Getting Ready for College, Careers, and the Common Core by David T. Conley

Author:David T. Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

An Overview of the Common Core State Standards

Fast-forward to the present, and the Common Core State Standards are here: as of spring 2013, they were adopted by forty-five states and the District of Columbia and were being implemented by most states and a number of districts. What about them is different? What potentialities do they hold? What types of obvious changes will result from their implementation? What are the major challenges they pose? This chapter briefly considers the introductory material in the official standards document. It then presents the structure and organization of the English Language Arts and Mathematics standards and concludes with a discussion of some of the major issues associated with teaching the standards effectively.

One of the first observations that even a casual review of the standards yields is that the English language arts standards are very different in organization and structure from the mathematics standards. This occurred intentionally, if not deliberately, because the two subject area groups worked independently without making decisions based on what the other group was doing. It does make some sense to tailor the structure of standards to the nature of the subject area that the standards reflect. However, in the case of the Common Core State Standards, some differences are harder to explain. This is apparent in the introduction to each. Here, I switch to a somewhat more analytical critique of the introductions.

Most people who want to familiarize themselves with the Common Core State Standards begin by downloading each subject area separately, an approach that does not reinforce the notion of a common core very well. The next step would be to read the introductory section that accompanies each subject area. These sections summarize the views of the standards writers on a range of issues, but offer an uneven presentation of the overarching rationale for the Common Core State Standards that explains why they are necessary, what problem they solve, and what connects the two subject areas.

The English language arts introduction does devote several paragraphs to an overview of who sponsored the standards, the process used to develop them, and a brief concluding paragraph to explain why these standards are needed and which problems they address. This introduction explains key design considerations that shaped the standards and presents the overall structure of the standards. The ELA standards consist of college and career readiness anchor standards as well as specific standards for grades 9 to 12. The intent, the authors explain, is for the two sets to work in tandem to provide sufficient specificity for what constitutes college and career readiness while also guiding instruction and literacy development throughout each year of high school. In this way, the ELA standards are meant to specify what college and career ready means.

Next, the authors explain that the grade K-8 standards are grade specific and that the 9–12 standards are in two-year bands of grades 9 and 10 and grades 11 and 12. They emphasize that the standards are concerned about results, not means; in other words, teachers are free to teach them as they best see fit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.