Paul Barton, an experienced analyst of trends in American education, has written this piece to emphasize the importance of appropriate implementation of the Common Core standards. He warns that testing should not begin until teachers are prepared, a curriculum is in place and has been taught, and teachers have the materials they need.
A Critical Stage for the Common Core
The much-anticipated Common Core Standards have been rolled out and tests based on the standards are being created. Now is a really critical stage when teachers must be trained and a curriculum created, and states and schools seem to be on their own. The standards have been described as very rigorous and challenging, requiring teachers to learn new pedagogies. These tasks will be both time consuming and expensive.
The early returns publically available are worrisome. A recent Education Week story bore the headline, “Teachers Feel Unprepared for the Common Standards.” The story was based on a survey of 600 subscribing teachers who formed “quite a diverse sample.” The survey found that nearly three in ten teachers have had no training at all on the standards. Of the 70 percent who had training, 41 percent had four days or less, and three in ten had one day or less. Although job-embedded training is considered the most effective kind, only three in ten of those who received training say they received it in that way.
The respondents said that more than two-thirds of their schools were not prepared, and 27 percent said their districts were not up to the task.
In addition to teacher training, a curriculum needs to be developed and teachers need to be provided the materials they need. The standards are about what students must know, not how they will be taught. If English teachers must include more non-fiction reading, non-fiction materials must be made available.
According to the Wall Street Journal (4-15-2013), New York City “slowly started preparing schools for the new standards three years ago.” The New York City Schools Chancellor said that all NYC schools were expected this year to teach to the Common Core mold, but the city never provided schools with a full curriculum or curriculum materials to plan lessons.
What is needed is common readiness standards. Although implementation is up to the states, it would be comforting to know that the principal actors who have gotten the standards movement this far would find a way to help guide it, check on all the stages of implementation, provide needed information about progress, and give some assistance or cautions to the states if implementation gets off track.
The new tests should not be given until implementation of the Common Core Standards is complete. It is the responsibility of the states to fully prepare teachers, develop a curriculum based on the standards, and provide teachers with the materials they need to teach to the standards. If not, students will suffer the consequences and teachers will likely be blamed.
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Paul E. Barton is author of National Standards, Getting Beneath the Surface.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“He warns that testing should not begin until teachers are prepared, a curriculum is in place and has been taught, and teachers have the materials they need.”
Sound like the logical process of sane people. Which means the people currently running the show have succumbed to a lumpenthink of group insanity. Wouldn’t be the first time in history.
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No matter when the tests start, the high stakes should be eliminated. Tests should be designed for teachers to evaluate their curriculum and their strategies, and to plan.
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You sound like one of them TEACHER LOVERS!
TEACHER LOVER!!!
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Any assessment that the teacher does not design for his/her particular class should be prohibited.
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YES! YES! And YES!
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What should test results communicate to the students and their families, or should the be of no concern?
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Interesting comment, Ron! Not sure where it is pointed (there are a lot of folks out there who have targeted teachers – usually prefaced by BAD – as the reason for all education woes). However, I would like to sign on as a “TEACHER LOVER.” If we are ever going to improve education it will be the teachers that will be responsible for the improvements. And teachers are seriously embattled, they need all the support they can find.
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The major educational publishers are ALREADY coming out with their “Common Core Editions” of their programs. The costs of developing these programs often run to tens of millions of dollars. Ideally, yes, what would happen is that standards would be written and then people would work together nationwide to create appropriate curricula that reflect those standards because, as Mr. Barton points out, A LIST OF STANDARDS IS NOT A CURRICULUM.
But in practice, in the real world, because of competition pressures, publishers race to get new products in place as quickly as possible and follow any new standards, as best they can, as a guide to what that curriculum should be. And so, to an enormous extent, the standards BECOME THE CURRICULUM–and whatever the publishers do is what the schools will then do, supported by professional development from the publishers. In this process, the ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL STEPS of rethinking both curricula and pedagogy in light of the standards get very short shrift. I think that the Common Core call for close reading of related, highly significant, rigorous, foundational texts calls for MAJOR changes in curricula and pedagogy–ones that have not, BTW, been subject to a national debate. But designing new curricula and pedagogy compatible with the new standards would involve some revolutionary new curricular designs. Educational publishers are loathe to make major changes. They fear putting lots of money into new development that will be too different, not what customers are used to seeing. And so they are majorly incentivized to do what they have done in the past, for the most part, and simply to correlate to the new list of skills in the standards. That’s a problem because the call for step-by-step close reading of rigorous texts with incidental, point-of-use skills instruction is revolutionary and requires VERY different curricula and pedagogy.
