Who is funding common core

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted the standards in Caroline Wolverton, another attorney for Duncan and the Education Department, said in court that the department did not write the Common Core standards. Edit Close. Toggle navigation. Francisville St. Business leaders in California should debate issues around the Common Core, which in California is so much more productive than in most of the rest of the country.

Common Core is not a partisan or political issue in California for the most part. The goal of the Common Core is to prepare kids for college and careers. How would you define career-ready? There are not simple metrics to explain that yet, though a few things are helpful. Evidence of leadership. Ambition for accomplishing something. Employers are going to have to get better at that.

What pitfalls should the state think about as it goes through a transition to Common Core? We have to prepare parents for what happens the first time we have real results on the new assessments.

Second, there is a possibility that we will have teachers overwhelmed by all these changes. Third, the budget is not going to be great forever. Make your donation today to our year end fundraising campaign by Dec. Click here to cancel reply. We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy. Here is how I see it. Californis is experimenting in funding and instruction and Teachers are lost with regard to teaching math and science.

Some schools are regressing in learning to the extent that, in my opinion, any fifth grade teacher in year will,soon find out that all children going into 5th grade … Read More. Californis is experimenting in funding and instruction and…it is a real big mess which shows negative planning and really those at high levels,in state education jobs need to be removed. Some schools are regressing in learning to the extent that, in my opinion, any fifth grade teacher in year will,soon find out that all children going into 5th grade did not learn 3rd grade standards.

And I say this regression will be seen as a domino effect due to a lack of emphasis of properly covering all common core standards. This article is in my opinion a propaganda article full of feel good,statements. Why not check data. Why not immediately implement simple diognostic chec for understanding and mastery of learning for all math grade levels? Why is our stat also creating tow,paths of have and have not mastered math middle school,algebra pathways…why.

This article and the view that Californiamleadership,is to be admired is madness. Is this a PR campaign for Mr. Is he planning to run for political office? It sure seems that overall Ed Source promotes a fairly positive view of CCSS in its reporting of the issues — what it chooses to report — how it reports. While Mendonca's views on implementing LCFF and Common Core at the same time can be supported, the simultaneous implementation of components for the Common Core does not make sense.

Instruction involves a curriculum frameworks as a basis for b instructional materials, both of which are needed for c good professional development for teachers.

Mendonca fingers PD as a major laggard … Read More. Even State Board Pres Kirst has been quoted in the media saying the new Smarter Balanced tests will not yield useful data until And without solid centerpiece statewide assessment data, how can we expect a new state accountability system to generate useful information?

So, while at a 50K foot level, LCFF and CC being implemented simultaneously can make sense, when we got down to the components there is great need to implement at least CC with required sequencing for the instruction-assessment-accountability elements. Not to follow the logical sequencing just generates massive confusion and inefficiencies in the trenches.

Doug, once again you nailed it. In the first comment on this thread I made a generic observation that the Common Core and SBAC has been pushed through hastily, a common refrain by many including yourself, and that you can't implement simultaneously.

Thank you for your reasoned and precise description of the proper process of implementation. I couldn't say whether Mr. Mendonca understands how a progressive implementation of the components you describe is crucial to … Read More.

But it is hard to reconcile his notion that everything should happen simultaneously given that reality. A respectful question regarding the issues addressed by Doug and Don regarding CC sequences.

Andrew -- No, a primary guideline for implementing large scale end-of-year statewide assessments is that instruction has to come before assessments. Another way to say it is that students must have the "opportunity to learn" the material being assessed for valid assessment results, a legal principle established in the late 70's for statewide high school graduation exams, affirmed by several court cases over the past 35 years.

A more common sense way of saying it … Read More. Andrew — No, a primary guideline for implementing large scale end-of-year statewide assessments is that instruction has to come before assessments. The above basic principle being stated, it has to be a considered judgment especially for a state the size of California just when statewide assessments for a new set of academic content standards should be initiated to provide reasonable baseline information. My own judgment is that statewide supports for instruction need to be in place [i.

For the Common Core standards, my judgment has been that these criteria will be met by , or perhaps by , but not earlier.

The elephant in the room, ignored for obvious reasons in consideration of common core, is general intelligence, or "g". Will Common Core assessment test results show a similarly high correlation with general intelligence? There isn't … Read More. Would it really be surprising if common core assessments turn out to be surrogates for IQ? Meeting the common core standards seems to be as easy as falling off a log for a gifted child with an IQ of and the attendant innate reasoning ability.

But extraordinarily difficult for a child challenged with an IQ of Is it realistic to set the same standards for a child with an IQ of 70 as are set for a child with an IQ of ? Intelligence is clearly valued, in business and in education. These are important questions for teachers. Because teachers will be the first to be blamed when relatively less intelligent students fail to meet expectations in common core assessments.

