Group items tagged

" 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

"Gene Wilhoit served as chief state school officer in Arkansas and in Kentucky before the Council of Chief State School Officers asked him to assume the leadership of their association. Two decades earlier, Wilhoit had served as an active member of the board of an organization, the New Standards Project, that I had put together to develop new, internationally benchmarked student performance standards for the American states, along with a set of assessments set to those standards. After he took the helm as Executive Director of the CCSSO, Wilhoit led the successful joint effort of the country's chief state school officers and its governors to create the Common Core State Standards. In this multi-part interview, I talk with Wilhoit about why he thought it so important to create the standards and what he thinks will be needed to fully implement them. "

"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."

"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. "

The Common Core was supposed to fix this. Its backers hoped that all states would insist that their students learn enough to be prepared for college when they graduated from high school. But a recent analysis of all the new tests administered by states in 2015, after the adoption of the Common Core, shows that most states are still not expecting their students to be on a college-ready trajectory, and that academic expectations continue to differ even among the 45 states that adopted the new standards.

"Dear Williamson County Schools Community Member: You may have heard the term Common Core State Standards. The State of Tennessee has adopted Common Core Standards for English language arts and mathematics, and Williamson County Schools has begun implementing these standards over the past few years. Williamson County Schools is already the highest performing school district in the State, and as Superintendent, I want to assure you that we will continue to build on our academic success working with the new State standards. "

"Millions of teachers and thousands of districts in 45 states are currently undergoing a sea change in the way that they teach and assess students. The new Common Core Standards for learning have been phased into states and districts since 2010, and the digitized Common Core Assessments are scheduled to deploy in states that have adopted them as early as the 2014-2015 school year. "

"Now that the Common Core State Standards in English and math have been adopted by most states, how will teaching and learning change? This two-part ASCD SmartBrief Special Report on the Common Core State Standards offers educators a guide to the latest information. Part II of this special report looks at how states and districts are preparing for the changes and how student assessments will be revamped. Part I of the report, published on Tuesday, looked at the standards in detail and how instruction will change. "

"A year-long effort to define a common set of academic standards for English and math culminated on June 2 with the release of the final version of the Common Core State Standards, which aim to establish consistent learning goals across states. The K-12 English, language arts, and math standards are intended to ensure that students in Kentucky have the same learning opportunities as students in Wisconsin, for instance, and were developed in collaboration with content experts, state officials, teachers, school administrators, and parents."

"The common academic-content standards that dozens of states are now adopting are better overall than 33 individual states' standards, according to an analysis released today by a Washington research-and-advocacy group." Provides a REPORT CARD for each state's standards in comparison to the ELA and Math CCSS.

"A new report offers a "bleak picture" of the state of state science standards across the nation, with just over half earning a grade of D or F. Among the 10 states to receive a failing grade were Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin. (See the full list below.)"

"his month, we're covering Common Core: Where are we now? In this blog post, education leader Fred Ende suggests two facts he says cannot be ignored about the Common Core State Standards: they create a common language and support "true rigor." When the Common Core State Standards were released in June 2010, it set off a storm of activity. Many states chose to adopt and implement; some did not, and still others chose to create their own standards that were, in some ways, almost a "Common Core Lite" version. Regardless of the politics and personal viewpoints many have shared since then, two facts can't be ignored:"

"Five states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards are beginning work on an initiative to create an open-source "platform" that would help teachers access, download, and create resources tied to the common standards, officials from the Council of Chief State School Officers told us today."

"As states press hard to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college or good jobs, many are hobbled by the very accountability systems they designed to leverage improvement, according to a report released Monday. The new study, by Achieve, argues that in reporting K-12 performance to the public, states often aren't including factors that matter the most in college readiness, such as the proportion of students who are completing rigorous high school courses, how well students are accumulating credits toward graduation, and whether they're earning college credit while in high school."

"For some, the Common Core State Standards seemed to come from nowhere, and appeared to be a sneaky attack on states' rights to control local education. But for those involved in writing the standards, it was nothing short of an exhaustive and collaborative years-long effort aimed at raising the achievement levels of students across the country. "

"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

"Listen to Dr. Schauna Findlay, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, describe the forthcoming Common Core State Standards and the state's plan for adopting these standards and developing curriculum maps for teachers to help in the transition from our current Indiana Standards to the new Common Core State Standards. "

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.

Grammar instruction may have waned in some classrooms starting in the early 2000s, largely because the high-stakes tests required by the No Child Left Behind law didn't assess grammar specifically. But with most states now using the Common Core State Standards, there's some thought that grammar is making a comeback-along with perennial debates about how best to teach it. "We are asking kids to dive into complex texts and understand them, so we need to teach them how to read complex sentences," said Chris Hayes, a veteran elementary teacher in Washoe County, Nev. And that requires deep knowledge of grammar.

"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."