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I DO NOT THINK THAT THE LOCAL SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTS WILL BE DEVELOPING THE CURRICULA. iT WILL BE A PACKAGED SET OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS THAT COME FORM THE GROUPS THAT DEVELOPED THE CCSS TO BEGIN WITH, ALONG WITH ALL THEIR ALLIGNED PARTNERS THAT HAVE SPROUTED UP. . ALSO IT WILL BE LOTS OF TECH PROGRAMS THAT ASSESS THE STUDENT AND THEN PRESENT THE NEXT LESSON FROM THE DATA ANALYZED FROM THE PROGRAM, VIRTUAL LEARNING, FLIPPED CLASSROOMS, STUDENT LEADING THE INSTRUCTION, TEACHER BECOMMING A FACILITATOR AND DATA COLLECTOR. SOON NO NEED FOR STATE OR LOCAL TEXTBOOK REVIEW COMMITTEES. THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION ALLIGNED WITH COMMON CORE OR WHAT THEY WANT TO CALL COLLEGE AND CAREER READY STANDARDS–IS TRAINING THE STUDENT–HUMAN CAPITAL TO DO A JOB AND ALSO ALL THINK ALIKE IN THEIR VALUES AND IDEAS———-SAD !!!!!!!!
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Re. Paul Barton commentary: Proper and adequate preparation for common core assessment certainly seems to be a serious concern. However, in my view. the real and most serious issue is not how common core is being implemented or assessed, neither is it the lack of input from teachers and parents to the curriculum. I agree with Professor Tienken at Seaton Hall that the development and national application of common core for every state in the US is a huge mistake that will hurt American Education. Unlike Singapore, Finland, Korea, etc. the US is a very large and diverse nation. Forcing students to learn a common core of knowledge across the whole country will actually have some very negative and unintended results. This approach is just telling teachers what to teach. It interferes with a teacher’s interaction with her/his students and limits a student’s opportunity to pursue his/her curiosity or educational interests. Educational curriculum should be developed at the local level as close to the students being taught as possible. It should be rigorous of course, but not force fed to students. The whole secret to really educating our children is to get them excited about learning, to open up the whole world of knowledge for them. A common core curriculum is just another response to the competetion mentality of outscoring other nations on yet another standard test.
Common Core is another fast food franchise approach (like NCLB and RTTT) to education. It’s a concept that works great to make the corporate directors of McDonalds and Burger King very rich, but doesn’t do so well to produce a healthy nation. We need an education concept that is more like the 5 star restaurant approach, where schools and school districts develop their own special receipes to excite the intellectual appetites of their students.
Common Core sure seems a contradictary approach for America where we pride ourselves on diversity and where the Constitution leaves education (along with all those items not explictly spelled out as federal responsibilities) to the states.
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Its not by chance that CCSS follows CCCP in the acronym dictionary!
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One ring to rule them all!
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Al Tate,
I WISH Common Core meant common knowledge. But unfortunately it seems only to prescribe common SKILLS, not knowledge. Kids across American will have to develop the “skill” of identifying themes in literature, but they won’t have any particular literature (e.g. The Scarlet Letter) in common.
A robust culture depends on common knowledge. Right now the only common knowledge Americans have comes from advertisement and other commercial media. It’s a debased culture.
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I WISH Common Core meant common knowledge. Amen to that.
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Can someone please define what an educational “standard” is and how it relates to the teaching and learning process? Haven’t seen an adequate definition yet.
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Again, Duane, you are absolutely right about this. People really need to have revisited what they mean by ‘standard.” In practice, in the United States, “standard” has meant a description of a skill (usually) or a concept (more rarely) that students are to show proficiency in at a particular grade level. The latter part is not part of the standard itself, and that’s extremely important, for the general description of a skill or concept means little until it is operationalized–until it takes the form, “What, precisely, does the student do to show proficiency in this standard?”
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I personally think that the whole idea of what a “standard” should be needs to be revisited. I don’t think that it should be limited to a list of concepts and skills. Standards should include both procedural and world knowledge. And they should be voluntary, not mandatory.
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Mr. Barton’s logic trumped (no pun intended) by the lust for quick profits before, hopefully, the wheels come off the snake oil wagon.
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I was once told that the US Military’s K-12 schools were quite good and followed a common course of study. I don’t know if that is true, but if that is true, why wasn’t it used as a template for a nationwide curriculum?
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