The “Developing Educational Standards” WEB page belongs to the home page of Putnam Valley Central Schools in New York. This WEB site provides an index for national, state, local, and other sources of information about educational standards and curriculum frameworks used or proposed in education K‐12 settings. Three primary sections comprise the table of contents: Government and General Resources in Section 1, Standards and Frameworks Documents listed by subject area in Section 2, and Standards and Frameworks Documents listed by state in Section 3.
Section 1: Governmental and general resources, has 5 categories. Category 1, U.S. Government Resources, contains 3 items such as the “U.S. Department of Education”. Category 2, Governmental Resources from Outside the United States, contains just 1 item about “Papua New Guinea” and is the weakest part of the WEB page. Category 3, Centers, Clearinghouses, and Labs, contains information organizations such as “The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)” to the “Northeast and Islands Regional Laboratory (NEIRL)”. Category 4, Miscellaneous Resources, contains 8 items on topics ranging from “ERIC Database” to “Essays about Standards”. Category 5, Organizations, contains 31 items from “American Federation of Teachers” to the “Organization of American History”.
Section 1, is the most difficult part of the WEB site to navigate since the reader needs some general idea of what each item may contain. Selection of any item takes you to a page that gives a brief description and multiple entry points to the desired WEB site. However, starting the search from Section 2 gives a faster chance of success.
Section 2, Standards and Frameworks Documents listed by subject area, has 13 categories ranging from “Art and Music” to “Technology”. Selection of one of these topics takes you to a page, structured By Organization, By State and By Country, that lists relevant WEB sites. The page also contains brief descriptions of each WEB site along with multiple entry points to each one. Subject searches provide a very fast solution in this WEB page and is the most useful for most readers.
Section 3, Standards and Frameworks Documents listed by state, has a category for each state in America. Some states have a large amount of information available such as New York, whereas others have very little or none at all. Each state has a description of items that contain information of interest; but information on each state varies with regard to depth of content due to that state’s involvement with standards and curriculum development. Selection of highlighted items takes you directly to that state’s WEB site.
Selection of any item sends you to a page that gives a brief description of the topic selected along with multiple entry points to the organization or topic of your choice. The WEB site contains many items that have full text versions of their policies, standards, research or opinions that makes it a very important resource for both researchers and practitioners.
The site has minimum graphics and a limited amount of text per page that provides very fast response times. It is easy, logical, fun to use and provides an excellent example of a high quality WEB page design for other developers.
Putnam Valley’s “Developing Educational Standards” WEB page works with Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator 2.0 or higher and compatible Netscape Navigator products.
Putnam Valley’s “Developing Educational Standards” WEB page comes “highly recommended” from many sources. It is the recipient of many awards and recognition from organizations such as Classroom Connect, The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse, Internet Compass for Schools, The New York State School Boards, Apple Computer, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Blue Web’n Learning Application Library, Classroom Connect, The Clearinghouse for Subject‐Oriented Resource Guides, Education Week, Electronic Learning, The National Education Association and The World Village Schoolhouse.
