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four questions to guide districts in supporting teachers during this transition.

these questions will help ground and steer districts to ensure teachers and students alike are ready.

first guiding question

what kind of professional development will clarify which previous strategies associated with past assessments should be kept and/or adapted, and which should be discarded?

This question should be raised with teams of reading teachers, both schoolwide and grade by grade. Assessments related to advanced student learning not described by the common core should also be addressed. We believe previous lessons learned about alternate assessments and special populations, such as English-language learners, deserve special attention.

second question

There are no common-core content domains for reading, like those that are available for math. Therefore, what kinds of professional development should be designed to support the identification of curriculum-mapping and instructional strategies for reading? This question demands a long-term view toward comparative student growth across grades.

we have documented a proliferation of free online trainings at the state level that support transitioning to reading within the common core. Superlative examples of state-level offerings include those developed by the Oregon and Maine education departments.

third question, is which professional-development activities and resources should be generated at the district level?

it appears that extensive support programs for teachers are not as common at the district level. A few standouts at the district level include Orange County, Calif., and the city of Baltimore.

a variety of partial-, full-, and multi-day professional-development seminars for teachers and administrators related to the common-core English/language arts standards

The work in both Orange County and Baltimore illustrates a larger lesson: In deciding what kind of professional-development opportunities to create at the district level, a focused approach should be used, one that is resplendent with examples of both content and practice.

fourth and last question

Appropriate technology-based skills related to instruction and to formative, interim, and summative assessments of reading must be considered, leading to our final question: What professional-development activities would ensure the kind of teacher proficiency needed to administer, understand, and interact with computer-adaptive and computer-based testing specific to reading?

A baseline of teacher knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to technology must first be carefully documented before any professional development can be designed. Likewise, corresponding documentation of teacher growth should be maintained throughout the process.

basic professional-development needs among teachers implementing the common core include training on literacy assessment, technology skills, practical learning experiences oriented toward the new standards and assessments, time for professional collaboration, a teacher-leader in each school, and continuous networking between teachers.

“Where the real difficulty comes up is when you actually develop the items,” he said. “It will be a challenge for vendors to come up with items that meet these specifications. They are used to writing items for state tests that do not get at this depth of knowledge.”

Comprehension, Not Guesswork

“To perform well on these kinds of assessment items, just having good test-taking skills will not be enough of an edge to perform well,” said Mr. Kaase, who now runs a Jackson-based consulting company that works with states and districts on testing, curriculum, and accountability issues.

Materials developed by PARCC, too, illustrate for vendors item types that require a grasp of the topic, said Mr. Kaase. One, for instance, asks 4th graders to plot the following numbers along a number line: 2, 5/4, 3x1/2, 3/4+3/4, and 2-1/10.

“You have to understand the meaning of the numbers and how they relate in order to answer this,” Mr. Kaase said.

Mr. Pack, who is a teacher-leader for PARCC, helping colleagues deepen their knowledge of the group’s work. “I was a little concerned at first blush, because they’re really complex. But they’re good math problems. They’re above the level of what we’re currently doing, but they’re attainable.”

He pointed to one illustrative example in PARCC’s materials that tries to gauge students’ fluency in division and multiplication. It offers five equations, such as 54÷9=24÷6, and asks 3rd graders to specify whether each is true or false.

“I like that it does multiple assessments in one item,” he said. “It asks kids to work each of those problems easily and be comfortable with it, which is what fluency is.”

PARCC expects to release sample items in English/language arts and math later this month, including prototypes developed under contract with the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh and the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Many milestones lie ahead before the consortia can deliver fully populated banks of test items. In the coming months, both groups will conduct sessions in which items are tried out with students and their feedback is obtained. Smarter

Both consortia will conduct trials next year before full-fledged field tests in spring 2014.

Even as sample items are crafted to help guide vendors on item-writing, the consortia and their partners caution that the item-development process is lengthy and full of revisions.

Jeffrey Nellhaus, PARCC’s assessment director, said he was acutely aware that the “field is hungry to see” how the goals of the common standards will be “made manifest” in assessment items, and is eager to examine the prototype items the consortium will get from the two research universities.

As officials from the Dana Center cautioned in an overview of the PARCC project, “Prototyping is for learning, and it can be messy.”

we believe that states can minimize the cost by taking advantage of emerging best practices and consciously repurposing existing state funding streams focused on these areas.

We first estimated the expenses associated with a business-as-usual scenario, in which states simply spend more on traditional delivery methods—hard-copy textbooks, face-to-face professional development, and paper-based standardized tests. Such an approach would, according to our calculations, require an additional $12 billion in spending across the 46 states and the District of Columbia, or an average increase of $289 in per-student spending.

