Common Core Standards Released
A Colorado School (1915). Source: Library of Congress
On Wednesday, June 2, 2010, the Common Core Standards for English and mathematics were released.
They can be downloaded from this web page: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards.
Sam Dillon of the New York Times writes,
The standards, which took a year to write, have been tweaked and refined in recent weeks in response to some of the 10,000 comments the public sent in after a draft was released in March….
The new standards were written by English and math experts convened last year by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. They are laid out in two documents: Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, and Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects. With three appendices, the English standards run to nearly 600 pages.
As I pointed out in March 2010, the appearance of standards is a significant development, however the mere existence of standards does not mean that either national standards or standard-based reform has actually arrived. States will have to develop curricula and tests to align with the standards. Historically, this is not something they have been good at. States also will continue to have a strong incentive to dumb tests and their achievement benchmarks down (i.e., getting 60% correct on the test constitutes “proficient”) in order to avoid the appearance of having failing schools.
Source: Sam Dillon, “States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education,” New York Times, June 2, 2010, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/education/03standards.html.
