College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

"Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards and are in the early stages of implementing them. But as panelists concluded at an AEI research conference on Monday, the state-led initiative will face an uncertain future as it intersects with additional efforts to improve schooling, such as teacher accountability policies and charter schooling."

In many U.S. schools, students struggling the most in mathematics at the start of high school have the worst odds of getting a qualified teacher in the subject, new research finds.

Succeeding in freshman-level mathematics is critical for students to stay on track to high school graduation, with students who make poor grades in math in 8th and 9th grades more likely to leave school entirely.

In the past I myself embraced what Fountas and Pinnel called “a balanced literacy approach.”  Under this model classroom reading would be made up of the following components:

1. independent reading (at the student’s independent reading level)
2. guided reading of a whole-group text (at median instructional reading level for class)
3. teacher read aloud (slightly above median instructional level). 

The common core call for increased text complexity seems to fit well with the “guided reading” portion of the block.

"Many people still hold to the belief that nonfiction writing is “just the facts,” often synonymous with formulaic, dull writing. Nothing could be further from the truth! For years, authors of all genres have honed their writing by reading literary nonfiction by the likes of David McCullough, Anna Quindlen, John McPhee, Susan Orlean, and so many others."

Changes to curriculum represent a major shift in K-12 education in the U.S. How will textbooks and educational materials producers keep up?

Scores will go down and the edu-politicians are trying hard to prepare the public. But their campaign of self-inoculation against widespread disappointment should not protect them. These educrats got us into this.

How the system will build from this impending problem is anybody’s guess. Whenever new tests are introduced, scores go down. Then teachers adjust. Even the testing companies adjust. Scores then go up. Will children learn more? We can only hope.

With the Next Generation Science Standards now finalized, two big questions are what kind of reaction they will generate and how many states will ultimately adopt them.

The final version of the Next Generation Science Standards was publicly unveiled yesterday. You can find detailed analysis and early reaction in this Education Weekstory.

“Mounting evidence clearly shows that our educational performance is not just a challenge of poverty, it’s an American challenge. Many middle class schools in the U.S. are not yet producing students ready to compete in the global economy.”

A new test from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will let individual schools see how their achievement ranks compared to schools in other countries around the world.

According to a recent report released by the nonprofit educational organizationAmerica Achieves, it’s not just low-income schools in the U.S. that have poor performance—it’s the country’s middle-class students, too.

Beginning in the fall, public school students will be encouraged to think more critically, write more convincingly and spend more time discussing the "why" of a math problem instead of just the "how-to."The new approach to teaching and learning...

Why do people insist on viewing the Standards as inconsistent with teacher creativity and choice? I am baffled by such uncreative thinking. That's like saying the architect cannot be creative becau...