Depth of Knowledge Expectations Documents

Alignment describes the degree to which state expectations and assessments are in agreement and together guide the system toward students learning what is expected. One aspect of alignment, according to Norman Webb's model, is Depth of Knowledge. Depth of Knowledge gives us a framework for determining the consistency between the complexity of the assessment tasks and the content expectations.

Interpreting and assigning depth-of-knowledge levels to both content expectations and assessment items is an essential component of alignment analysis. The following document describes the Four Depth of Knowledge levels used for this analysis.

The following documents were developed by Michigan teachers that classify each expectation according to the depth of knowledge. Teachers and districts can use these document to align or assist in the creation of assessments correlated to the Michigan Content Expectations.

Levels for Michigan:

HS ELA Content Expectations

HS Mathematics Content Expectations

HS Reading-Literature Content Expectations

HS Science Benchmarks

HS Writing Language Content Expectations