Hi,

Although I am currently unaware of high school standards per se, over the past few months I have been very heavily involved in creating standards for an end of year eighth grade achievement test on behalf of the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools (CoJDS). In addition, the current BJE High School Entrance Exam will transition to become the JSAT High School Entrance Exam after this year and we have been heavily involved with developing standards for this redesigned exam as well.(JSAT stands for Judaic Studies Achievement Test.)

The standards for the end of year eighth grade achievement test have been developed in partnership with fifty day school across North America and cover subjects such as Chumash Skills, Chumash Knowledge, Dinim / Yediot Klaliot, Navi, Torah Shbal Peh, Tephilla and an optional Gemara section. These standards will form the basis of JSAT Level 8. The exam is not yet published however the standards are available. In addition, schools who currently offer their students the BJE HS Entrance Exam are currently helping to design the standards of the new JSAT High School Entrance Exam and we expect that process to be completed shortly. We also intend to make this exam available nationally.

I believe you will find these standards very helpful for your high school program as well.

In closing, I would just like to note that we have already published JSAT Level Five which is a fifth grade achievement test that to date has been taken by over 2,200 students. It is a wonderful tool to help administrators gather objective data about their Judaic Studies learning programs. The data can be used as a tool to help guide student learning and we hope to do the same for the upper grades shortly.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance in this area.

Tzvi Daum
CoJDS Curricular Initiatives