Standards Aligned Systems (SAS) is the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s cutting-edge model for achieving consistent, standards-based, sustainable educational improvement across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s public education system.
At its core, SAS involves assistance provided by PDE in the form of standards, strategies, tools and programs that are distributed through the Pennsylvania Inspired Leadership (PIL) network and the state’s Intermediate Unit (IU) system. The SAS model is based upon the premise that six core components are required to provide a consistent environment in which student achievement is possible in a comprehensive manner:
Clear Standards - encompass Pennsylvania’s academic standards, assessment anchors and eligible content components.
Fair Assessments - include the PSSA and a variety of assessment systems and tools such as 4Sight along with diagnostic and formative assessment models.
Effective, Engaging Instruction - focuses on active engagement, variety in instructional techniques, high-level instructional feedback, differentiated instruction, and ongoing formative checkpoints to ensure student understanding coupled with alignment of instruction to standards and curricula.
Comprehensive Instructional Resources - for instruction include development and deployment of engaging materials and programs, evaluation of effectiveness against a control group, research of the impact across multiple schools and multiple groups, and validation through peer review.
Targeted and Proactive Interventions - involve standards-based instruction, scheduling to meet student needs, program flexibility, instructional effectiveness, data-driven instructional decision-making, tutoring, and tracking intervention responses.
Strong Curriculum Framework - recognizes Pennsylvania’s locally controlled curriculum model and integrates it with the SAS Big Idea focus areas in mathematics and other content areas. The goal of the curriculum focus is to provide Big Ideas, Concepts and Competencies which are clearly defined for each subject area and grade level.