The increase here would represent less than 3 percent of that figure.

With some changes in approach—what we call "balanced implementation"—the total cost could drop to less than half the estimate: roughly $5.1 billion, or $121 per student. And if we consider the fact that some existing resources could be repurposed, the additional net cost for states could be even lower, likely less than $100 per student.

What does our balanced-implementation scenario look like? Our ideas include:

• Moving away from hard-copy textbooks and doing more sharing of online materials.

platforms are available for self-publishing textbooks,

We can already see examples of cross-state sharing of curriculum and materials, such as the tri-state materials-sharing platform utilized by Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.

• Using computer-administered technology to offer formative assessments.

• Delivering professional development through a mix of in-person and online instruction

Customized professional development should address the needs of individual teachers, including specific gaps in knowledge and areas needing growth.

states are not treating common-core implementation as something above and beyond their usual use of materials, assessments, and professional-development practices. Instead, they are viewing the transition to the common core as an opportunity to adapt their practices in an effort to deliver 21st-century education.

• States, districts, and charter providers must be willing to stop purchasing goods and services from their existing vendors if they don't meet their current needs, and seek out new vendors willing to take advantage of the opportunities the new standards present.

the commonness of the common core has the potential to restructure these markets dramatically, thus opening up a host of new opportunities, including cross-state resource sharing.

The conditions are ripe for locally developed curricular modules, lesson plans, formative assessments, and professional-development resources to have a national impact.

The commonality of the standards should be a blessing for individual classroom teachers, allowing them access to resources that meet their unique needs. The common standards, coupled with 21st-century technology, have the potential to create a new kind of community of districts, school leaders, and teachers—a community liberated to improve instruction in ways that were once thought to be impossible.

ightened purse strings should force states to seek cost-effective solutions that make the best use of funds while leading to the use of high-quality instructional materials, assessments, and professional development. Implementing the common core won't be cheap, but the expense will be worth it if it leads to improved teaching and learning.

"We get that test score, and we make that big inference that kids have been taught this," Mr. Elliott told the gathering of special education and testing experts, including members of the consortia that are designing common-core assessments and alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities. "Many students with disabilities need 30 to 40 more days of class time to get an equitable opportunity to learn."

And that disparity may only grow as the demanding common standards, in English/language arts and mathematics, are put in place.

Progress and Problems The major hurdle of increased, improved instruction aside, the technical and content issues posed by the exams are numerous, experts at the Education Department forum said.

Students with disabilities have become a bigger part of state accountability systems, albeit gradually, during the past 20 years, so that now even students with the most significant cognitive disabilities are included in state testing programs. One fundamental advantage to designing tests with students with disabilities in mind from the beginning is that, for the most part, the tests won't have to be adapted to work with those students after the fact, disability education experts have said. A need for such retrofitting is common with current state assessments.

One big issue lies with computer-adaptive tests, which pull from a bank of test questions with a wide range of difficulty. The computer adjusts the difficulty of the questions it poses based on a student's performance on previous questions. One problem with that approach is that some students may shut down if they miss the first question, Mr. Danielson said. Then there's the risk that the computer will throw a student a question that's below his or her grade level because of a series of incorrect answers that leads the computer to those questions, a possibility that concerns special education advocates.

Yet another issue is that states using exams developed for most students by one of the two consortia working on those tests will have to agree on a common set of acceptable test accommodations—adjustments made, in other words, to help students with disabilities access the test content as easily as classmates without disabilities.

Read-Aloud Debate Common accommodations include giving students additional time to take an exam, giving them a separate testing area, limiting questions to appearing one at a time, and adjusting the size of the typeface of the test. But one accommodation over which there is disagreement is whether, or how much, students should have test instructions or test content read aloud to them.

teachers must shift their practice and teach more advanced materials to their students in more successful ways

We believe the answer lies in two key strategies: greater teacher collaboration and better instructional materials in the classroom.

teachers indicated they need more professional support and development to implement these standards

the best professional development comes from those already in our schools. When engaging in inquiry or lesson study, teachers draw on their shared trust, expertise, and experiences to improve instruction. And when this collaboration focuses on student work, it builds educators' capacity to address students' academic needs immediately.

Too often, teachers do not have sufficient opportunities to work together to examine work and structure interventions within their classrooms. As the new standards are implemented, we must ensure that teachers are not left alone to figure out how best to teach to them.

