A majority of education philanthropies see the Common Core State Standards as the most significant policy development in the field today, new survey results show, but the share of them providing grants to advance implementation is not keeping pace with that sentiment. At the same time, the data, drawn from a recent survey of nearly 200 philanthropies nationwide, suggest that a growing number of foundations—24 percent—are currently providing grants to support common-core work or plan to do so.

This is nearly double the 13 percent who said they were supporting common-core efforts when asked a year earlier, in 2011, as part of the annual survey from Grantmakers for Education. On the latest, 2012 survey, 58 percent said they have no plans to fund implementation efforts.

Chris Tebben, the executive director of Grantmakers for Education, said she was surprised at the level of consensus about the common core's significance, especially given that it was cited in reaction to an open-response question about trends in education.

"It was almost stunning how prevalent the awareness was of common core as the most significant trend," she said. "Usually when you poll 200 grantmakers from all over the country, you see much more spread across the issues."

(The report does not provide a precise figure for the share of respondents who cited the common core, since this was an open-ended response question, but I'm told it's safe to say a majority of them did so.)

The new report says "many respondents believed the new standards represent a unique opportunity for transforming education. ... They noted that the new standards will require both districts and states to implement comprehensive changes at a time of reduced budgets and saw an important supporting role for philanthropy."

Tebben said it was striking that the share of philanthropies providing grants for common-core work does not match this widespread sentiment, but she believes more of them will get active over time.

"That was a leading indicator for where you will see response from philanthropy a year from now," she predicted.

The new report, "Benchmarking 2012: Trends in Education Philanthropy," also probes the kinds of support for the common core provided by foundations. Most popular was professional development for teachers and principals. Least popular was direct student support or tutoring. Here's a breakdown:

• Professional development (74 percent)
• Public awareness and communications (49 percent)
• Creation of new curricular and instructional materials (44 percent)
• Public policy and public-will building (40 percent)
• New-teacher preparation (35 percent)
• New assessments (30 percent)
• Higher education systems alignment (21 percent)
• Student support or tutoring (12 percent)

More than half the grantmakers supporting common-core implementation are what the report calls "local funders" that are providing grants locally or within one or two states. Another 7 percent are regional funders, while 38 percent are national.

Although the report does not list the philanthropies that provide grants related to the common core, those that have recently provided such support include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, the GE Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (Full disclosure: Education Week's news coverage is supported in part by grants from the Gates, GE, and Hewlett foundations.)

Tebben argues that philanthropies are in a good position to advance the common core.

"The implementation of common core is so well-suited to a role for philanthropy," she said. "First off, you have districts, schools, and states working on a massive change-management process, at a time when their resources are being cut."

She suggested that philanthropy can play a variety of roles, including building public awareness and support for the standards; backing initiatives to better align efforts across sectors, such as K-12 and higher education; fueling professional development; and scaling up promising programs and practices that can be shared not just within states but across the nation.

The 198 grantmaking organizations that responded to the latest survey include a mix of philanthropies, from private, family, and corporate foundations to corporate-giving programs and public charities.

There's plenty more information beyond the common core in this fifth annual report, which provides a helpful sketch of the funding priorities among education philanthropies, and how the field is evolving over time.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The public-comment period has opened on two key pieces of a policy that will govern how accommodations are designed for tests on the Common Core State Standards.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, has posted two portions of a forthcoming accommodations manual on a special page of its website. The two draft policies deal with calculator accommodations for its mathematics test, and reading accommodations for its English/language arts test. The test, as you probably know already, is slated to be given in 2014-15.

PARCC, one of the two consortia of states designing tests for the common standards, is soliciting feedback on these pieces of its accommodations manual through Feb. 4. It will seek feedback on another portion, dealing with writing accommodations, in the coming weeks. The complete manual, which will include far more, will be put out for comment this spring.

For a refresher, read our earlier blog post about these two pieces of PARCC's accommodations policy. We reported some praise for the draft policies, but also some serious concerns about their potential to narrow the field of children eligible for accommodations on tests.

The page of PARCC's website that contains the draft policies also has links to a graphic showing what they cover and what will be covered in the forthcoming, broader manual. It also links to a white paper co-authored by Martha Thurlow that helped shape the policies. Last but not least, there is a link to the online tool that will collect public comment.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Tests now being designed for the common standards are likely to gauge deeper levels of learning and have a major impact on classroom instruction, according to a study of the common assessments released today.

