When school standards become fighting words

    So what are the Common Core State Standards and why do states have them? Here is the background:

• The U.S. has a tradition of local control over public schools.
  

     Throughout the country, local and state school boards have long governed education. This local control has spawned great schools -- but also struggling schools. For many years, American educators have been frustrated by student performance on standardized tests.

• U.S. children score lower than students in many other developed countries in reading and math. [See the Program for International Student Assessment.]
  

      Importantly, nearly all nations with high-performing schools have "national standards, a national curriculum, a grade-by-grade curriculum framework, and high-stakes national exams given to students at key gateways, like exiting secondary school," said former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during a 2011 conference.

• Without taking away local control,  the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- which led the effort to develop Common Core -- wanted to institute consistent learning goals across states.  

     The National Governors Association website explains that the standards are "designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to go to college or enter the workforce and that parents, teachers and students have a clear understanding of what is expected of them."
     The goal was to make sure all U.S. students, no matter where they lived, would graduate from school with skills to either move on to college or vocational training. The standards, published in 2010, don’t mandate books or curriculum used by states or counties.

• Examples of Common Core standards.

     The eighth-grade math standards give examples of concepts students should understand. For example, students should “know and apply the properties of integer exponents to generate equivalent numerical expressions."
    The literacy standards say that students should be able to:
    “Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
    “Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
    “Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.” 

    To know more:

    Common Core State Standards Initiative: Frequently asked questions.

    National Governors Association: Governors work to implement the Common Core State Standards.

    Related:

    6 top schools that don't require the ACT or SAT

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