Inside the Instructional Materials Taskforce (Part 1)
By Lisa Goldschmidt, Digital Director, Student Achievement Partners Representatives from six districts from across the United States are embarking on a project that will culminate in their ability to support an instructional materials selection process that trains reviewers to identify alignment to the key shifts of the Common Core State Standards. It can be a […]
Read More →Gates Foundation’s Vicki Phillips: Common Core Momentum II
Vicki Phillips, director of education, college ready at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, continues her discussion about the momentum of the Common Core implementation process on Eduwonk.com. The first part of her discussion – Eduwonk: Gates Foundation’s Vicki Phillips On Common Core Momentum – can be found here. “Stick-to-itiveness. Determination. Tenacity. Grit. These are […]
Read More →Why do CEO’s support the Common Core State Standards? Craig Barrett, former Intel CEO and chairman and current CEO of BASIS Schools – one of the highest-performing charter school systems in the country – speaks candidly about why businesses and higher education benefit from the Common Core in the Journal Sentinel op-ed, “Why CEO’s Support […]
Eduwonk: Gates Foundation’s Vicki Phillips On Common Core Momentum
Vicki Phillips, director of education, college ready at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, offers a compelling and supportive piece about the implementation of the Common Core State Standards on Eduwonk.com. Phillips provides a clear picture on the Gates Foundation’s position on the importance of accountability, thoughtful implementation, and high-stakes consequences – all in support […]
Read More →Transforming Teaching through Collaborative Practice
By Katherine Bassett, CEO of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY)
Teaching is often referred to as the most isolated of professions. In fact, many teachers remain inside their classrooms with little to no interaction with their colleagues during the day.
Yet collaboration is essential for learning, and the Common Core State Standards demand that teachers teach through collaborative practice models, requiring students to work in groups, building problem-solving and collaboration skills. In addition, we know that new teachers grow best through collaboration and mentoring in order to become effective and to persist in a challenging profession.
As states and school districts across the country focus on effective teaching as a strategy to improve student achievement, we must find new ways to increase opportunities for collaborative practice. In some cases, this may mean changing the very structure of school.
Read More →Quality Resources to Implement the Mathematics Common Core Standards
By Ellen Whitesides, Illustrative Mathematics
One of the greatest challenges right now in the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics is determining the quality of resources, materials, and professional learning that claim to be aligned to the standards. Illustrative Mathematics is a website and growing community focused on illustrating the standards with high quality tasks reviewed by a math expert as well as a classroom expert. Illustrative mathematics is building a community of expertise that writes and reviews tasks, discusses tasks and standards, and works together to better understand strong mathematics instruction.
The idea of Illustrative Mathematics came from the writing of the Common Core Standards. The author team envisioned example tasks to clarify the meaning and nuances of standards but these examples were not finished in time for the publication of the standards document. These examples became the basis for Bill McCallum’s project, The Illustrative Mathematics Project. The project aimed to illustrate the standards with tasks, and at the same time give recognition to the difficult art of task writing and reviewing. The community worked together to determine the necessary pieces of a good task, and formulated criteria for task reviews. As tasks were discussed, reviewed, edited, and revised expertise developed within the community, and The Illustrative Mathematics Project grew into its current form, Illustrative Mathematics. Illustrative Mathematics images a world where people know, use, and enjoy mathematics and we are collaborating together as a community to create that world.
Read More →All Students Deserve the Full Benefit of Math and English Assessments
By Rick Miller, Executive Director, California Office to Reform Education (CORE)
Transitioning from California’s old standards to the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) over the past three years has been both exciting and challenging. Implementing an assessment system that is aligned to the new standards is a critical next step in this process as it will provide both accountability and important information to our teachers and administrators.
To address this need, California’s Governor signed a bill last month that eliminates the multiple choice standardized tests in reading, math, and social science that California public school students have been taking since 1999. Assembly Bill (AB) 484 replaces these pencil-and-paper exams with new computer-based adaptive tests. The new assessment system, called the California Measurement of Academic Progress and Performance (CalMAPP), includes the Smarter Balanced CCSS-aligned assessments for English language arts and mathematics.
Read More →N.C. Takes A Sound, Balanced Approach to Student Performance and Teacher Assessment
By The Hunt Team
The North Carolina State Board of Education has taken a bold approach to accurately measuring student performance while sensibly delaying high-stakes school and teacher evaluation changes based on new test results.
Across the state, North Carolina teachers have been hard at work teaching their students to new, more rigorous standards. Last school year, students were assessed against these standards for the first time. Scores typically drop when new tests are introduced, and as expected, lower student scores on the 2012-2013 tests reflect the more challenging standards and assessments. It’s not that students are performing worse—they aren’t —they are just being measured against a higher bar.
Read More →Ten Big Takeaways from CEP’s Research on State Implementation of the Common Core
By Diane Stark Rentner, Deputy Director, Center on Education Policy, The George Washington University
In the late winter/early spring of this year, the Center on Education Policy at the George Washington University surveyed state education agency (SEA) officials in the 45 states and DC that have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in math and/or English language arts (ELA). Forty of these CCSS-adopting states participated in the CEP survey, which covered a wide range of issues, including general implementation efforts, opposition to the CCSS, activities to prepare for CCSS-aligned assessments, and the challenges that states face. Altogether, CEP issued six reports based on the survey data. Here are the ten big takeaways from this extensive research:
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