UCLA's National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards & Student Testing, or CRESST, analyzed the work done so far by the two consortia of states designing the tests. The center concludes that the assessments hold a lot of promise for improving teacher practice and student learning. But its report also cautions that the test-making projects face key financial, technical, and political challenges that could affect their success.

With the "essential relationship between what is assessed and what is taught" in mind, co-authors Joan Herman and Robert Linn sought to explore the extent to which the common assessments will gauge "deeper learning." Their study was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (which also provides support for Education Week's coverage of deeper learning).

In examining the potential rigor of the coming tests, Herman and Linn were guided by Norman Webb's "depth of knowledge" classification system, which assigns four levels to learning, from Level 1, which features basic comprehension and recall of facts and terms, to Level 4, which involves extended analysis, investigation, or synthesis. Herman and Linn examined the work so far of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium for signs that they would demand the kinds of learning at Levels 3 and 4 of the so-called "DOK" framework.

The researchers found reason for optimism that the assessments will demand those skills. They singled out, in particular, the more lengthy, complex performance tasks being crafted by the two groups, saying they seemed likely to assess skills at DOK Level 4.

"It appears that the consortia are moving testing practice forward substantially in representing deeper learning, but the nature of available data make it difficult to determine precisely the extent of the change," since the tests are still in the design phase, the study says.

Herman and Linn noted a RAND study from last year that examined released items from 17 states reputed to have challenging exams and found "depth of knowledge" levels overwhelmingly in the 1s and 2s in mathematics, and those in English/language arts a bit more rigorous. While the unfinished work of the two consortia can't be directly compared with existing state tests, they said, the two groups still appear to be on track to creating tests that are more rigorous than what most states currently administer.

Important questions remain, however, about how well the two consortia's plans will be realized, the study says. Among them:

• Maintaining their performance tasks, in the face of pressure from states concerned about cost and time. As we reported earlier, SBAC has already had to grapple with this pressure from some of its members.

• Making automated scoring possible for constructed-response items and performance tasks. Without it, current $20-per-student projected costs for the summative tests could soar.

• Ensuring the comparability of the with-accommodations and without-accommodations versions of the tests.

• Managing the "shock to the public and to teachers' instructional practice" that the tests' increased intellectual rigor will demand.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With all the talk in education circles these days about "college and career readiness," it may come as little surprise that the issue is now being raised in the context of the common standards for science under development.

In fact, an appendix to the draft of the Next Generation Science Standards issued last week takes a stab at defining the concept. The document suggests that while college and career readiness (CCR) may be familiar terrain in math and English/language arts, that's not the case for science.

To address the matter, the nonprofit group Achieve (which is helping to oversee development of the new science standards) convened experts in scientific disciplines, science education, and workforce readiness to explore the matter. They sought to take into account the context provided as a result of the common-core standards, while "acknowledging the unique nature of science and its increasingly critical role in the future of our society and economy," the appendix says.

The draft identifies five dimensions of CCR. Students who are college- and career-ready in science can demonstrate evidence of:

• Applying a blend of science and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas to make sense of the world and approach problems not previously encountered by the student, new situations, new phenomena, and new information.


• Carrying out self-directed planning, monitoring, and evaluation.


• Applying knowledge more flexibly across various disciplines through the continual exploration of science and engineering practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas.


• Employing valid and reliable research strategies.


• Exhibiting evidence of the effective transfer of mathematics and disciplinary literacy skills to science.

I should note that one thorny issue around college and career readiness is the blending of those two dimensions into one definition. In other words, does someone really need the same skills and knowledge for a career as for college? (The draft references a definition of "career ready" from the common core that is focused on "preparation for entry-level positions in quality jobs and career pathways that often require further education and training.") Suffice to say that some experts have questioned this premise. My colleague and co-blogger Catherine Gewertz has explored this issue from time to time on this blog. In fact, last summer she described a meeting around the development of common assessments where the discussion was ostensibly on both college AND career readiness, but virtually all the conversation was squarely about college preparation.

Leaving that issue aside, the appendix points to some significant differences between CCR in science, and in math and English/language arts. It notes that research on the latter is "quite robust," but it is "still primitive" when it comes to the former content.