The standards are an opportunity for greater collaboration, fresher thinking, and a rearticulation of shared goals for teachers and students. By collaborating with each other and with instructional specialists through cycles of examining student work, creating hypotheses about how to implement common-core-aligned lessons, implementing them, and making adjustments in their practice in real time, teachers can find the best ways to help their students reach these higher expectations while still maintaining individual styles and flexibility.

this commitment to deep collaboration also requires new types of materials aligned to the standards, with a focus on real-time assessment and its translation into classroom practice. Two examples of this kind of collaboration are the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC), through which groups of traditional public school and public charter school teachers, curriculum experts, and other educators are working together to create high-quality, useful lessons and research-based instructional tools incorporating the common-core standards. In addition to developing a free, online library of new lessons and units, these efforts, funded by the Gates Foundation, are pioneering new pathways for how educators can work together to shift teacher practice.

Adopting the common core extends the teacher's role as coach, carefully designing activities to build specific skills, providing constructive feedback, and continually modifying lessons based on student understanding. Through professional development, teachers learn how to assess and give meaningful, consistent feedback; to share what works with their peers; and adjust lessons appropriately.

Some say working with the collaboratives has been the best professional-development experience of their careers

Teachers also say they have found that some of the extra time spent on this approach in the first few modules is recouped later in the year because students can apply the skills learned to future lessons.

Providing teachers with real training and templates, not scripts and worksheets, and meaningful opportunities to work together to implement strategies that will improve student learning, are critical components of any strategy to implement the common core.

Having teachers individually rewrite their own curriculum is a recipe for classroom chaos.

Educational publishers have the resources to provide a wide variety of new materials that could facilitate these necessary changes. They have editorial departments that keep up to date on education research. They can make connections with education researchers so they can work with teams of writers and editors to develop materials. The publishers can have researchers spend months organizing and testing sequences of lessons to find out what best supports student learning. They have design and production departments to produce the materials in an appealing and accessible format for wide use. They can build professional development into these new materials, which could be a foundation for teaching educators about the common core. But publishers won’t do any of this if they don’t have to.

Instead of a well-considered evaluation of available materials, schools tend to adopt and purchase educational materials for superficial reasons, either because they don’t have time for a thorough evaluation or they have little faith in textbooks. But if textbooks are sold based on design or inconsequential elements, publishers will prioritize visual design and superficial features. This would represent an unfortunate cycle of repetition and promote the status quo.

On the other hand, educational publishers would bend over backwards to make effectiveness their top priority if the top-selling textbooks were those with the best sequence of lessons to develop each standard in depth, the most effective teaching methods, and the richest content. They would do the work that schools so desperately need. But to identify materials with effective characteristics, customers have to know what those characteristics are.

Contrary to what many think, some textbooks are superior to others and do, in fact, meet some of the standards with fidelity. If the most effective materials for a particular population of students, such as higher- or lower-achieving students, were available to teachers, they could use them and focus their energies on meeting the needs of their students. Instead, many must devote time and energy to writing curriculum, although few have any experience in this demanding work. Teachers need to know and understand the new standards, but they should also be able to distinguish materials that faithfully reflect the standards from those that do not.

How can schools identify the most effective materials?

• Establish an adoption team to analyze potential materials. I

Next, the adoption team should establish evaluation criteria for curricula and then employ those criteria to analyze instructional materials.

Finally, the team should confirm that instructional materials in use share specific characteristics: The development of each required standard at a grade level is comprehensive, with a clear introduction, development, practice, and assessment. Content, readability, and skill expectations are appropriate for the population of students. Organization promotes natural learning progressions and logical development of skills and concepts. Lessons include an engaging and appropriate mix of learning activities and experiences that develop the critical concepts as identified by the standards. Teaching methods reflect effective practices as identified by research and experience. Materials support a change in teaching practices and are different from materials currently in use.

according to the report, this approach "fails to adequately capture the level of content mastery, rigor, and depth of change necessary to meet the expectations of college and career readiness in the Common Core standards."

the report identified several other challenges affecting implementation:

Ongoing budget crises at the state and local level;

The misconception that the Common Core State Standards are federal standards;

Initiative fatigue on the part of teachers in the midst of simultaneous and sometimes conflicting educational policy shifts;

The need to modify teacher preparation programs;

The need for colleges and universities to adapt their admissions practices based on the changes happening at the K-12 level; and

Communications between state agencies and educators.

Educators themselves also identified several concerns, including the need for:

Information about how Common Core implementation will affect policies governing their careers and teaching practices;

Access to model lessons, resources, and professional development;

Time for planning; and

Information about Common Core assessments and the technologies that will be required to implement them.