The process for developing Academic Content Standards began in 1997 when the State Board of Education and the Ohio Board of Regents created a Joint Council to oversee the implementation of recommendations made by the Secondary and Higher Education Remediation Advisory Commission. The boards began to build a common long-term agenda for education from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

The Joint Council started its work by establishing a set of common expectations for what all students should know and be able to do upon completion of high school. The initial work established common expectations in six content areas: (1) the arts, (2) English language arts, (3) foreign languages, (4) mathematics, (5) science, and (6) social studies. These drafts were transformed into Ohio's Academic Content Standards.

The Joint Council assembled advisory groups to assist in completing preliminary planning for the process to draft Ohio's new Academic Content Standards. This preliminary planning included review of exemplary world-class standards from the United States and other countries and the formulation of strategic policy recommendations. The recommendations assured that the drafting and refining of Academic Content Standards would respect Ohio's history for sharing responsibility for curriculum decisions with Ohio's diverse learning communities.

Writing teams were made up of representatives from the 12 regions served by the Ohio Department of Education Regional Professional Development Centers and included educators from each grade level, kindergarten through grade 12, as well as career-technical education, special education and gifted education. Ohio's diverse ethnicity, geography, types of school districts and colleges and universities were represented on the writing teams. Parent and business and industry representatives also were represented on the writing teams. Original members of the teams who wrote the Common Expectations were invited back to join the writing teams.

When the writing teams completed the draft of the Academic Content Standards documents, these documents were subjected to a period of extensive public engagement and rigorous review. Focus group meetings and electronic feedback via the Web page allowed all stakeholders to express their opinions. The writing teams reviewed the public feedback and made revision recommendations to respond to the issues raised by feedback. The draft standards presented to the State Board of Education for adoption reflect the final recommendations of this writing process and include grade-level indicators of progress (K-12), benchmarks that will serve as checkpoints at key grade bands, philosophies and guiding assumptions.

Subsequent to the adoption of the kindergarten through grade 12 Academic Content Standards for English language arts and mathematics, House Bill 94 mandated that the Ohio Department of Education develop pre-kindergarten reading and mathematics content standards and model curricula. The Office of Early Childhood, in liaison with the Office of Curriculum and Instruction, was charged with this work. Writing teams were selected that included representatives from around the state of Ohio. They began their development work using the kindergarten through grade 12 Academic Content Standards as the basis to ensure an alignment across all grades. They engaged in an orientation with experts in the field of early childhood literacy and mathematics development. When the teams had developed drafts, the drafts were submitted for public review, presented to the State Board of Education for their review and are now available on the Ohio Department of Education's Web site. Pre-kindergarten model lessons will appear in the English language arts and mathematics model curricula being disseminated in the fall of 2003.