In fact, one challenge for science is that some measures often used for defining CCR don't apply in this subject. The appendix says that with the Common Core State Standards, "college ready" indicated preparation for credit-bearing coursework in two- or four-year institutions without the need for remediation and with a strong chance for earning credit toward a degree.

So, what's the problem? For one, there are very few remediation courses for science in universities, colleges, and technical schools, the appendix explains. Most students enroll straight away in credit-bearing courses in science because there are no real alternatives. Also, most postsecondary options don't include a placement test to determine the appropriate level of science course to enroll in. Furthermore, the role of science in college and careers is changing "dramatically," the appendix says.

As I noted on this blog the other day, on the college side, the appendix makes clear that higher education is moving beyond an emphasis on learning content. "A transformation in college science education is under way, informed by how students learn," it says. [W]hat is taught will be much more than content. College science and engineering education will tend toward disciplinary intersections, focus on core concepts, and integrate practices into instruction."

As with the latest draft standards themselves, the appendix on college and career readiness (one of 11 appendices!) is also considered a draft, and organizers tell me they are inviting feedback to help revise it. So if you have opinions on the topic, there's still time to weigh in.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

U.S. student achievement looks more favorable on the global stage when comparisons take into account the especially large share of American adolescents who come from disadvantaged social backgrounds, concludes a study released today by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute. The gap, for instance, between U.S. students and those from top-scoring nations on one prominent global assessment would be cut in half in reading and by at least one-third in math, the study says, if statistical adjustments were made for social class.

In addition, the study finds that while the achievement of disadvantaged U.S. students has been "rising rapidly over time," test scores for such students in some nations to which the United States is frequently compared, such as Finland and South Korea, have been "falling rapidly."

The research, which draws on reading and math results spanning a decade or more on two high-profile international assessments, seeks to go beyond the average national test scores widely discussed and debated to better gauge how countries are educating particular groups of students, especially those who tend to face the biggest academic challenges.

"Education reformers frequently invoke the relatively poor performance of U.S. students to justify school policy changes," write co-authors Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, and Martin Carnoy, an education professor at Stanford. But those conclusions draw on comparisons that are "oversimplified, frequently exaggerated, and misleading. They ignore the complexity of test results and may lead policymakers to pursue inappropriate and even harmful reforms."

Central to the new research is the premise that, in every country, students at the bottom of what the researchers call the "social-class distribution" perform worse, on average, than students higher in that distribution. And so, the U.S. average is brought down relative to some other nations with which the United States is frequently compared "because we have so many more test-takers from the bottom of the social-class distribution."

The study focuses on achievement in the United States and six other countries. They include three high-fliers on global comparisons—Canada, Finland, and South Korea—as well as three "similar post-industrial countries": France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The study comes as a fresh batch of international achievement data was issued in December on TIMSS, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and PIRLS, the Program for International Reading Literacy Study. Here's the EdWeek coverage on the new global data.

The authors say that "social-class inequality" is greater in the United States than in "any of the countries with which we can reasonably be compared." As a result, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is "better than it appears when countries' national average performance is conventionally compared."

Before I proceed, I want to briefly explain how the authors examined social status. They did not draw on family income, race/ethnicity, or parent education level to distinguish social-class groups. Instead, they relied on the number of books in adolescents' homes. "We consider that children in different countries have similar social-class backgrounds if their homes have similar numbers of books," they explain. Although the authors concede that the measure may be imperfect, they contend that this "indicator of household literacy is plausibly relevant to student academic performance, and it has been used frequently for this purpose by social scientists." They ultimately divided the population into six social-class groups, from least to most advantaged.

"This is the first time I think anybody has done a cross-country comparison with social-class disaggregation," Rothstein told me.

On PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, the analysis found the picture for U.S. 15-year-olds improved considerably when taking into account social class. As mentioned above, the gap with top-scoring nations, in this case Canada, Finland, and South Korea, closed by half in reading and about one-third in math. However, the data do not change the global picture altogether. At all points in the social-class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in Canada, Finland, and South Korea, the study says. (You can find EdWeek's overview of the 2009 findings here.)

"Although controlling for social-class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it," the study says.

