College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

Wyoming lawmakers have thrown their support behind proposed state standards based on national standards adopted by 45 other states and the District of Columbia.

Reasons for CCSS Support:

More Rigorous

About 70 educators and parents around the state reviewed the national standards and generally said they were more rigorous than existing Wyoming content standards.

College and Career-Ready

“If you want kids to be college and career ready, you have to have standards that articulate what it means to be college and career ready."

Comparability

“And if you want to be compared — favorably I hope — to other states, you have to have a basis for that comparison.”

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“A company is not going to write a textbook aligned to just Wyoming standards,” Marion said. “They’re going to write to common core standards, and you want to have materials that represent what your teachers are teaching.”

Improvement over current state standards

Lawmakers said that among all the complaints they heard about the common core from constituents, none said current Wyoming standards were better.
“I’m not hearing a defense of the Wyoming content standards by anybody,” said Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Laramie.

Dr. King said the move to longer testing times was part of the state’s efforts to fine-tune tests of student performance. The tests will, for the first time in 2012, include questions that will not count toward a student’s score, but will be used to develop future tests (Common Core State Standards).

At three hours, New York’s tests will still be shorter than those given in many other states, where they range from two and a half to four and a half hours. Nevertheless, the increase in testing times drew sharp criticism Monday from many school administrators, teachers and parents.

Essential Question: When studying a story or an essay, is it possible to be too concerned with what the author is saying?

In an opinion piece in Education Week, Maja Wilson and Thomas Newkirk complain the publisher’s criteria for Common Core State Standards are overly “text dependent,” discouraging students from bringing their own knowledge and opinions to bear on their reading.

Summary: What often gets lost in our rush to engage young readers and make their reading personally relevant is the simple fact that text has communicative value. When someone commits words to print, they mean to communicate facts, ideas, imagery or opinions. They should expect, if they’ve done their job well, to be understood. Might the reader have a response? Let’s hope so. But unless they have understood the author’s words and intent clearly, any response they make is less than satisfying and may not be particularly relevant as a “response.”

The bottom line: Demonstrating comprehension based on what a text says is not a problem. It’s a baseline skill for any literate human being.

A Little More Text, A Little Less Self
by Robert Pondiscio
December 19th, 2011

Core Knowledge Blog

http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2011/12/19/a-little-more-text-a-little-less-self/

A collection of Common Core Resources geared towards Utah teachers.

Damon Gardenhire, communications director for Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi, asserts high cost estimates for implementation of the Common Core are inaccurate.

In addressing the issue, the agency has stressed Barresi’s distinctions between “curriculum” and “standards” in terms of the “common core” of subject matter mastery or awareness in public schools.

At least in terms of Oklahoma, the agency leadership contends estimates of high development and implementation costs are “a red herring.”

If you were unable to attend the MASSP High School and CTE Mid-Winter Summit, you missed an opportunity to learn some key information. We were fortunate to have Mel Riddile provide a keynote session on the changes we can expect as we transition to the Common Core Standards. John Carroll from ACT also shared a number of important updates.

Highlights on Common Core:

- Mel explained that the transition to the Common Core is a 2nd order change.
- Employment and college readiness statistics support the need to increase rigor in our curriculum. Rigor = Content + Higher Order Thinking Skills + Application.
- The common core is internally benchmarked for success in a global economy and it is research and evidence based.
- For every 10 students who enter college - fewer than 2 will graduate with a 2 or a 4 year degree.
Common Core assessments will be implemented in 2015. These assessments are supposed to be online and they create significant logistical challenges.

The days of Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry could be numbered in Triangle schools, but they would be replaced by a new trio of what's supposed to be tougher and more in-depth math courses.

via Education Daily

December 12, 2011

Education policy analysts in a recent report on high school exit exams questioned what the future of high school assessment policies will look like when a new assessment system tied to the Common Core State Standards is put in place in SY 2014-15.

Several states have expressed plans to replace their current math and English/language arts exit exams with tests developed by two state consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Analysts said uncertainty lies ahead for high school testing policies, as states decide how adoption of uniform assessments might impact current state requirements. “With a state assessment that measures students’ college- and career-readiness, as both the PARCC and SMARTER Balanced assessments intend to do, will there be a need for mandated ACT and SAT testing or for existing college and career readiness assessment policies?,” they wrote. “In other words, can states, or will states, eliminate or consolidate their assessment policies in order to streamline their assessments system tied to the [Common Core]?”

