Currently, there are no formally documented national ASL Content Standards for L1 learners. By taking this initiative to have the ASL Content Standards developed, the Clerc Center hopes to encourage educators to take an intensive look at the linguistic development of their students to ensure they are developing appropriately and attaining language development benchmarks.
The K-12 ASL Content Standards are necessary to give today’s educators realistic benchmarks and grade-level indicators of student development in ASL. This is important because without the Standards, each educator has a different evaluation tool. This does not reflect the norm in education today, which is focused on standards and evidence-based reporting.