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the 46 states and the District of Columbia that have adopted the common core are just beginning the journey of implementation. A great deal of thoughtful work is required to implement the standards successfully, and that work will not come without a price tag.

we argued in our recent report, "Putting a Price Tag on the Common Core: How Much Will Smart Implementation Cost?," the statewide cost of bringing the common core to classrooms could be reduced significantly if states were willing to rethink implementation.

Our report focuses on three key areas of expense: new instructional materials, new assessments, and professional development

, "Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards: Moving from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability," identified challenges and best practices for Common Core implementation and offered recommendations for easing the transition from state to common standards

"Educators are unclear about where to focus their instructional efforts, and many school leaders are overwhelmed by trying to lead multiple, major reform efforts and uncertain about where to direct professional development. Furthermore, the simultaneous reforms have exceeded the capacity of most state and local education agencies, compromising educators' ability to best implement any reform." according to the report.

As a consequence, the report's authors argued, teachers are "charging ahead" with their own inadequately informed approaches to blending state and common standards, such as the "crosswalk approach," in which educators try to correlate verbiage in the Common Core standards with their own state standards to determine whether the standard has been taught.

Gone are the days when states and districts could lower expectations, hide poor results, or create confusion about what students are capable of achieving

The new standards emphasize teaching fewer topics, but in greater depth, and focusing more on hands-on learning and dynamic student projects than traditional lectures.

teachers must also encourage innovative assignments that require students to show their understanding, use their knowledge and skills to solve problems, create written and multimedia presentations, and complete real-world tasks.

How will these assessments interact with other assessments? How will they affect reporting trends in student achievement and/or graduation requirements? How can states and districts work together to help teachers meet this new challenge?

planning for professional development for teachers cannot be forgotten

Reading teachers are perhaps the key component of success on this front

"I really like the bit about visual design that isn't distracting or chaotic," Findell said. "I've opened too many textbooks that are like walking into a video arcade. ... You want the graphics there to support the mathematical ideas, rather than just being, 'Wow, what a cool picture.' Skip to the next page."

Special Populations Findell said "one of the most important contributions" of the publishers' criteria was clearly stating that instructional materials should be consistent with the common core's call to provide all students the opportunity to learn and meet the same standards. As the document explains, "Thus, an overarching criterion for materials and tools is that they provide supports for special populations such as students with disabilities, English-language learners, and gifted students." Findell told me: "We have an unfortunate history in this country of identifying some students as not yet ready for grade-level instruction and then giving them something less—often much less. In other words, we notice students who are behind, and we slow them down. We usually do it out of compassion, but the consequences are devastating for students." So he said a "crucial message" about common-core implementation is that all students receive grade-level instruction, even if some students need additional support.

For some, textbooks provide a comprehensive curriculum in which content requirements are developed in a systematic and organized way. Textbooks can give teachers ideas for sequencing, presenting, and assessing content, skills, and concepts. New teachers often depend on textbooks. For others, textbooks represent scripted, uninspired lessons that turn teachers into slaves and strip them of their creativity with a one-solution-fits-all approach. For this group, even intelligent, published education researchers lose their credibility when they become affiliated with a commercial textbook publisher.

The release and adoption of the common standards have inspired two major initiatives. The first is to educate teachers about the expectations of the new standards and how schools will have to change to meet the standards. States, school districts, professional-development companies, and educational organizations provide webinars, in-service sessions, and courses on implementing the common core. But most of these don’t include any discussion about curriculum. Instead, they focus on educating the 3.2 million teachers as if they were individually responsible for revising their curriculum.

The second initiative is the incorporation of the new standards into educational materials. In the interest of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, textbook publishers, who have invested tens of millions of dollars in their textbook series, are doing the minimum necessary to address the new standards. While they have added labels, paragraphs, activities, lessons, or chapters to reflect the standards, it is unrealistic to expect that they will re-envision their materials if they don’t have to.

English Language Arts The text is more complex.

Since the 1960s, text difficulty in textbooks has been declining (Source: CCSS Appendix A)

has created a significant gap between what students are reading in twelfth grade and what is expected of them when they arrive at college.

Most states have committed to implementing the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts and mathematics, but whether textbook publishers will help, hinder, or neutralize this effort is an open question.

The release and adoption of the common standards have inspired two major initiatives. The first is to educate teachers about the expectations of the new standards and how schools will have to change to meet the standards.

The second initiative is the incorporation of the new standards into educational materials.