College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

As full implementation of Common Core State Standards nears, educators are searching for answers to three questions: 1) What are the CC State Standards? 2) How will they change what I do?

by Catherine Gewertz

A year ago, 18 states reported not having a completed plan in any of the three areas. This year's survey found only three states in that situation. Forty-four states have fully developed plans in at least one area, compared with 28 in the 2011 study. Twenty-one states have completed plans in all three areas, an accomplishment only seven could claim at the time of the 2011 survey.

Eye on Education

Lauren Davis

When I was a teacher, it was common practice to ask students for their personal responses to literature. I did that a lot in my classroom as a way t...

by Catherine Gewertz

International Baccalaureate educators say their program offers a base for designing curriculum units that align with the new Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English/language arts.

Whole Child Education

Consistency in the knowledge and skills taught in schools across the country promises to reduce barriers to students and families. It will greatly benefit students who find themselves in different schools throughout their educational life.

By E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

As someone who has studied how to best use the early years to close achievement gaps and give all children an opportunity to live happy, productive, engaged lives, I am also a supporter of the CCSS.

By Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Education Next

The assessment questions that weigh most heavily on my mind these days, however, involve “cut scores.” For if the Common Core is truly intended to yield high school graduates who are college and career ready, its assessments must be calibrated to passing scores that colleges and employers will accept as the levels of skill and knowledge that their entrants truly need to possess.

It is exactly this “close reading” that Common Core supporters hope will usher in a new era of reading instruction—one where teachers select grade-appropriate texts for all students; where they have students read and reread those texts—perhaps more times than even makes sense or feels comfortable—to support deep comprehension and analysis; and where they push students to engage in the text itself—in the author’s words, not in how those words make us feel.

Tom Friedman

Nothing has more potential to let us reimagine higher education than massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms.

I have been writing about this dispute for a while now; for a refresher, see my stories here andhere, and my blog posts here, here, and here. My latest story on this fiction/nonfiction dispute just went up on our website.

Achieve, an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit education reform organization based in Washington, D.C., in partnership with College Summit and whole child partners National Association of Secondary School Principals and National Association of Elementary School Principals, has released new guides to help elementary school leaders, secondary school leaders, andschool counselors support Common Core State Standards implementation. The guides provide explanations, talking points, and action steps that school leaders and counselors can begin to put into practice in their schools today in the following areas:

• Culture
• Literacy instruction
• Text complexity and informational text
• Close reading and text-based response
• Writing across content areas
• Mathematics instruction
• Student engagement and collaboration
• Instructional time
• Create-and-learn versus sit-and-get
• Professional learning
• Assessment
• Technology integration

Learning Unlimited

• Turning Promise into Practice a compendium edited by Robert Probst & others

• When Kids Can’t Read—What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers

• Readicide  by Kelly Gallagher

• Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? by Chris Tovani

• The Reading Zone by Nancy Atwell

• Nonfiction Matters  by Stephanie Harvey

• Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys by Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm

• Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males  by Alfred Tatum

State-level education officials have been setting academic standards for students in their own states since the late 1980s. As a result, education policy observers say, wide disparities between different state standards developed, making comparison of national performance data difficult.

Futurity.org

Research news from leading universities

MICHIGAN STATE / U. MICHIGAN (US) —Kindergarteners aren’t learning enough new words to prepare them for long-term reading comprehension, say researchers.

Turnitin has released Source Educational Evaluation Rubric, an evaluation tool designed to help writing students determine the academic quality of the Internet sources cited in their research papers.