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“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.”

the International Baccalaureate standards; and the Knowledge and Skills for University Success

The authors wanted to see how closely the content covered, the range of material included, and the depth of that material correlated with the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

alignment in the topics covered and the range of content between the common-core standards and the five others, the common core demanded a bit more cognitive complexity in some topics, particularly English/language arts, the report says.

The comparison standards lacked the depth of challenge in reading for informational texts, writing, and reading and writing for literacy, and, on the math side, in geometry. However, some of the rigor of the common core will be defined by examples of student work and can’t yet be measured for depth of knowledge required

some experts ask whether having comparable international, national, and state-to-state standards means that the common core makes it more likely a student will be prepared for college.

The study continues a line of evidence that the core standards that states have adopted have a solid research base and will help teachers and students,”

The next step for states is to ensure that during the implementation of the standards, teachers have the support and tools that they need to teach the new standards.”

the report is not meant to measure the quality of one group of standards over another, but rather to test the conclusion that the common-core standards place a strong emphasis on preparing students for postsecondary education by comparing the standards with others that also focus on college readiness.

States also shouldn’t focus on trying to make sure everything in their standards and all the details line up exactly with the common core as they do their own in-depth comparisons

Instead, they should look for broader correlations.

different standards have different purposes

the comparison and alignment of the “long-standing, well-respected” IB standards with the common core was particularly noteworthy, given that the common-core crafters have claimed that they are internationally benchmarked, and the results of the study could give some support to the claim.

Comparison and alignment with Texas, a state that didn’t adopt the common core, is also important,

Texas has been a leader in the establishment of college- and career-readiness standards, and overall received positive remarks for strong and in-depth coverage

what we see are findings that Texas College and Career Readiness Standards are found to be at or above the standards contained within the common-core state standards.

According to a related study EPIC released in August, most entry-level college professors found the common-core high school standards were relevant to college-level courses.

There’s a big danger if you look at these standards as everything you need to know to be ready because it’s not.

The common-core standards are a step in the right direction, but we still need more information on what makes a student college- and career-ready and still have a way to go toward creating stronger standards and assessments than [evaluating a student] by a cut score on a test.”

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.”

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.

the CCSS cites an ACT report called Reading Between the Line that says that the ability to answer questions about complex text is a key predictor of college success.

The text covers a wider range of genres and formats.

In order to be college-, career-, and life-ready, students need to be familiar and comfortable with texts from a broad range of genres and formats. The Common Core State Standards focus on a broader range and place a much greater emphasis on informational text.

The Common Core sets expectation that, in grades three through eight, 50 percent of the text be expository. Specifically, in grades three through five, there is a call for more scientific, technical, and historic texts, and in grades six through eight, more literary nonfiction including essays, speeches, opinion pieces, literary essays, biographies, memoirs, journalism, and historical, scientific, technical, and economic accounts.

In addition, students are expected to understand the presentation of texts in a variety of multimedia formats, such as video.

There is a greater emphasis on evidence-based questioning.

The standards have shifted away from cookie-cutter questions like, "What is the main idea?" and moved toward questions that require a closer reading of the text.

The questions are more specific, and so the students must be more adept at drawing evidence from the text and explaining that evidence orally and in writing.

Students are exposed to more authentic text.

The Publishers' Criteria for the Common Core State Standards, developed by two of the lead authors of the standards, emphasize a shift away from text that is adapted, watered down, or edited, and instead, focus on text in its true form. While scaffolding is still considered an important element when introducing students to new topics, it should not pre-empt or replace the original text. The scaffolding should be used to help children grasp the actual text, not avoid it.

The standards have a higher level of specificity.

There is a great amount of flexibility for educators to determine how they want to implement the new standards and the materials they choose to use and/or create; however, the standards themselves are quite specific.

Additional Expectations

Shared responsibility for students' literacy development. In grades six through twelve, there are specific standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. The message here is that content area teachers must have a shared role in developing students' literacy skills.

Compare and synthesize multiple sources. Students are expected to integrate their understanding of what they are currently reading with texts that they have previously read.

need to answer how what they have just read compares to what they have learned before.

Focus on academic vocabulary. One of the biggest gaps between students, starting in the earliest grades, is their vocabulary knowledge. The new standards require a focus on academic vocabulary, presenting vocabulary in context, and using the same vocabulary across various types of complex texts from different disciplines.

The Common Core State Standards are not "test prep" standards. They aim to teach students how to think and raise the bar on their level of comprehension and their ability to articulate their knowledge.

However, the depth of the standards and the significant differences between the CCSS and current standards in most states require a whole new way of teaching, so even the most experienced teachers will need to make great changes and require support in doing so.

A lot of publishers are repurposing old materials and saying that they are "aligned" with the Common Core.