Assessing Children's Spelling

How can I evaluate my students' spelling skills when the curriculum doesn't even tell me what to teach?" This question was posed during an in-service session I provided for teachers not long after the introduction of a new Language curriculum to Ontario schools in 1997. Although the curriculum document mentions spelling at each grade level, the expectations are quite generic and do not show much variation from grade to grade. If assessment and evaluation are to be tied to instruction, how can teachers, in the absence of clear benchmarks, be sure their reporting practices are valid?