ENC1102-706F08

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a U.S. education initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula into alignment with each other by following the principles of standards-based education reform. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Announced on June 1, 2009,[1] the initiative's stated purpose is to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them."[2] Forty-eight of the fifty states in the United States are members of the initiative. Standards were released for mathematics and English language arts on June 2, 2010, with a majority of states adopting the standards in the subsequent months. (See below for current status.) States were given an incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards through the possibility of competitive federal Race to the Top grants. The common standards are funded by the governors and state schools chiefs, with additional support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and others.[3] States are planning to implement this initiative by 2015[4] by basing at least 85% of their state curricula on the Standards.

here are six categories of content to be covered at the high school level: number and quantity; algebra; functions; modeling; geometry; and statistics and probability. Some topics in each category are indicated only for students intending to take more advanced, optional courses such as calculus, advanced statistics or discrete mathematics. Even if the traditional sequence is adopted, functions and modeling are to be integrated across the curriculum, not taught as separate courses. In fact, modeling is also a Mathematical Practice (see above), and is meant to be integrated across the entire curriculum beginning in kindergarten. High school standards in other categories which are intended to be tied to the modeling category are indicated in the Standards with a star symbol.