A table in the study illustrates the differences in social-class distribution across the seven countries on PISA in 2009. It finds that 20 percent of U.S. students were in the lowest social-class group, below all others. Here's the data for the rest: Canada (9 percent), Finland (6 percent), South Korea (5 percent), France (15 percent), Germany (12 percent), and the United Kingdom (14 percent).

The authors also identify what they call an "apparent flaw" in the 2009 U.S. PISA sampling methodology that "probably reduced the reported average score of students in the bottom social class." Rothstein told me that officials from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which oversees PISA, were consulted about this situation and did not dispute it. As Rothstein explained to me, 40 percent of the U.S. sample for PISA in 2009 was drawn from schools in which at least half of all students are eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch. In other words, the U.S. sample included what the report calls a "disproportionate number of disadvantaged students who were enrolled in schools with unusually large concentrations of such students." (That said, the U.S. sample did include disadvantaged students in "appropriate proportion to their actual representation.")

[UPDATE: (3:45 p.m.) Since I published this blog post, I heard from an official at the National Center for Education Statistics, who said there was no sampling error as described above on PISA, and who also disputed how Rothstein characterized the reaction from OECD to this matter. OECD officials "refuted Rothstein's mistake very strongly," said Daniel McGrath, the director of the international-activities program at the National Center for Education Statistics, in an email. McGrath said Rothstein and Carnoy did not use the right data sources in making their claim about the extent to which students in high-poverty public schools were tested. "They had the wrong year and they compared mismatched data sources," McGrath writes. "The PISA sample did not have a disproportionate number of high-poverty schools." McGrath said there are "myriad other problems with this paper," which are addressed in a six-page letter the OECD sent to the authors. Since McGrath contacted me, I also heard back from Rothstein, who shared this response to the OECD letter.]

The researchers paid special attention to educational achievement in Finland, a nation that has been heralded as a global leader in schooling for its strong performance on PISA. (As I recently discovered, however, Finland's results are not as strong on TIMSS in math. In fact, in that subject, the national average is not statistically different from the United States'.)

Although the study finds that math and reading scores in Finland are higher for every social-class group than in the United States on PISA, its scores have been falling for the most disadvantaged students while U.S. scores have been improving for students from a similar social background.

"This should lead to greater caution in applying presumed lessons from Finland," the study says.

There is a ton of data and analysis to mine in this new report, and my blog post only scratches the surface. I'll close by returning to the issue of methodology. In the end, the authors concede that some dimensions of their research strategy, with its focus on disadvantaged students as judged by their access to books at home, may be debated.

"Scholars and policymakers may choose different approaches," they write. "We are only certain of this: To make judgments only on the basis of statistically significant differences in national average scores, on only one test, at only one point in time, without regard to social-class context or curricular- or population-sampling methodologies, is the worst possible choice. But, unfortunately, this is how most policymakers and analysts approach the field."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Children are embracing e-books by the millions, but most say they still would choose the printed version, according to a survey released today.

Scholastic's biennial survey of children from 6-17 years old found e-books soaring in popularity: 46 percent of the 1,074 children surveyed said they had read an e-book, compared with 25 percent who said they had in 2010.

The e-book-reading numbers vary by only a few percentage points by gender or age group. But boys were slightly more likely to say that since they started reading e-books, they're reading more books overall.

Half of the children said they'd read more books for fun if they had better access to e-books. And it's clear that children are doing the lion's share of e-book reading at home, rather than in school: Three quarters of the children who have read an e-book have done so at home; only one-quarter said they had read an e-book in school.

E-books are particularly good when students are traveling or on the go, they told researchers, or when they don't want their friends to know what they're reading.

But print books clearly still have a big place in children's lives. Their responses showed that 80 percent of the books they read for fun are in print. They also prefer the printed form over the e-book for reading at bedtime or sharing with friends, the study found.

Fifty-eight percent of the children said they will always want to read books printed on paper even if e-books are available. Two-thirds of children gave the same response in 2010.

Asked about the benefits of e-books, children and parents most frequently cited the convenience of carrying all their books around in one place, and obtaining books wherever they are. Among the e-book attributes they like the most are dictionaries, built-in note-taking and highlighting features, and skill-building activities.

Print books, on the other hand, got high marks from children and parents for not needing batteries, the ease of seeing how much of a book has been read. Children, in particular, cited liking the to hold a print book more than an electronic device. Parents cited liking to "get away from technology."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With a second and final draft of common science standards issued on Tuesday, this is a critical time as the writers come into the home stretch. I have not gathered a lot of feedback yet from the field, mainly because several experts I contacted said they needed more time to digest the latest iteration. After all, this is a large and complicated document (and includes 11 appendices).

