Common Core State Standards

Conservatives hate Common Core. The rest of America? Who knows.

Scott Clement at the Washington Post has a good post on the status of Common Core and the challenges ahead. Some highlights...

• Support for Common Core in polls ranged from 33 percent to 59 percent in a single month in 2014.

• Americans support the broad goals of Common Core ... [but] The more people say they have heard about the program, the more they oppose it.

Common Core State Standards

The anchor standards define college and career readiness, in part, as the ability to integrate and evaluate content present in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Who Is Fighting Against Common Core?

U.S. News has a great article outlining why groups on all ends of the political spectrum are opposing Common Core Standards. The reasons range from states rights & local control to a recruiting tool for home schooling to a dislike of standardized evaluations.

The article also points out that while teachers like the standards, "they complain the curriculum, created without teacher input, is inflexible, its installation has been disorganized, and administrators and parents will blame them if student test scores implode."

Parent Guides to Common Core

The California PTA Association has a set of web pages outlining what Common Core is (and is not), why it matters, and breaks the requirements down grade-by-grade. Your state may have similar resources.

Website helping Arizona schools prep for Common Core

This news article talks about resources used by small school districts in Arizona. Check with your administrators and colleges about resources for your state.

Standards Movement in American Education - Governors Take the Initiative

An interesting article on how we got to where we are today -- looking at the options taken and not taken. It concludes with a look at the future of the Standards Movement.

Next Generation Science Standards ("NGSS")

In addition to Common Core, there are other standards in the works out there.

The Next Generation Science Standards ("NGSS") were developed by twenty-six states, in collaboration with partners (sounds familiar). It will be coming on-line over the next few years.