post, from Miriam Burt, may be of interest to some of you.

Marie Cora

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Using content standards in adult ESL instruction was a topic of interest
at TESOL and COABE and is certainly a topic of interest and importance
to the field. The Center for Adult Emglish Language Acquisition (CAELA)
has just published a brief on the subject, "Using Adult ESL Content
Standards."  This brief, by CAELA staff members Kirsten Schaetzel and
Sarah Young, begins with historical information about content standards
and then describes the processes that adult ESL teachers and program
administrators can follow to successfully incorporate standards into
lesson planning, classroom activities, performance assessment, and
professional development. The brief is available for downloading in html
or in pdf on CAELA's Web site at
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/briefs/usingcontstandards.html  

There are two other briefs on standards on the CAELA Web site:

"Using Content Standards" supplements the information from an earlier
CAELA brief on "Understanding Adult ESL Content Standards," by Cristine
Smith and Sarah Young, which is also available in html and in pdf  at  
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/briefs/contentstandards.html. 


To complete the set, there is also a CAELA brief on program standards
and adult ESL Instruction. "Using the ESL Program Standards to Evaluate
and Improve Adult ESL Programs," by Joy Peyton is available on CAELA's
Web site at
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/briefs/eslprogstandards.html.

Miriam Burt
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Center for Adult English Language Acquisition
Center for Applied Linguistics
4646 40th Street NW
Washington, DC 20016
(202) 362-0700, ext. 556 (phone)
(202) 363-7204 (fax) 
miriam at cal.org (email)