We already have identified ways in which the Common Core standards were written to specifically address college and career readiness. To do so, they include:
- Vertically-scaled standards; these are standards are built so that students' skills and knowledge can be assessed year over year monitored longitudinally.
- Backward-mapping from the end objective of college and career readiness through grade-by-grade development of the standards.
- Benchmarking against the best state standards (including California) and international expectations as those standards have emerged over the past fifteen years.
- Specific skills and knowledge embedded in the standards such as informational texts and text exemplars.
- A focus on students learning material in depth rather than covering a broad expanse of materials.
For good standards to become a good standards-based system, two conditions are required. First, Academic standards require a system of support; this includes instructional materials, professional support and development for teachers, assessments, and accountability structures. Second, standards require policy structures that create and align K-12, higher education, and industry/business to a coherent whole. Such policies include high school graduation requirements, course requirements, exit examinations, and aligned assessments.
California spent the better part of five years developing the various support structures for its standards. And much of this was done well. The curriculum frameworks and instructional materials were, increasingly, tightly developed. The assessment system evolved into one that reflected well the standards. The state's accountability system emerged as well.
But each of the conditions noted above--ranging from vertical scale to contemporary benchmarking--is not a part of the California standards, resulting in serious shortcomings.
Key policy decisions--fueled by concerns over state costs, state vs. local control, and the simple limitations of what was known about standards during this time frame--left the standards in California gasping. The system is incomplete. A few examples:
- The California High School Exit Examination is built on grades 6-8 math standards and grades 9-10 language arts standards
- High school graduation requirements do not include four years of math, language arts, science, and/or history-social science.
- Repeated calls for reform and increased requirements--see the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence, Getting Down to Facts, and the Superintendent's P-16 Council reports--have gone nowhere.
While the Academic Standards Commission and the State Board of Education could use the evaluation of the Common Core to call for retaining and revising the current standards system, it is highly unlikely that state officials will do so. And it's not clear that a better result would emerge from such a decision.
With the inherent shortcomings to the standards and the lack of a policy foundation on which to base fixes to the standards, it is difficult to argue that the current standards system is capable of being fixed.
Tomorrow: Academic Standards and Robles-Wong vs. State of California
