College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

The Council of Chief State School Officers urges testmakers and the two state consortia to create large-scale assessments that reflect good instructional practice.

1. Aligned to Common Core State Standards
2. ensure test accessibility
3. ensure security
4. create user-friendly reports
5. chart students' progress
6. provide data that can help guide instruction
7. Math: balance of concepts, procedures, application, link math reasoning and practices to its content
8. ELA: assess both reading and writing, balance of literature and informational text.

Successful young Latino and black high school men rely on family and school support to overcome the odds and be high academic achievers, a new research study finds.

The high school students attributed their success to several factors, including:

• Consistently high expectations from parents and family;
• Meaningful relationships with caring teachers and other adults in their school who promoted a college-going culture;
• A desire to transcend poverty; and
• The ability to develop positive reputations that kept gang members from recruiting them.

Hechinger Report

It’s not just K-12 teachers who are being asked to adjust their teaching styles and curricula to ensure students learn theCommon Core standards. The people who teach the teachers are also under the gun.

The College Board, which administers the SAT, issued a report yesterday (September 26, 2013) bemoaning that only 43 percent of SAT takers in the 2013 graduating class were college and career ready. That means 57% are not ready.

Rod PowellMystical, dark, malevolent, ominous, pornographic. Glancing at my Twitter streams (#commoncore, #nced, #ncpol), I've seen each of these words applied to the new Common Core State Standards.

Michael Fullan discusses the latest global trends in educational change and leadership development, addresses the challenges and opportunities of the Common Core, and talks about his work to assist the state of California in implementing whole...

by Cicely Woodard, 8th grade math & Honors Algebra I teacher 

"Since implementing Common Core State Standards in my middle school mathematics classroom, my role as teacher has changed.  No longer am I the ultimate source of knowledge in the classroom.  Instead I am a facilitator of student-centered, student-led learning.  No longer am I helping students to choose the right answer.  Now I am helping them to develop deep understanding of mathematics that has meaning to their lives.  My expectations are high, and everyday my students are rising to meet those expectations."

The Aspen Institute and The Achievement Network are addressing the pressing need to empower teachers to help students reach new levels of mastery with a collection of new resources. These materials meet educators where they are and spell out some straightforward steps school-based educators can take to turn Common Core vision into reality.

THE Journal

As new assessments are rolled out, concerned parents will want to know why their kids' scores have decreased. Here's how educators can explain the change and highlight the positive aspects of the new standards.

Shanahan on Literacy

What is new and different in the Common Core? When it comes to the writing standards, a heavy emphasis on audience for one thing, and this is very good news.

As an English teacher who holds a master’s degree in writing, I’m grateful and inspired by the Common Core’s focus on writing skills.

"The key to improving SAT scores and college-and-career readiness is to ramp up the daily work of students across K-12 and increase participation in rigorous high school courses, said Mr. Coleman of the College Board. Students who scored better on the SAT were more likely to have completed a core curriculum in high school or have taken honors or Advanced Placement courses, he noted."

A reader over at my other blog asked some questions about how the standards were developed and about  this idea of field testing standards that has been floating around recently. On the question of...

• Students who do well in Algebra 1 in 8th grade move through higher-level math classes more easily.
• Students who take Algebra 1 later than 8th grade have less opportunity for additional, higher-level math classes.
• Students who repeat Algebra 1 seldom become proficient in Algebra.