Common Core Standards Resources

sample items being drafted for those exams offer early ideas of what lies ahead.

“What we are starting to see here are tests that really get at a deeper understanding on the part of students, not just superficial knowledge,” said Robert L. Linn, an assessment expert and professor emeritus of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder who reviewed a sampling of the consortia’s materials.

Mr. Linn predicted that even with sample items to guide them, vendors will find it tough to develop tasks and questions that fully reflect the aims of the two state groups

"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.

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.

Published Online: July 17, 2012 Published in Print: July 18, 2012, as Big Districts Push for Teaching Texts Aligned to Common Core Districts Push for Texts Aligned to Common Core By Christina A. Samuels Printer-Friendly Email Article Reprints Comments Like Liked </l

est districts have come together to say they will only buy common-core instructional materials that meet a set of "publishers' criteria" written by a nonprofit organization that played a leading role in crafting the new standards.

"we need to make sure we demand that publishers respect the work that we've done on the common core." The pact among the school districts "will make it a little easier to hold publishers' feet to the fire," he said.