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For most states, shifting to the common standards will require a shift in instruction.

There are as few as 28 standards for math for some grade levels, “which is fewer standards than ever before, but you now have to teach them and drill much deeper into them

Students are expected to conjecture and reason and problem-solve. That’s a new day in math. That’s a shift for everyone; therefore, we have real professional development that needs to get done.

PD should not be confined to a one-time conference or class,

but rather become an ongoing process for teachers.

the writing portion of the standards also represents a shift to a richer and more rigorous understanding of writing.

Teachers with a significant amount of experience might not have very much experience with the kind of teaching that would lead kids to be successful with these standards

although the common standards provide an opportunity to share resources between states, education leaders need to keep in mind that all teachers will come to those resources and professional-development opportunities with different backgrounds

Another issue for online PD around the common core is identifying high-quality resources

One of the challenges is that everybody, at least in their claims, appears to be aligned to the common core with professional development and instructional supports,” she said. Looking at those resources with a critical eye and making sure they are high-quality before distributing them to teachers is essential

States need to be “patiently aggressive” in developing and distributing professional development for teachers around the new common standards

If we move too quickly, [the resources] won’t be what we need them to be

If we wait for the assessments [due out in 2014-15], they will not have had the instruction necessary. We have to patiently but aggressively prepare professional-development resources, and the teachers need to know what the standards are.”

The James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, an affiliate center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Durham, N.C., is one of the providers of online resources on the common core. The organization has created a series of videos, posted on YouTube, that describe various aspects of the common core, such as how the standards were developed, what the key changes are in the subject areas involved, and the reasoning behind those changes.

The videos are designed not only for teachers, but also for school board members, policymakers, administrators, and even the PTA.

“Right now, I think you’re seeing the development of a lot of [curricular] materials,” she said, “and then the professional development to actually use those materials and teach the standards is the next frontier.”