The Common Core State Standards IES Assess-As-You-Go Project Illinois Teacher Professional Development

The Common Core State Standards • A brief history of the CCSS • What’s New about the CCSS? • CCSS and Assessment • Critiques of CCSS • CCSS and Illinois • CCSS and English Language Arts • CCSS and Scholar/Assess-As-You-Go

A brief history of the CCSS Sept 2009 • Draft College and Career Ready Standards were released by NGA and CCSSO November 2009 • Common Core State Standards K-12 Work and Feedback Groups Announced December 2009 • States submitted comments and also supporting documents January 2010 • Second Draft Released to States Feb-March 2010 • States solicit input from educators and give feedback to CCSSO March 2010 • First Public Draft of CCSS released June 2010 • CCSS released to stated (June 1) • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Council of State Governments host a policy discussion of the CCSS for legislators and education officials (June 1) • CCSS released to the public for the first time (June 24) • IL State Board of Ed adopts CCSS (June 24)

A brief history of the CCSS

A brief history of the CCSS

• Less of a focus on content and more about underlying capacities to do knowledge work • Less about memorization, more about disciplinary orientations and capacities • Writing is emphasized in almost every subject area , used as a vehicle to show higher order thinking skills – e.g. writing a scientific argument instead of remembering the scientific facts or getting the definitions or rules right • Three main writing types: 1) argument, 2) narrative and 3) informative/explanatory text What’s New about the CCSS?

CCSS and Assessment

CCSS and Assessment PARCC received an $186 million grant to support the development and design of the next-generation assessment system.

CCSS and Assessment

CCSS and Assessment New K-12 assessments will build a pathway to college and career readiness by the end of high school, mark students’ progress toward this goal from 3rd grade up, and provide teachers with timely information to inform instruction and provide student support. The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.

CCSS and Assessment 2 Summative Assessment Components: Performance-Based Assessment (PBA) administered as close to the end of the school year as possible. The ELA/literacy PBA will focus on writing effectively when analyzing text. - End-of-Year Assessment (EOY) administered after approx. 90% of the school year. The ELA/literacy EOY will focus on reading comprehension.

CCSS and Assessment 2 Interim Assessment Components: Early Assessment designed to be an indicator of student knowledge and skills so that instruction, supports and professional development can be tailored to meet student needs - Mid-Year Assessment comprised of performance-based items and tasks, with an emphasis on hard-to-measure standards. After study, individual states may consider including as a summative component

CCSS and Assessment Sample Item:

CCSS and Assessment The 31-state SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium was awarded a four-year $160 million grant by the U.S. Department of Education to develop a student assessment system aligned to a common core of academic standards.

CCSS and Assessment

CCSS and Assessment

CCSS and Assessment

CCSS and Assessment

Critiques of CCSS Testing will become more frequent Stephen Krashen Stanford University, Washington Post [link]

Critiques of CCSS CCSS are very similar to other previous standards but the switch will require new textbooks, resulting in huge revenues for publishing companies Alan Singer, Hofstra University, the Huffington Post [link] “The Wall Street Journal reports that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute estimates the national cost for compliance with common core will be between $1 billion to $8 billion and the profits will go almost directly to publishers.”

Critiques of CCSS The English Language Arts CCSS: 8 concerns Jane M. Gangi, PhD [link] 1. The elementary text exemplars are primarily by and about White people, thus privileging White children and marginalizing children of color and the poor 2. The word “analysis” appears 94 times in the CCSS; the word “emotion” twice in a clinical sort of way, and the word “affect” not at all. 3. The CCSS eliminates reading for pleasure and choice and, although the CCSS claims to be “internationally benchmarked,” does not say which nations. 4. Music is mentioned once, the visual arts not at all. 5. Albert Einstein would push for more fairy tales; Charles Darwin would push for poetry (not the 75% - 25% informational : narrative split of the CCSS) 6. By privileging efferent reading the CCSS privilege information processors, over “aesthetics” (not mentioned until 11th grade). 7. “Close reading” focus = less room for personal connections & local epistemologies 8. Extra money spent on testing can’t go for infrastructure, playgrounds, labs, libraries, field trips, and teacher Professional Development

The CCSS and Illinois Illinois State Board of Education hosted a webinar on incorporating the Common Core into the Illinois standards. The webinar will help district and school practitioners begin to understand what the new standards will be, where they come from, how they will relate to assessments, and what the process of beginning to implement the standards will look like.

The CCSS and Illinois Illinois State Board of Education adopted new Math and English Language Arts standards for K‐12 education known as the New Illinois State Learning Standards Incorporating the Common Core.

The CCSS and Illinois Illinois is a Governing State in the PARCC Consortium …Illinois students can expect PARCC assessments [link]

The Common Core State Standards IES Assess-As-You-Go Project Illinois Teacher Professional Development Justin Olmanson, PhD IES Postdoctoral Fellow in Technology, Education, and Assessment