Common standards: California must race to adopt them by Aug. 2
Published: June 8, 2010
For better or worse, ready or not, California is on the hook to consider adoption of common core academic standards in English language arts and math released last week by the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a project of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. California committed to accept or reject the standards in legislation passed earlier this year to boost the state’s score on its application for the federal Race to the Top grant.
The common standards movement, originally a voluntary, state-led effort to establish more consistent expectations for student learning, shifted into hyperdrive when Race to the Top set an August deadline for adoption of such standards.
The new standards outline a progressive pattern of specific knowledge and skills that aim to prepare students to succeed on the job and in college. They draw in part from standards used in areas such as Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore that perform well on internationally benched tests of academic performance.
Since California’s own academic standards have long been touted as among the nation’s best, the concern is that adopting the common core could dilute the rigor of the state’s current standards. Yet, by legislation and two RTTT applications, the state has agreed to accept or reject the common core by Aug. 2. The State Board of Education is the entity that will make the formal decision, advised by a state-authorized Academic Content Standards Commission authorized by legislation intended to boost California’s chances in the RTTT competition. The panel will have to work quickly, as the State Board’s only meeting between now and the Aug. 2 deadline is July 14-15.
California: Committed to common core?
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell praised the standards upon their release June 2, acknowledging that the world has changed profoundly since California adopted its academic standards in 1997. “This clearly defined and well-articulated staircasing of student skills will help accelerate improvement in student performance and close the achievement gap,” he said in a statement.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite having twice committed the state to adopting the common core, remains somewhat ambivalent in his public comments. The standards commission, he said in a statement, will “consider” the common core standards and make recommendations to “ensure” California’s standards are at least as rigorous. His press secretary, Aaron McLear, told reporters last week that the purpose of the commission is “to find out if these core standards make sense for California.”
The state’s new standards commission is composed of 10 members chosen by the state Senate and Assembly leaders and 11 by the governor. Schwarzenegger named his appointments only after the standards were released, and included one outspoken critic of the common core: Ze’ev Wurman, who recently concluded in a white paper that “no one knows whether Common Core’s standards will raise student achievement in all performance categories, simply preserve an unacceptable academic status quo, or actually reduce the percentage of high-achieving high school students in states that adopt them.”
The governor’s appointees also include the lone school board member on the panel: Gregory Geeting, who serves on the Sacramento County Office of Education board. The common core standards themselves are designed to comprise only 85 percent of a state’s standards, with the remaining 15 percent open to state prerogatives.
The National School Boards Association applauded the release of the standards but said they “should be voluntary by the states and not mandated as a condition for receiving federal education program funds.”
The standards themselves
Key aspects of the English standards are a “staircasing” of increasingly complex writings meant to help students develop the critical thinking skills they will need in college or in the workplace. Designed to build toward the college- and career-ready standards the CCSI developed last year, the proposed K-12 standards address reading, writing, speaking and listening, language, and media and technology.
The math standards progressively build a foundation for learning algebra in the eighth grade and provide guidance to help K-5 teachers do a better job conveying math concepts. One criticism of the math standards, however, is that in high school they are not linked to specific courses such as Algebra II or geometry, but rather deal with conceptual categories including number and quantity, functions, modeling and statistics, and probability which cross over a number of courses.
Assuming the SBE acts by the deadline, the process of creating curriculum frameworks and adopting instructional materials will begin immediately. In a February policy update, CSBA advises local governance teams to monitor the SBE’s actions and participate in the process if they wish.
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