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"In the last year, there's been quite a bit of chatter about whether textbooks that claim to be aligned to the common-core standards really do meet that mark. A Consumer Reports-style review of K-8 math materials found that nearly all of the textbook series analyzed were out of sync with the common-core standards (though that review has since come under fire and been revamped). Other researchers have called claims of common-core alignment a 'sham.'"

"Toolkit for Evaluating the Alignment of Materials Evaluating and Developing Core Aligned Materials"

"3. Know and Align the Standards or Outcomes There may come a time when learning will be so open that students will be able to learn whatever they want. However, in this day and age, we are accountable to learning standards and outcomes. This doesn't mean that we can't be flexible in how we help students reach these learning objectives. And personalized PBL can help us find that flexibility. As students generate their questions, project ideas, and products for learning, teachers must align their work to standards and outcomes, which means that teachers need to know their standards deeply in order to serve as translators of students' personalized projects to the standards. Teachers can create checklists of the standards, sub-standards, and outcomes to work through the "weeds" of hitting the standards through personalized projects, and they can use these checklists with students to co-create project ideas and assessments. See Edutopia's Building Rigorous Projects That Are Core to Learning for ideas."

"Social studies supervisors and teachers across the country are revising their unit plans to meet their state's content standards, as well as, the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in History and Social Studies. Simultaneously, many states are implementing new evaluation and observation frameworks. The performance ratings employed by the most popular evaluation models encourage a shift away from teacher-led direct instruction to more student-centered activities incorporating inquiry and synthesis. In social studies, primary source document analysis goes hand in hand with the 9-12 Common Core reading and writing standards. Here are five top resources to align your curricula to the Common Core with student driven lessons. "

" I say "rough sketch" because, let's be honest, Arizona doesn't look like that. But it's also a rough sketch because you need far more than three colors of white board marker to tell the full story of the states' collaborations to build both the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests. Related Posts Why Indiana Is Scaling Back Participation In Common Core Testing Consortia PARCC Before Today's Governing Board Meeting: Five Things To Know About PARCC Ritz: Pausing Common Core Rollout Keeps Standards, Assessments Aligned Education Next: Common Core Is A Set Of Standards, Not Curriculum Minnesota Warns Parents To Prepare For Lower Scores On New Common Core Tests How Michigan Might Provide A Template For States Hoping To Leave Common Core How Science & Social Studies Teachers Are Transitioning To The Common Core Topics The story isn't only complex because of Indiana's recent "pausing" of both the Common Core's implementation and the state's participation in the PARCC consortium. (Though state officials have stopped attending governing board meetings, Indiana hasn't officially left the group, so Elle still colored them blue.) Explaining to me why she mixed her work with my work of art, Elle broke it down like this: 20 states and the District of Columbia participate in PARCC: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Dakota*, Oklahoma** 24 states participate in Smarter Balanced: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Hawai'i, North Dakota*, Alaska*** * North Dakota participates in both PARCC and Smarter Balanced. ** Oklahoma announced this week it will develop its

Standards Alignment System - Comprehensive approach to support student acheivement across the Commonwealth of PA.

"Karl Nelson is the director of the Digital Learning Department for the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). In this Q&A, he talks about how his state is using open educational resources (OER) to help support Common Core State Standards. The OSPI's OER Project was launched in 2012, when the Washington Legislature passed HB 2337. According to Nelson, the legislature saw OER as a chance to both save districts money and improve instructional material quality, so it directed OSPI to identify a library of openly licensed courseware aligned with the state standards. The legislature also asked OSPI to provide guidance to school districts using OERs."

"Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium - Smarter Balanced is a state-led consortium developing assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics that are designed to help prepare all students to graduate high school college- and career-ready."

"Identifying Common Core in the Classroom CCSS Instructional Practice Guides: Common Core-aligned practice made clear These tools provide specific guidance for what the CCSS for ELA / Literacy and Mathematics look like in planning and practice. They are designed as developmental tools for teachers and those who support teachers. "

"At Harriet Tubman Elementary in Newark, New Jersey, 5th grade teacher Yvonne Copprue-McLeod teaches a lesson about reading comprehension and answering open-ended questions using textual evidence. Ms. Copprue-McLeod's strategy for her lesson is to have students work in groups, using specific details from the text to draw inferences and answer questions about the main character in the text. This lesson is aligned with multiple 5th grade Common Core ELA standards (RL.5.1, RF.5.4, SL.5.1, SL.5.4)."

