College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

The Parents’ Guide to Student Success (listed below in English and Spanish) was developed in response to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics that more than 40 states have adopted.

Created by teachers, parents, education experts, and others from across the country, the standards provide clear, consistent expectations for what students should be learning at each grade in order to be prepared for college and career.

Tennessee’s public education curriculum to include more analytical thinking and, officials hope, less teaching to the test.

Teacher Training

Tennessee is training 12,000 classroom instructors this summer how to teach math principles under the new “common core” curriculum in grades three through eight, a system Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman says will better ready Tennessee’s youth for college and the work force.

Best Schools

“Ironically, the schools that have the best test score gains, they’re not teaching to the test,” said Huffman.

“They’re teaching really rich, complex critical thinking lessons that incorporate the skills. They’re the ones who are getting the most gains. But we need to move everyone over in that direction,”

"All six of the shifts of the Common Core are text-based shifts:

1. Shift #1 (Balance): Balance literary and informational TEXTS.
2. Shift #2 ( Reading in the disciplines): Students learn through domain-specific TEXTS.
3. Shift #3 (Complexity): All students read the central, grade appropriate TEXT around which instruction is centered.
4. Shift #4 (Text-based answers): Students have rich and rigorous conversations which are dependent on a common TEXT.
5. Shift #5 (Writing to sources): students develop skills through written arguments that respond to the ideas, events, facts, and arguments presented in the TEXTS they read.
6. Shift #6 (Academic Vocabulary): Students constantly build the vocabulary they need to access grade level complex TEXTS.

The Common Core has the power to enrich data-driven decisionmaking at all levels Implementation of the Common Core State Standards has begun, and new aligned assessments are on the horizon.

I expressed concern about what would happen if and when states adopted more stringent and meaningful assessments tied to the new standards.

Whenever Myra, Mary Ann and I talk about CC we stress the third “c,” collaboration — meaning librarians working with teachers and administrators. But I just read a review of a new book that made me think of the idea of “commonality” in a different way.

"I think we are going to have to take a long look at the post-secondary mathematical preparation of elementary teachers. Theoretically, the CCSSM should help as they will arrive in our programs with a deeper understanding of mathematics, but obviously this won't happen all at once." - Jonathan Thomas, assistant professor of mathematics education, Northern Kentucky University

99% of all students now attend schools in states which have adopted higher, college and career-ready, standards. 

While Virginia has not adopted the Common Core Standards, the state has re-aligned its Standards of Learning and significantly increased the rigor. "The tougher exams grow out of a broad effort to ratchet up academic expectations and make sure graduates have the skills they need to compete in their post-high school lives."

The new state tests — given to all Virginia students in grades three through eight, as well as those finishing courses in Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry — herald the arrival of an era of harder standardized tests not just in the commonwealth but also across the country.

The Common Core State Standard don’t specifically mention technology as a separate subject, but assume technology will support the teaching of math, science, reading, language, and writing.

Here are a few of the specific elements that technology can address and examples of projects (not in any particular grade-level order):

In order to implement the Common Core State Standards, educators need resources and materials that they can use.

Ideally, teaching kids how to think critically becomes an integral part of your approach, no matter what subject you teach.

Here are 10 concrete ways you can begin leveraging your students' critical-thinking skills in the classroom and beyond.

1. Questions, questions, questions.
Questioning is at the heart of critical thinking, so you want to create an environment where intellectual curiosity is fostered and questions are encouraged. For Jared Kushida, who teaches a global politics class called War and Peace at KIPP King Collegiate, "lecturing" means integrating a flow of questions throughout a lesson. "I rarely go on for more than 30 seconds without asking a question, and I rarely stop at that one question," he explains.

Washington (MO) School District Superintendent, Dr. Lori VanLeer, said the district wants to improve instruction through professional learning with grade level and subject area teams.

“Teachers, principals and district leaders will collaborate to plan curriculum implementation, develop assessments, analyze student work and assessment results, and plan lessons, as well as determine appropriate remedial, reinforcement or enrichment style inventions for students,” she said.

"Over the next few years, all public schools in Missouri will transition to the Common Core Standards and new assessments."
“This transition is very exciting, but also challenging,” she said.
Collaboration is key, VanLeer added, and professional teams will need to work together throughout this process.

by Timothy Shanahan, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

When teachers understand what makes texts complex, they can better support their students in reading them.

How is reading complex text like lifting weights? Just as it's impossible to build muscle without weight or resistance, it's impossible to build robust reading skills without reading challenging text.

The common core state standards in language arts treat text difficulty as akin to weight or resistance in an exercise program.

A new report suggests most states are already implementing UDL without a federal mandate.

As educators brace for new reforms, what will these changes look like? How will assessments and curriculum differ from previous versions? How can all students get the best education possible?

Will a common curriculum nationwide improve educational outcomes?

Andrew Porter, an educator professor with the University of Pennsylvania, agreed, saying that research shows there's no correlation now between state standards and educational outcome.

California is cited as an example as a state with high standards and low outcomes.

Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior director of the High Quality Standards Program at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said that's really about a failure in implementation.

"Even in states with great standards now, not all students are meeting those goals."
Porter-Magee said. "As a nation, we have not implemented standards well.

"Common core standards gives us a chance to reboot, to have conversations about what has failed in the past and what we need to change," she said.

1. Our students have not mastered oral communication.

• If you have been in a classroom, you have noticed that students don't speak very well. We really haven't taught them how. Class discussions and presentations suffer. Podcasts, videos, and digital storytelling suffer.

Check out http://sixtraitspeaking.com!