Common Core Standards Resources

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.

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.

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.

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.