Some districts have prepared their teachers on the new instructional approaches for the common core; others have done little.
College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders
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Who weighed in on the common core in the past 12 months and what did they have to say? The Commentary editors take a look back.
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Mel Riddile
April 23, 2012 11:35 AM
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by Catherine Gewertz
Education Week
April 23, 2012
"The biggest potential pothole, by far, is failed implementation." It's a huge, heavy lift if we are serious about teachers teaching it, kids learning it, curricula reflecting it, tests aligned with it, and kids passing those tests." - Chester E. Finn Jr.
The implementation stage brims with possibilities both promising and threatening, depending on one's perspective.
Whether the standards succeed will depend largely on how well they are translated from expectations to classroom instruction.
"One shared set of standards doesn't dictate content or pedagogy, because content is not prescribed, and there are many ways to teach the specified skills."
Math
Math teachers face having to teach skills to which they're unaccustomed, since some concepts have been moved to lower grades in the new standards. They're also being asked to focus longer and more deeply on fewer concepts and to emphasize conceptual understanding and practical applications of math. In many places, such as Howard County, Md., that has resulted in a flurry of activity as teachers brainstorm about how to design curriculum and pedagogy that embody the standards.
English Language Arts
The English/language arts standards present challenges of their own. More than most states' own standards, they insist on students building content knowledge and reading skill from independently tackling informational texts. They demand better analysis and argumentation skills, and they involve teachers from all subjects in teaching the literacy skills of their disciplines. Teachers in Kentucky, among other places, are experimenting with new templates that attempt to capture these key shifts.
Professional development remains a central area of concern as the standards are implemented, and many in the field say the success of the initiative rests on it.
"Teachers are not accustomed to teaching the way the standards envision," said Barbara A. Kapinus, who helped shape the standards as a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association before retiring this month.
"We have a whole group of teachers out there who have come in in the last 10 years, under No Child Left Behind, who have been given scripts to follow and have marched kids through those scripts and through sequences of little, teensy skills. What we're talking about with the [common] standards is a completely different kind of teaching."
The Tests
"The biggest potential obstacle is the tests," he said. "Because of their experience with NCLB, teachers want to know, what are the tests going to require? Will the tests back up what they are supposed to do with the new standards? If they don't, then the entire effort is lost."
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Mel Riddile
April 22, 2012 3:50 PM
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by Jeffrey Mirel and Simona Goldin
Jeffrey Mirel is an historian of education at the University of Michigan. Simona Goldin is a research specialist at the same university working on the Teacher Education Initiative.
- In his classic 1975 book, Schoolteacher, Dan Lortie described teacher isolation as one of the main structural impediments to improved instruction and student learning in American public schools. Lortie argued that since at least the 19th century teachers have worked behind closed doors, rarely if ever collaborating with colleagues on improving teaching practice or examining student work.
- In Finland and Japan, where students outperform those in the U.S. in international tests such as PISA and TIMMS, collaboration among teachers is an essential aspect of instructional improvement.
- Nearly 90 percent of U.S. teachers believe that providing time to collaborate with colleagues is crucial to retaining good teachers. (Scholastic and the Gates Foundation)
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Mel Riddile
April 22, 2012 3:41 PM
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As I was reading through the Common Core for language arts, I found the standards on text types and purposes.
There it was...to write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.
Maybe, just maybe....this purpose for writing would support the students in providing reasons with facts and details while linking opinions and reasons using words and phrases.
Opinions are like bellybuttons, everyone has one...maybe this purpose and form of communication is just what we need!
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Mel Riddile
April 20, 2012 4:29 PM
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A state consortium that is designing tests for the Common Core State Standards had been planning to design model instructional units for the standards, but it has decided not to do that, officials said at a meeting of states today.
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Mel Riddile
April 17, 2012 4:03 PM
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ETS Report on CCSS Assessments: Coming Together
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Mel Riddile
April 18, 2012 9:45 PM
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Pillar #1: “I’m only one of my students’ teachers, but I’m the most important because I teach them to connect to all the others.”
Pillar #2: “My students should learn from me how to learn without me.”
Pillar #3: “My students’ knowledge lies not only in their minds but in their networks.”
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Mel Riddile
April 18, 2012 9:31 PM
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From
ohiorc
“We need to begin with a thorough knowledge of books. That means, bottom line, reading as much as we can from the field of young adult (YA) literature. How to go about this methodically? There are resources that will guide us in the right direction.”
—Teri Lesesne
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Mel Riddile
April 17, 2012 3:52 PM
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I am tired of people criticizing the Common Core.
- Establishing a common framework is meant to help in limiting local costs by not having so many different people duplicating work.
- One set of standards, one set of assessments, and yes, they should NOT be multiple choice.
- The standards should be implemented with thought, depth and rigor.
- Create life long learners and develop critical thinking skills. Students need to learn how to learn and where to find information.
- Teachers can be the guide.
- The key here is the learning will happen from the implementation, not the framework.
An excerpt from Marzano Research Lab about the Common Core Standards:
- These standards demand very high levels of performance from all students, which in turn has significant implications for teaching. Differentiated instruction, integrated instruction, learning by design, and other strategies will need to become commonplace in all classrooms. There is no excuse for at-risk populations failing to achieve along with the rest of the students in school.
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Mel Riddile
April 17, 2012 3:25 PM
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Two-thirds of U.S. students are not considered proficient in writing.--National Assessment of Educational Progress
"That presents a pretty bleak picture, and yet the expectations for writing in college and the workplace are being ramped up."--Gary Troia
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Far too many K-12 students have inadequate writing skills, and the current efforts to improve instruction in the United States may be more challenging than anticipated, research from Michigan State University shows.
