After taking more than a year to develop and build on a foundation of previously established college and career readiness standards, the Common Core State Standards have now been published.

You should know that…

• The Standards were developed by the Council of Chief State School Officials and the National Governors Association, along with input from numerous teachers, parents, school administrators, business and civil rights leaders, and are designed to replace several uncoordinated currently defined by the states

• Only Texas and Alaska did not participate.

• The standards address English language arts (ELA), history/social studies literacy, science and technical subjects, and mathematics, K-12.

• All are “1) research and evidence based; 2) aligned with job and college expectations; 3) rigorous; and 4) internationally benchmarked.”

• States can add up to 15% of their own standards to fill in the gaps.

If adopted nationally, as is expected, all states, thus all districts, will essentially follow the same curricular guidelines, allowing a child to transition smoothly from, say, a school in the Oklahoma City to one in Philadelphia, without losing ground or repeating much material.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Education is reviewing state applications for the second round of the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant competition. In the first round, Pennsylvania placed seventh; only Tennessee and Delaware won that time. This time, 35 states and the District of Columbia are trying again.

Initially, Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the adoption of national standards a requirement for the implementation of RTTT, but organizations such as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development were wary of such a mandate. As a result, adoption now awards additional points to a state on its application.

Competing in this second round suggests that these 36 applicants are likely to adopt the Standards.

And it behooves all of us to read all of the Standards, which represent “what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade.”

You will find, for example, that instead of a list of required readings, the English Language Arts Standards include an appendix with suggested texts appropriate for each grade level. The exception: High school juniors and seniors are required to study the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and a play by Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, he would also discover, for example, that third graders could describe the characters in a story, sixth graders could compare and contrast various texts, while 11th graders would demonstrate an understanding of 18, 19, and 20. Nineteenth-Century Foundational Works in American Literature.

And when it comes to writing, the standards state, for example, that a fifth grader would successfully write well-supported opinion pieces, while an eighth grader might write arguments based on relevant evidence, and last year could transmit complexes. ideas, concepts and information clearly.

Grades 6-12 Literacy in History/Social Studies and Science/Technical Standards include:

• Identify aspects of a text that reveal the author’s point of view or purpose.

• Analyze an author’s purpose in providing an explanation, describing a procedure, or discussing an experiment in a text, defining the question the author seeks to address.

Meanwhile, the Mathematics Standards include, for example, the expectation that first graders be able to solve word problems that require the addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, while fifth graders graders can handle fractions with unlike denominators, 8th graders can use rational approximations of irrational numbers, and high school students could apply the Remainder Theorem.

Of course, adoption would force states to amend their standardized tests and curricula to align with the Standards. It’s worth it?

Founder and President of the Core Knowledge Foundation and University of Virginia Professor Emeritus of Education and Humanities ED Hirsch, Jr. says, “This is a welcome acknowledgment that only a grade-by-grade, cumulative curriculum focused on a coherent content, can lead to the high level of literacy the nation needs. In short, the Common Core Standards represent a fundamental and long-awaited rethinking of the dominant process approach to literacy instruction in the United States.”

Meanwhile, Walt Gardner, who trained as a teacher and lecturer in the Los Angeles Unified School District at the UCLA Graduate School, is now an educational contributor to major newspapers and magazines. He writes that “National standards are not a panacea for the ills that afflict public education, but they are a step in the right direction. There are always risks involved in an undertaking of this magnitude. worth taking them.”

The bottom line: Developed as they were by experts, these Standards will provide teachers with flexible guidelines they can follow as they develop lesson plans that will meet the needs and interests of their students.

And that’s an advantage, whichever way you look at it.

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