Glossary

What Does It Mean?

Accelerated Learning—Accelerated learning is a system of support that provides personalized instruction opportunities to each student for remediation on curriculum content not yet mastered or to increase learning and experience through early college experiences and internship.

Advanced Placement (AP)—AP courses are taught on site at a high school or online. They offer students rigorous courses of study equivalent to college-level courses. Students can take an AP test and, if they score high enough, receive college credit for the course. Each college or university sets its own policy for acceptable scores and the number of credits.

Articulation—Articulation is an agreed upon alignment between courses and levels of academic instruction. For example, some Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs have articulation agreements with community colleges and universities through which specific CTE course serve as prerequisites for college courses.

Assessment—Assessments are used to evaluate a student's mastery of the instructed curriculum. Assessments can be paper and pencil tests, demonstrations, projects, or other performances.

Benchmark—A benchmark is a standard or point of reference. As used in describing curriculum, a benchmark is a specific descriptor of what a student should know and be able to do within a specific curriculum area. For example, within the English language arts curriculum, grade level content standard 4 states, “All students will use the English language effectively.” Benchmark 4 for early elementary states: “Become aware of and begin to experiment with different ways to express the same idea.”

Carnegie Unit—The Carnegie Unit was developed in 1906 as a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject. For example, a total of 120 hours in one subject (i.e., meeting four or five times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, for 36 to 40 weeks each year) earns the student one “unit” of high school credit. Fourteen units constitute the minimum amount of preparation that may be interpreted as “four years of academic or high school preparation.”

Competence—Competence is demonstration of satisfactory attainment of high school course standards, benchmarks, and expectations.

Courses—Courses are classes that comprise specific sets of high school grade level content standards. Courses are not defined by “seat time” or Carnegie units or semesters; they are defined by the content and instruction.

Dual Enrollment—Dual enrollment refers to participation of eligible high school students in college-level courses. Eligible courses must not be offered by the high school and must lead toward accreditation, certification, and/or trade licensing.

Educational Development Plan—The educational development plan is a tool that students use beginning in middle school to explore careers and the educational requirements for achieving a career goal.

Grade Level Content Expectations—Grade Level Content Expectations (GLCEs) state in clear and measurable terms what students in each grade are expected to know and be able to do in a specific curriculum area like math or English language arts.

High Stakes Testing—High stakes testing is a term used to describe a variety of assessments. The term usually refers to statewide assessments that have a serious impact on students, schools, and school districts. For example, some states require students to pass a statewide assessment in order to move to the next grade or to graduate from high school.

High School Content Expectations (HSCEs)—HSCEs state in clear, measurable terms what students should know and be able to do at the end of each course.

Information Communication Technology—The term refers to the many modalities of communication and understanding that make up 21st Century literacy, which is defined as the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlap. These modalities include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, recognize and use that power, manipulate and transform digital media, distribute the modalities pervasively, and easily adapt them to new forms.

Leadership Capacity Building—The term refers to developing the ability in school district staff to nurture and sustain positive change without gaps in progress even when key leaders leave the organization.

Mastery—Mastery means demonstrating skills and knowledge specified in content area expectations.

Mentor System—A mentor system is an established structure for providing adult coaching and support to each student.

Proficiency—The acquisition of enough knowledge and skill to advance to the next level.

Remediation—Opportunities to learn or re-learn to bring a student up to satisfactory performance of academic expectations.

Satisfactory Performance—Satisfactory performance is performance that displays achievement of grade level content expectations.

Standard—A standard is a uniform metric or statement against which academic performance can be measured.

Time-on-Task—Time-on-task is time spent teaching, learning, investigating, and demonstrating.

Universal Design for Learning—In terms of learning, a term that means the design of instructional materials and activities that makes the learning goals achievable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage, and remember. Universal design for learning is achieved by means of flexible curricular materials and activities that provide alternatives for students with differing abilities. These alternatives are built into the instructional design and operating systems of educational materials; they are not added on “after-the-fact.”

Virtual Learning—Demonstrated content and skill development through the medium of technology.

Source: Adapted from Michigan Department of Education’s Presentation of Proposed High School Graduation Requirements, November 2005.

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