Expectations of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

The K-12 ASL Content Standards are intended to provide teachers with a framework for what ASL-using students are expected to learn in the K-12 educational setting as their language develops. The Standards provide guidelines for those who adopt comprehensive ASL language instruction and outline expectations of student learning outcomes at different developmental stages in their educational progress. This framework is not intended to determine how teachers teach but to serve as a resource so that teachers have the means to know what they are supposed to teach and at what point they are supposed to teach it.

Due to the similarity of natural language development for both students learning ASL and English, the K-12 ASL Content Standards parallel those of the CCSS ELA; this ensures high expectations for deaf and hard of hearing students who use ASL as their first language and provides teachers with a basis for equitable evaluation of students’ learning.

The Standards anchor the document and define expectations. The Anchor Standards describe the general expectations that students learning ASL as a first language across grades K-12 should meet for college and career readiness. Content standards are grade-level standards that define end-of-year expectations for each grade, beginning in kindergarten and finishing at the completion of high school. The Anchor Standards provide broad expectations and the grade-level standards provide specificity. Content standards are presented in grade clusters as follows: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12; clustering allows flexibility in course design and instruction.