College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

Michele Molnar is a veteran journalist who has written about education at the local and national levels, as well as about business and community associations.

Making the Common Core Practical

Study says adults find online information better than teens. PARCC, are you designing your Common Core tests using research-based usability standards?

Jason Zimba in EdWeek

"It is incorrect to say that algebra isn't covered until high school. There is a great deal of algebra in the 8th grade standards. For example, students in grade 8 are expected to solve two simultaneous equations with two unknowns. I don't see a lack of rigor there. The standards actually invest heavily in algebra because of the way they focus so strongly on the prerequisites for algebra in the elementary grades.

I actually think the questions about algebra are better formulated as questions about acceleration. How will kids who are ready for advanced work accelerate to reach courses like calculus during high school? But those are questions for policy, not for standards. The standards don't speak to this issue. Decisions about acceleration and ability grouping are still the purview of local districts, just as they've always been. For example, I've seen where the state of Massachusetts has provided some interesting guidance for districts showing several different models for acceleration, all of them ending at calculus in the senior year of high school."

Reading Wars I: Whole Language vs. Phonics

Reading Wars II: Complex Text and Close Reading vs. "Leveled" Text

"leveled literacy programs and related assessments fail to measure up to what the CCSS demands."

Judging from students’ initial experience in a new math course, Georgia’s move to a common core of academic standards shared by 44 other states won’t be painless.

Just under 59 percent did not meet the standard set for an end-of-course test after they took a new algebra course tied to the common core.

"Georgia does not do a good enough job teaching young students the basics of math, a failure that shows up in later years when they are exposed to rigorous material like that found in coordinate algebra. He also said students are expected to retain too much information from a single course."

Long before corporate America began its assault on public schooling, American education was in trouble. Here's why, and what to do about it.

Mathematical literacy is an important skill for the 21st century. Being to to do simple math in your head is useful and important, and we're losing that ability.

"There’s a culture among schoolkids to dislike math and the perception that it’s largely useless."

"...as soon as you fear a subject, or don’t want to learn it, you won’t."

“I just don’t get math.”
“I’ve never been any good at math.”
“I don’t like it.”

One great resource and support for this transition is The Alabama Learning Exchange. This website has practical ideas and examples of alignment and lessons for math and language arts.

A unique training strategy Alabama is implementing is the use of Regional Support Teams.

The Common Core was a hot topic at the ALA midwinter meeting in Seattle, specifically at a standing-room only discussion group where more than 80 librarians gathered to learn more about the new state standards, and to share their own experiences...

The case against testing is remarkably weak

IRA Reading Today Online

by Ruth Culham

February 12, 2013

The 4Ws

• Writing process: the recursive steps writers go through to generate text
• Writing traits: the language used to assess and teach writing
• Writing modes: the purposes for writing
• Writing workshop: the structure of the writing classroom

In all the hubbub about the balance of fiction and nonfiction in the common core, you might well have been hearing less lately about its other expectations. One of those is a renewed focus on the teaching of vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary.

Huge Achievement Gaps

"There is too little teaching of vocabulary in general, and that children in higher-poverty schools tend to get even less of it than those in lower-poverty schools. When you combine that with the recognition that children in higher-poverty schools typically learn fewer words at home, as well, it's easy to see huge gaps taking shape."

by Rick Hess

Straight Up Conversation: Common Core Guru Jason Zimba

Key Indicator of Common Core Math Implementation:

"Until we see fewer topics and a strong focus on arithmetic in elementary grades, we really aren't seeing the standards being implemented."--Jason Zimba

Tim Shanahan on Literacy

• If the issue is teaching reading, then matching text complexity with student reading levels is NOT the issue. That’s where guided reading and similar schemes go wrong.
• Placing students in more challenging books is a good idea because it increases opportunity to learn (there is more to figure out in challenging texts). This is important since our kids do not read effectively at high enough levels.
• Increases in text difficulty levels need to be coordinated with increases in the amounts and quality of scaffolding, support, encouragement, and explanation provided by the teacher.

A great strategy for building vocabulary for any student. Using paint chips, teachers provide students with a visual aid to better understand difficult vocabulary. Covers Common Core for the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words.

The Common Core identifies six instructional shifts needed to effectively implement the standards in ELA/Literacy. Shift 6 suggests an instructional change in the teaching of Academic Vocabulary.

By Peter DeWitt on February 10, 2013 8:17 AM

"Unfortunately, try as we may, many of us who are principals have not had to teach the Common Core State Standards. Perhaps we even taught in grade levels that did not have high stakes testing and never felt the immediate pressure of that type of accountability. We discuss, research, and pontificate about student engagement, but the only ones who can account for our own teaching expertise are our former administrators and students."