- Study co-director Gary Troia of MSU, along with Natalie Olinghouse at the University of Connecticut, said educators and policymakers in many parts of the country will have to make significant changes to bring existing curriculum, materials and teacher training in line with the Common Core State Standards for writing and language.
- The new K-12 standards are intended to improve instruction in mathematics and English language arts, including writing, nationwide.
- "Everyone needs to know how to write well, and we are not doing a good enough job to prepare students," said Troia, associate professor of education. "What we are finding is that states are going to be faced with a misalignment between the content standards and curriculum materials they are using and what the Common Core requires them to cover."
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Mel Riddile
April 24, 2012 10:13 AM
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A study of computer essay-scoring software finds some "capable of producing scores similar to human scores" on thousands of essays.
Under the new Common Core English standards that nearly all states have adopted, USA school kids will soon produce millions of new long- and short-form essays in most subjects. The standards take effect in 2014 and schools must figure out how to grade all that writing soon.
- Computers could supplement — but not replace — teachers. - Tom Vander Ark
- "I want to see kids writing a lot every day in every classroom across the country and I want teachers, students and parents to have the benefit of more critical feedback," he says.
- "I want teachers to be able to spend more time on teaching writing and not mechanics of grading."
But computer-scoring advocates, many of whom are also educators, say critics misunderstand the basic undertaking. Computers stink at judging high-level writing achievements, such as whether a writer has a unique style or can present sophisticated ideas. Most auto-graders aren't even programmed to capture that, no matter what critics say.
"They really don't understand that most kids are having a hard time communicating at all," says Mark Shermis, dean of education at the University of Akron. He agrees that timely, individualized grading by a human reader would be great, but given the scale of writing that schools envision, it's unlikely. "If every kid in the country had that kind of individualized attention, we might not be having this conversation."
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Mel Riddile
April 24, 2012 8:42 AM
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Researchers say middle school algebra classes may do more harm than good for students already struggling with math.
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April 23, 2012 1:06 PM
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3 Key Shifts in ELA/Literacy Common Standards
ENGLISH/LANGUAGE ARTS/LITERACY
1. Informational Text
Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and informational texts. At the elementary level, the standards call for a 50-50 balance between informational texts and literature. They shift the emphasis to 55 percent informational by middle school, and 70 percent by high school. Such reading includes content-rich nonfiction in history/social studies, science, and the arts. Informational text is seen as a way for students to build coherent general knowledge, as well as reading and writing skills.
2. Citing Evidence
Reading and writing grounded in evidence from text. The standards place a premium on students’ use of evidence from texts to present careful analyses and well-defended claims. Rather than asking students questions they can answer solely from their prior knowledge or experience, the standards envision students’ answering questions that depend on reading the text or texts with care. The standards also require the cultivation of narrative writing throughout the grades. The reading standards focus on students’ ability to read carefully and grasp information, arguments, ideas, and details based on text evidence.
3. Complex Text
Regular practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary. The standards build a “staircase” of increasing text complexity to prepare students for the types of texts they must read to be ready for the demands of college and careers. Closely related to text complexity—and inextricably connected to reading comprehension—is a focus on academic vocabulary: words that appear in a variety of content areas (such as “ignite” and “commit”).
SOURCE: Adapted From Student Achievement Partners
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Mel Riddile
April 23, 2012 11:39 AM
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As student testing begins in the Commonwealth, the business community is urging educators and legislators to stay the course on the recently implemented academic standards.
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Mel Riddile
April 21, 2012 12:44 PM
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Douglas Fisher: Close Reading and the CCSS (2) What it looks like!
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Mel Riddile
April 21, 2012 7:35 PM
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April 19, 2012
Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday explains the Unbridled Learning accountability model in a videotaped presention.
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Mel Riddile
April 22, 2012 11:43 AM
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by Sherri Beshears-McNeely
Anybody who has been around me in the last 6 months or so knows of my recent fascination with the book Teach Like a Champion. (Lemov, 2010)
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April 18, 2012 9:35 PM
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by Robert Rothman
The United States has, since its inception, acted on the belief that all students deserve a basic education. The common core state standards define a basic education in a new way: readiness for college and careers. And for the first time, the expectations are the same for almost all students, regardless of where they live. These standards represent a great opportunity to advance equity and excellence.
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Mel Riddile
April 18, 2012 9:27 PM
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Mrs. Marsh and Mrs. Vernon’s Pre-Algebra classes participated in many Common Core Math activities that focused on the following standard: A-CED.2: Create equations in two or more variables to...
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Mel Riddile
April 17, 2012 3:50 PM
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Webinar by Susan Brookhart
ASCD
Discover the kinds of formative and summative classroom assessments that best coordinate with the new generation of testing consortia for the Common Core State Standards.
Participants will take a close look at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments and discover how to create classroom assessments that form a balanced system that supports student learning and aligns to the Common Core State Standards. In addition, Brookhart will
- Overview SBAC and PARCC assessments.
- Identify assessments shifts.
- Share the implications of the Common Core for school-based formative and summative assessments.
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Mel Riddile
April 16, 2012 3:26 PM
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DENVER - At schools around the country, three words are causing teachers to re-think the way they do things - Common Core Standards.
- "Part of the change is just the processes that kids use," Curtis said. "Come up with different solutions and justify your solution, and know that you're right and know when that person is wrong, and those are all skills that we need to negotiate the world."
- The Common Core Standards are asking students to use more critical thinking skills and communication skills. She says working collaboratively is a big focus as well.
Teacher Leaders
"We're all leaders. If you have an idea, present it, go for it, do it," Brazeel said. "We are learning that we can actually take charge and do different projects that we want to do with our students."
