AFNR Standards - National FFA Organization

– Level II—These are activities/abilities that will build on the first-levelknowledge and are skills that students possess at roughly the 11th- and 12thgradelevels.– Level III—These are activities/abilities that will build in complexity from thefirst two levels and are skills students possess at roughly the 13th- and 14thgradelevels. These skills may be obtained at the end of the high school levelin more focused programs, in which case articulation agreements withpostsecondary institutions are encouraged.Methodologies and ProcessesThe development of the National AFNR Career Cluster Content Standardsbegan with a review of the Knowledge & Skills Statements originally developedas part of the 2003 United States Department of Education (USDE) ClustersProject. The Committee began with these because the statements had beenreviewed by hundreds of educators and industry representatives as they weredeveloped. The comments of these reviewers guided the work in thedevelopment of the accompanying standards. Various iterations of the standardswere reviewed by a total of 257 agricultural educators (averaging 32 perpathway). They included 178 secondary and 79 postsecondary/universityagricultural educators, representing 39 states overall. Additionally, the standardswere validated by a total of 155 representatives of the animal science, plantscience, environmental science, natural resources, biotechnology, foodprocessing, agribusiness and agricultural power & structures industries from 32states (averaging 19 per pathway). Both of these totals exceeded the project’sspecifications. As development progressed through the review and validationprocesses, the succeeding versions became more fine-tuned.Throughout the process, the National AFNR Career Cluster Content StandardsCommittee stressed rigor and relevance both in the agricultural content coveredand in the alignment of the AFNR Career Cluster Content Standards tonational academic standards. Thus, the accompanying document includes notonly the AFNR Standards but also the alignment of the Performance Indicatorsto national academic standards. Further, these academic standards are fullystated in the Appendix that accompanies the AFNR Standards. The academicalignments were carried out using teams of both academic and agriculturaleducators. Core academic teachers are encouraged to review the NationalAFNR Career Cluster Content Standards as a way to raise agriculturalawareness within the school and the community and provide related meaningfullearning experiences for students.v