"A professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education has launched a new free math curriculum designed to help engage students more deeply in math. Dubbed the "Week of Inspirational Math," the program is aimed at students in grades 5-9 and includes five lessons, one for each day in a week, featuring math problems designed to be fun and engaging along with videos with positive messages about math. Teachers using the curriculum will also be able to join a network offering additional support and resources throughout the school year. "We want to give kids inspirational math tasks that help them see math as a lovely subject of beautiful patterns and deep inquiry," said Jo Boaler, the program's designer, in a prepared statement. "And we want teachers to see what happens when kids are really engaged in math." Boaler said she hopes teachers will use the program at the beginning of the school year to give students a positive experience right off the bat and set the tone for the rest of the year, but the program can be used at any point. "The lessons address five key areas of math: geometry, algebra, numbers, patterns and connections," according to a news release. "The problems are so-called 'low floor, high ceiling' tasks that are accessible to all students but can be solved in different ways to challenge those just being introduced to the topics as well as high achievers. They also emphasize different messages: Mistakes help you grow, for example, and it's not how fast you complete a task that's important but how deeply you understand it." The Common Core-aligned program is the latest offering from YouCubed at Stanford, a program Boaler helped launch that aims to make new research into math learning accessible to teachers and parents. "We're researching and using new brain science to find out how best people learn," said Boaler, in a prepared statement. "Then, we're giving teachers things they can actually do in their classroom based on this research." The program

"This collection of blog posts highlights lesson plans, ideas, and other useful resources to help you bring Common Core-aligned lessons into your classroom. We're actively building this repository of ideas every week, so make sure to bookmark this page. You can also follow #CCSS or #CCSSChat on Twitter for the latest updates."

"So it's been a few years since the Common Core, and wow, has it been a wild ride! Some states have dropped the CCSS altogether and replaced them with similar standards. Some still have the CCSS, but have opted out of the tests related to them. Parents are also choosing to have their students opt out from these high-stakes tests. Some teachers are reporting the rigorous learning happening in their classrooms, while others are concerned about the appropriate level of the rigor. Textbook companies have been called out on their true lack of aligned materials, and great teachers have been creating their own lessons and units to meet their students' needs."

This article addresses a few of my major concerns with the Common Core State Standards. Having them "unpacked" in state-specific or national Essential Maps does not instantly improve teachers' understanding of what students must know, understand, and be able to do. I believe district curriculum maps designed by teachers based on the CCSS and/or state Essential Maps must be a part of the synergy of curriculum design and instructional practice in schools.

"The Curriculum Framework specifies what is to be taught for each subject in the curriculum. In Pennsylvania, Curriculum Frameworks include Big Ideas, Concepts, Competencies, and Essential Questions aligned to Standards and Assessment Anchors and, where appropriate, Eligible Content. "

"Achieve was founded in part to help states align their academic standards and assessments with the expectations of college and careers."

"ASCD SmartBrief Special Report: Common Core State Standards (Part I) For many years, academic standards in the U.S. have differed by state, district and sometimes even school. The varying standards have resulted in wide disparities in student knowledge. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards by most states is an attempt to create guidelines that can be used by educators across the country to teach math and English, with the goal of improving student proficiency. This two-part ASCD SmartBrief Special Report on the Common Core State Standards offers guidance to educators on what to expect as the standards are implemented. Part I examines the standards and how instruction will change. Part II, to be published Thursday, looks at how schools are beginning to align their teaching with the common core and how testing will change. "

Well ... yes and no, according to a pair of new surveys from the RAND Corporation, a research and analysis firm. Teachers do seem to be getting a lot of professional development aligned to the common core in both English language arts and math. The problem is that it's not always focused on the topics that they say they need the most help on. Instead, teachers seem to be saying: "OK, we totally get that there are these new standards. We even kinda know what they want us to do differently. But we still need help digging into the pedagogy on some of the finer points."

"Results from new state tests in Kentucky-the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards-show that the share of students scoring "proficient" or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given."

"The Common Core State Standards that most states have adopted have triggered plenty of political debate. But have they transformed how teachers are teaching - and what students are learning? Not nearly enough, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to closing achievement gaps. "