Earlier this week, we published an overview of the new draft of the Next Generation Science Standards. And the main theme of that story was change, lots of change, I was told, from the first public draft issued in May. The organizers say they received comment from more than 10,000 individuals and organizations.

A helpful resource to quickly digest the scope of change is Appendix B, an eight-page summary that highlights the main strands of feedback since May and key changes, organizing critiques into 10 themes. They include concern that there was too much material covered, suggestions for inclusion of still more topics, a perceived lack of clarity in the performance expectations, and complaints about a lack of specificity in making connections to standards in other subjects.

The most consistent comment I've heard so far is some disappointment that the public only has three weeks to provide comment. This is especially challenging for those organizations trying to bring a variety of voices into a coherent response.

Below, I'll share some of the early feedback I've received. Before I do, just a reminder about authorship. He's a more detailed primer on who is writing the science standards, but the short version is that 26 "lead state partners" are working with a variety of experts in science and education, and are being guided by a framework developed by a National Research Council committee.

Fidelity to NRC Framework

I spoke yesterday with Helen Quinn, who chaired that NRC panel and is a professor emeritus of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University. Quinn cautioned that she needed for time to give a more thorough review, but her preliminary impression was generally positive.

"My impression is that they've tightened it a lot since the previous draft," said Quinn. "I like the direction it's moved. It's really been built off the framework."

Quinn said that one concern she had with the first draft was the dimension that explicitly identified "cross-cutting concepts" in science. (Basically, for each standard, there are performance expectations, followed by a set of "foundation" boxes that expand on and explain those expectations in relation to three dimensions: cross-cutting concept statements; science and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas.)

"In the first draft, the idea of cross-cutting concepts was kind of stuffed in there," she said. "And they've done quite a bit of work to improve that and to make clearer what is intended."

Asked about the rigor of the standards, Quinn said they are indeed challenging. "It's very hard to look at these standards and say you're lowering the bar. They're very demanding. The fact that they don't teach the Periodic Table in the 4th grade doesn't mean they're lowering the bar."

But she argued that the real power of the standards comes in the merging of content knowledge with scientific practices and investigation skills. "Yes, of course, there is knowledge students need, but emphasizing knowing detailed facts as the outcome of learning is out of place in the modern world where access to knowledge is easy. ... Access to understanding is not easy. What you need is a context in which to put your facts, to apply that knowledge and use it in context."

Big Lift Ahead on Professional Development

I also spoke with Jacob Clark Blickenstaff, the director of teacher education programs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit organization for physicists in academia, business, and at national laboratories. Although he said he had not yet read the document closely enough to comment on the changes from the first round, he made one key observation based on the physics-related content that will be expected of teachers.

"The amount of physics content expected of elementary and middle school teachers to teach is quite a bit," he told me. "I haven't seen anything in my quick reading that shows any less material."

"So we see an awful lot of professional development necessary to really fully implement these standards for teachers, and probably changes to preparation. Otherwise, we'll be asking people to do something they're not prepared to do, and that's not fair to the teachers and not fair to their students."

As we talked, he turned quickly to a 1st grade standard, Waves: Light and Sound. The third of five performance expectations says: "Record and communicate observations that some very hot objects give off their own light." The next one says: "Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that vibrating matter creates sound and that sound can cause matter to vibrate."

Blickenstaff explained: "On the surface, those sound really easy to do, but to have the teacher do something that is meaningful for students, not simply following a recipe, the teacher needs to understand some fundamental physical-science principles. ... As soon as a student asks a question that isn't there in the manual, I worry about how well the teacher is prepared to [address] it."

Blickenstaff said he helped to organize a response to the first draft from the American Physical Society that brought together experts in physics and physics education. While they did share a number of concerns with the first draft, on the issue of content coverage he said: "We did not have any specific topics that we thought were glaringly absent."

To be clear, you're likely to find few people who believe the professional-development challenge of the science standards is not a big one. Indeed, in my story I quote both Stephen Pruitt from Achieve (he's overseeing the standards-development process) and Peter McLaren, a standards writer and president of the Council of State Science Supervisors, saying as much. Also, the National Science Teachers Association emphasized the same point in its statement on the new draft.