According to State High School Tests: Changes in State Policies and the Impact of the College and Career Readiness Movement, 27 of the 31 states with current or planned exit exams reported participating in one or both of these state consortia to develop common assessments that are aligned to new benchmarks.

At least 16 out of the 27 states plan to replace their current exams with consortia assessments, and at least 16 states — though not necessarily the same ones — also expect the new assessments to be “more rigorous” than their current tests, the paper noted. Delaware was the only state responding that new assessments would be “about the same as” their current assessments, and Arkansas predicted they would be “no less rigorous,” it said.

"The new Common Core Standards that promise to significantly enhance the academic rigor seen in American classrooms." Mike Casserly, Council of Great City Schools.

More than one in five college freshmen end up taking at least one remediation course, according to federal estimates, but states are doing a better job of providing feedback to high schools about when they need to beef up course rigor, according to new data from the Data Quality Campaign.

According to the DQC, 39 states give high schools feedback reports on how their graduates perform academically in postsecondary education.

Of these, 28 states include information on the students who need to take remedial classes once they reach campus.

For the most part, this information is limited to the students who stay in-state, at public universities;

only a dozen states give high schools feedback on the 19 percent of high school graduates who attend out-of-state or private colleges.

TOWNSEND -- School Board members listened to a presentation on possible scheduling changes at North Middlesex Regional High School Monday night.

For the last six years, the school has employed a block schedule of four, 87-minute classes per day over two semesters of six months. Elective classes run in quarters. Battye said it allows students to achieve high, but not grow well.

Administrators have reviewed new cognitive and educational research, distributed a Visions and Values survey and looked into Common Core and Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing.

PARCC testing, which will be implemented along with the Common Core in the state, requires four tests during the school year that, according to Battye, should show improvement.

A schedule that carries disciplines throughout the school year, she said, would suit that better.

Read more: http://www.nashobapublishing.com/pepperell_news/ci_19561469#ixzz1giOaLqcG

Center on Education Policy via Huffington Post

12/9/11

"Fewer states are requiring students to pass high school exit exams to graduate, but more states are increasing standardized testing in college- and career-readiness assessment efforts, according to a report released Thursday."

The report by the Center on Education Policy reveals that in the 2010-11 school year:

- Fewer Barrier Exams - 25 states have or plan to implement policies that require students to pass end-of-grade or end-of-course exams to earn a high school diploma -- a figure down from 28 the year before.

- Six more have or plan to implement exit exams that do not mandate a minimum passing standard for graduation.

- Using State Scores In Calculation of Final Course Grade - Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee changed their exit exam requirements that instead factor student scores from those tests into the student's final grade in a course required for graduation.

- 65 percent of all public school students nationwide required to take exit exams for graduation in the 2010-11 school year, compared to 74 percent in 2009-10.

- The trend is moving toward more testing tied to national standards that aim to prepare students for college and careers.

- Of the 31 states that have or plan to implement exit exams, 27 are participating in national guidelines tied to the Common Core State Standards, and 16 of those states plan to replace their current exams with assessments tied to the Common Core.

- Just one state -- Georgia -- actually uses high school exit exams in employee hiring and higher education applications.

College-Readiness

- But states are still struggling to keep up. A report last month revealed dismal history education standards in Texas, contributing to a low level of college readiness among the state's high school students.

- In 2006, when the College Readiness Standards were created, 40 percent of Texas college students weren't prepared. Last year, 48 percent of those entering community college and 14 percent of incoming college freshmen needed remedial courses in at least one subject, and the gap is growing.

National figures released in August echo the Texas readiness report:

- Just 25 percent of ACT test-takers met college preparedness standards for English, math, reading and science, whereas nearly one-third didn't meet any of those standards. 

- New York's High School Progress Reports released in October revealed that just a quarter of students graduating from New York City high schools this year were prepared for college coursework, and fewer than half of all students enrolled in college four years after entering high school.