Policymakers and business leaders hope that tougher standards will help the US catch up globally. Second, under the old system, it was hard to compare students in different states. Until now, each state set its own standards for what students should understand at each grade level, and each state had a different definition for what it meant to be "proficient" in math and reading.

The US Education Department's statisticians found a lot of variation when they mapped state standards onto scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That test is called the "Nation's Report Card" — a standardized test students take nationally every few years. They also found that even students who met state goals might not actually be doing all that well, since the national exam set the bar higher than states did.

In the federal government's eyes, all states had standards that were too low, and there was too much variation on how low they were. Most education systems don't work that way, and it makes it difficult for states to collaborate to improve education nationally.

The Common Core is supposed to solve this by holding students in the majority of states to the same, higher standards. In the past, "students had this sense that math was some kind of magical black box," says Dan Meyer, a former high school math teacher studying math education at Stanford University. The Common Core wants to get kids beyond rote memorization of how to do math and towards a deeper understanding of how math actually works.

This has led to some problems that have gone viral on the internet as frustrated parents vent over bizarre-looking homework assignments:. The simple example the parent gives above is known as the standard algorithm — and, under Common Core, it will still be taught.

But students are also supposed to learn other methods that try to make the underpinnings of the standard method more obvious. Take the problem above, which uses a number line to show that subtraction is really about calculating the distance between two numbers. Students put the two numbers at opposite ends of the number line.

Then they travel from one number to the next to figure out the distance. It's 4 steps from to , steps from to , 7 steps from to LearnZillion, a company that creates lesson plans for teaching to the Common Core standards, has a 5-minute video explaining this technique.

Here's what it's supposed to look like on another sample problem:. Multiplication, too, is explained visually. Most people learned to multiply two-digit numbers like this:. Much of this is bound to confuse parents — particularly because in many cases their own math backgrounds aren't particularly strong, and so they can't step in and easily find the answers themselves.

But math teachers say parents need to learn to help their kids by asking them more general questions that help them learn the principles behind the problem, rather than stepping in and solving the problem themselves. More on the Common Core's approach to math here. The federal government didn't write the standards, but it has promoted them. States weren't explicitly required to adopt the Common Core in order to compete for the federal money; they could have used their own standards if they proved to the Education Department that those standards prepared students for college.

Nearly all of them adopted Common Core instead, and all of the states who eventually won the grants were Common Core states. Another grant program was created to help develop tests based on Common Core standards. The federal government has other levers to promote Common Core, too. It waives some requirements of No Child Left Behind, the education reform law, for states that among other things adopt "college and career-ready standards" and assessments based on those standards.

But Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota got waivers from the law without adopting the Common Core by proving that that their standards could prepare kids for college and careers. Opponents of the Common Core are a pretty varied group, as are supporters.

Chamber of Commerce, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush among them and others who oppose it, particularly from the Tea Party. The Democratic party is also divided, as it often is on education reform issues: The Obama administration supports the Common Core, while teachers' unions have concerns about how it's being implemented and some on the left are opposed to continuing to emphasize standardized tests at all.

After George W. Bush expanded the federal role in education through No Child Left Behind, a growing sector of the Republican Party has returned to viewing education as a local and state responsibility. They believe local authorities are best at determining what's appropriate for children to learn in that state or community.

As a result, they distrust the idea of quasi-national standards promoted by the federal government. Some Republican governors who initially supported the Common Core have tried to walk a fine line as controversy has erupted, saying they support the standards but oppose the federal government's involvement.

Others, including presumed candidates in , have denounced it as a federal takeover: Sens. There are also Common Core opponents on the left, who worry about student privacy, the growth of standardized testing, and how the standards are being implemented.

Some liberals are suspicious of the education reform movement, which encourages the growth of charter schools and minimizes the role of teachers' unions.

They also don't like that Common Core continues to emphasize standardized testing. Because students are likely to perform poorly on early Common Core tests, they say that those results will be used to argue that American public schools are failing and charter schools or vouchers are the solution.

Diane Ravitch, a former Bush administration official who later turned away from the education reform movement, is one of the most prominent opponents from this line of thinking. She says she supports voluntary national standards in theory, but argues the Common Core standards are untested.

She also opposes raising standards so high that students cannot meet them. Standards are about what students should know or know how to do; curriculum is about how they're taught to know or do those things. For example, the Common Core standards require second-graders to be able to contrast two versions of the same story. But teachers are free to pick what lesson plans are used to teach that skill, and states still pick what books are assigned for children to read.

Federal law prohibits the Education Department from interfering in curriculum, which is determined at the state and local level. However, the Common Core standards are very detailed.

The second-grade standard on comparing stories includes an example, although schools aren't required to use it: How the Cinderella tale differs across cultures. Some critics say that this level of detail starts the United States down a slippery slope to a single, national curriculum.

Most states that have adopted Common Core standards have also joined one of two groups, called consortia, that are creating new standardized tests.