Engineering in the Standards

Meanwhile, on how the standards handle engineering, I'll include some quick reaction from Elizabeth Parry at North Carolina State University. Parry is the university's coordinator of K-20 STEM partnership development and also the chairwoman of the K-12 and precollege division of the American Society for Engineering Education. She apparently had some deep concerns with the first draft, but was more upbeat this time.

"My first reaction is pretty positive," she wrote in an email, highlighting in particular Appendix F and Appendix I, which both concern engineering. "It seems the writers and Achieve really heard and considered the feedback from the engineering education community, and these two engineering-focused parts reflect that."

She said: "The distinctions and interdependence of science, engineering, and technology discussed in Appendix I are much clearer in my opinion. The additional detail in Appendix F when discussing the cross-cutting practices are more realistic in terms of higher expectations in lower grades. ... And finally, engineering habits of mind including systems thinking, ethics, collaboration, and communication, as well as other hallmarks of engineering design such as trade-offs and optimization, iteration, and a hint of the need for students to be allowed to experience failure and then have the opportunity to improve, are more specific in this draft."

College and Career Readiness

Susan Singer, a biology professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., who also is a member of the state team for Minnesota (a lead state partner), highlighted to me the new appendix in the latest draft that seeks to define college and career readiness in science.

"Many people in K-12 still have a conception that the best way to get kids ready for college is to have them sit still and listen to lectures," she told me. But Singer said a core driver behind the new standards is to move past that mindset. The draft appendix notes that a "transformation in college science education is underway, informed by how students learn." And it makes the case that this shift needs to be reflected at the K-12 level.

"[W]hat is taught will be much more than content," the draft appendix says. "College science and engineering education will tend toward disciplinary intersections, focus on core concepts, and integrate practices into instruction. The [Next Generation Science Standards] will prepare students for this college of tomorrow."

With regard to the standards, Singer said she's encouraged by their evolution since the first draft. "I'm really excited. My take-home lesson is it's really at this point become a community-built document, and the input from the community has made it stronger and better. It's more focused, eliminating some performance expectations, and staying true to focus on what's really core."

Will New Standards Change Instruction?

Finally, I got an email from Eric Bluh, a physics teacher at Ballard High School in Seattle, who offered a skeptical take on the standards more broadly.

"Call me a skeptic, but we've had 'standards' in science teaching for more than 15 years," wrote Bluh. "We had years where it was the sole focus of professional development. So what? Did they make a big change? ... Have they made much difference INSIDE the classroom? Not really. So I am underwhelmed."

I'll be returning in coming days with more analysis and feedback on the standards, but this at least starts to give a flavor for reaction from the field.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A set of new guides to the Common Core State Standards offers a solution, of sorts, to a brewing controversy about the balance of fiction and nonfiction in U.S. classrooms. "Informational text" doesn't have to displace fiction, the guides say, if the overall amount of reading students do increases "dramatically."

The "action guides" are meant to help counselors and school principals put the common standards into practice. Issued by Achieve, College Summit, and the two groups that represent elementary- and secondary-level principals, the guides include a primer on the standards, talking points, and an array of tips.

But in exploring the instructional shifts in the standards, they also offer common-core advocates' answer to teachers who are worried that assigning a much heftier chunk of nonfiction will force them to drop cherished parts of their literary canon.

"A shift to more informational text does not mean an abandonment of nonfiction or literature," the guides say. "Because literacy is now a shared responsibility among all teachers, reading should dramatically increase in all content areas. While English teachers may use more informational text, students may actually read more literature not less."

The booklets also downplay the immensity of the shift to nonfiction for older students, choosing not to repeat the part of the shift that has sparked the strongest reaction: that 70 percent of what students read in high school should be informational text. All three guides—even the one for high school principals—mention only the elementary-level balance: fifty-fifty.

"Balancing informational and literary text [in grades preK-5], students read a true balance of informational and literary texts," the guides say. "Elementary school classrooms are, therefore, places where students access the world—science, social studies, the arts, and literature—through text. At least 50 percent of what students read is informational."

The booklets also make note of how much schools have to do in order to be up to the challenge of cross-disciplinary literacy envisioned by the common standards. Principals have a crucial role to play in helping teachers of social studies, science, and other subjects learn how to teach the literacy skills specific to their disciplines, they say.

