As I began writing up today's entry, I returned to a recent presentation on the Common Core English Language Arts standards by a friend, Sue Pimentel. Sue deserves an introduction. She is the nation's foremost developer and consultant on academic standards having been the lead writer for both California's 1997 Reading/Language Arts standards and the 2010 Common Core.
Sue recently presented an overview of the Common Core and a comparison of those standards to California's 1997 content standards. I want to highlight some of her presentation, but also want to provide a link to the PowerPoint presentation she gave. It's truly a shortcut to understanding the Common Core standards for English Language Arts.
Here's the link to her slides (and audio of her presentation can be found at the http://pace.berkeley.edu web site):
Common Core begins with a simple notion: the complexity of text materials really is a reflection of the quality and rigor of the text itself. That is, students must master reading increasingly complex texts. Common Core--both from its perspective of college and career readiness as the "end game" and in scaffolding the standards grade over grade--reflect contemporary research and understanding on text complexity. What I appreciate about Common Core's approach is that it advances our understanding of how to organize standards and to reveal a sense of priority. Presenting standards as a series of sub-standards, domains, or strands, can also lead to isolating the skills and knowledge students need to develop. Common Core reflects a greater emphasis on the end game of reading: understanding increasingly complex texts.
The Common Core also create a new progression in reading emphasis. By creating an explicit sharing of emphasis in the early grades (K-5) on reading literature and reading informational texts across the curriculum, the Common Core addresses a pragmatic reality for most schools: the shortchanging of instruction in history-social science and science. As students transition from elementary to secondary years, the standards focus increasingly on informational texts and foundational reading selections in American government; in a post-secondary world, the split for adults between informational texts and literature shifts to 80/20. The standards support and anticipate that shift.
Finally, the Common Core standards revive writing as an expectation and reflection of critical thinking skills. Writing is deeply integrated as a partner with reading in student skill development. Further, and this is a truly important contribution, the Common Core standards offer annotated examples of student writing through the grades to guide expectations and to establish performance patterns.
In a rapidly changing world, we accustom ourselves to new solutions--think of smart phones and hybrid cars--and the differences they make in our lives. It's more challenging for academic standards to make such a difference; implementation is often a years-long prospect. But the Common Core English Language Arts standards have the same capacity for taking students several steps forward in their development of skills and knowledge and preparation for their futures.