"From a practical standpoint, middle schools and high schools currently lack the capacity to integrate literacy instruction in the content areas. Even if teachers are receptive to the idea of incorporating literacy into their daily instruction, they lack the training and resources needed to deliver that instruction. The result is the need for building principals to begin immediately to start building teacher capacity, which begins with addressing common misconceptions about literacy instruction."

Another important challenge in implementing the standards, according to the booklets, lies in the daily practice of "leveling" texts, or matching texts to readers based on their skill level. Because the common standards expect students to read at their grade level—rather than at their reading skill level—learning to match texts to readers becomes a new ballgame that will require "additional training in evaluating the appropriateness of the material for their students," the guides say.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Tomorrow afternoon, a second public draft of proposed common standards for science will be issued for comment. This represents the last opportunity for the broader community to have input into the standards, which are being developed through a partnership that includes education officials from 26 "lead states," before they are released in final form in March.

After that, it's up to states to decide whether to adopt what are being called the Next Generation Science Standards. I'll have more to say on the thorny issue of state adoptions later, but organizers of the effort are hopeful that most states ultimately will. The 26 lead states are not bound to adopt them, but have pledged to give "serious consideration" to doing so. And some other states have indicated interest in signing on as well, I'm told.

Top priorities among the standards writers include: promoting depth over breadth in science education; ensuring greater coherence in learning across grade levels; and helping students understand the cross-cutting nature of crucial concepts that span scientific disciplines. Another aim is for students to apply their learning through scientific inquiry and the engineering-design process to deepen their understanding.

For background, here are a few helpful resources from the EdWeek Archives:

• Our story on the first public draft of the science standards, issued last May;

• Who is writing the science standards;

• Some friendly fire the first draft attracted from the National Science Teachers Association and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute;

• Complaints from some advocates for computer-science education; and

• South Carolina adopts a measure prohibiting adoption of the science standards.

I'll be back tomorrow with analysis of the new draft.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By guest blogger Andrew Ujifusa

Ever since the defeat of a resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards at the American Legislative Exchange Council—a Washington-based conservative think tank that ideologically might have been sympathetic with common standards foes—the question for those foes has been where they would go from there. Without the stamp of ALEC's influential approval, what would be their strategy?

Indiana Sen. Scott Schneider, a Republican, has one straightforward strategy: He is proposing legislation that would require Indiana to withdraw from the common standards in English/language arts and math, the Associated Press has reported. "I am worried that common core was pushed on Indiana without proper review of what it will mean for students and teachers," Schneider said in a press statement Wednesday. His bill is scheduled for a committee hearing Jan. 16.

The legislation, if approved, would mean that Indiana would become the first state to withdraw from the common standards altogether, and a move that would sting for common core proponents and those working on the assessments. It would also represent a stinging rebuke for Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, a Republican and common standards champion who is transitioning to Florida's top education position after getting the boot in Indiana's Nov. 6 election in favor of Democrat Glenda Ritz, now the superintendent-elect. (Ritz herself has questioned the common standards and the core's new battery of tests.) After he lost, Bennett warned that the common core could be in jeopardy for Hoosiers, and this at least represents one lawmaker's attempt to make Bennett's prophecy closer to reality.

However, it's not clear that either incoming Republican Gov. Mike Pence or Republican leadership in the legislature would even contemplate siding with Schneider. Remember, ALEC's national chairman in 2012 when the group shot down the anti-common core proposal was Indiana Rep. Dave Frizzell, a Republican.

Schneider voiced opposition to the common standards in January 2012, and has pushed for a further "study" of the standards.

Still, the news brings to mind a conversation I just had with Emmett McGroarty with the American Principles Project, a Washington-based nonprofit vigorously opposed to the standards due to the belief that they represent federal intrusion into K-12 and bad education policy. In an interview I did for a story I'm working on for a later date, he said that groups like his have been active at the grassroots level in several states, and he highlighted Indiana as a state where he saw good results from that kind of work. He listed several other states like Colorado, where anti-common core lobbying is also underway.

"I think there's a strong possibility that a state or two will withdraw this year, maybe more," McGroarty said.

He has obvious reasons for making that prediction, but Schneider's plan proves it's not totally off base.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend