Based on statements made last week by CCSSO representatives at the SIIA Education Tech Government Forum in Washington DC, the most recent draft of the K-12 Common Core Standards will be released on Wednesday, March 10. Like the previously released “Career and College Ready” Common Core Standards, there will be a public review period in which CCSSI invites comment and questions. From these responses, CCSSI will publish the final copy of the K-12 and a revised Career and College Ready Common Core Standards. The anticipated date for the final publication is late April or early May.
Academic Benchmarks, as stated in earlier postings and communications, plans to fully support the final Common Core Standards in digital form for its clients. For more information, please contact commoncore at academicbenchmarks dot com.
EdWeek has focused a solid bit of time over the last few weeks on the Common Core Initiative. To help focus your time, we have added a mention of a topical event and a brief summary of a few pieces for you to peruse.
Tune in tomorrow, January 26, at 3pm ET to a live chat with contributors of the Quality Counts 2010 to discuss the Common Core Standards with author Alfie Kohn and CCSSO’s Gene Wilhoit.
Dakarai Aarons’ article in EdWeek, “Effect of Common Standards on Publishers Uncertain,” questions how the development of new instructional and assessment materials will impact costs and competition for the industry. A final comment in the piece from Kathy Mickey of Simba reminds us of a reality – publishers understand that K-12 is an economy based on politics. We are, as a colleague once soberly informed me, “just government contractors after all.”
The work ahead for states, districts and schools is the focus of Stephen Sawchuk’s piece in EdWeek, “Putting New Standards Into Practice a Tough Job.” Sawchuk calls out the various hurdles that will need to be overcome as long-standing practices – from teaching to policy to expectations – are changed to meet the desired new goals. Finding a common threshold while respecting the right for states to act in their own interest is not going to be solved by standards alone. As Arthur Levine of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is quoted, the improvements we must now look to make are in how we help teachers “get to the standards.” I am sure assessment and professional development would be listed among the critical elements of our collective success.
In his article “U.S. Common-Standards Push Bares Unsettled Issues,” Sean Cavanagh of EdWeek takes a look at the history of “national standards” movement by its various names back to the 1950s. Cavanagh also presents some tensions between the working definitions of ‘curriculum’ and ’standards’ and the appeal to follow in the path of other nations that have agreed to a single set of standards – not all to the successful end of student success. The comparison of national standards across international lines has intrigued many. How should the U.S. compare itself as whole to a set of small, somewhat homogenous nations when some U.S. school districts have more students, with varying economic and social histories than an entire nation being held up as model? Obviously the question of a common set of standards, as pointed out by those at NGA and CCSSO, is only one piece of the puzzle. However, the comparison seems to stop at the discussion of standards too often.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Jan. 7, 2010/via PRNewswire/ – ExploreLearning, a business unit of Cambium Learning Group, Inc.(NASDAQ:ABCD) , announced today a ground-breaking partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education and the Northwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative to bring their award-winning online simulations, called Gizmos, to middle school classrooms statewide in Arkansas.
With funding provided by an Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) award from the Arkansas Department of Education, the Northwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative is partnering with ExploreLearning to improve student achievement in Math and Science through the use of advanced classroom technology.
“This is another valuable resource that supports the Total Instructional Alignment Resource Project (TIARP), a joint project of all Arkansas Education Service Cooperatives. Gizmos will give grade 6-8 students across Arkansas the ability to explore, experiment with and visualize math and science concepts as they learn,” said Teresa Chance, an assistant director for the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative and project director for the EETT grant’s Gizmo implementation. Through TIARP, teachers can conveniently access a growing number of curriculum support resources, including literature connections, video clips and now Gizmos. Read the rest of this entry »
Academic Benchmarks looks forward to meeting with our current and future clients in Austin, Texas for the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) February 9-12. If you would like to arrange a time to sit down with us, please contact us at blog at academicbenchmarks dot com. See you in Austin!
This week, Academic Benchmarks sent a letter to our clients to address the imminent release of the Common Core standards. States will soon begin the process of adoption and look to explore how to best implement this unprecedented initiative in American education. A key point of the note confirms that the AB standards collection will include the final Common Core Standards so that our clients can leverage the standards within the proven standards utility infrastructure, adopted by leaders in the K-12 education industry.
View Letter
Curriki recently announced that its nearly 100,000 users will be able to align their contributed educational resources to state standards with the help of a standards engine powered by Academic Benchmarks. Read More.
Academic Benchmarks is going to Florida for FETC 2010! We look forward to warmer temperatures and good conversations with members of the AB GUID Network. Please email us at blog at academicbenchmarks dot com to arrange a time to sit down.
See you January 13 – 15 in Orlando.
Two-year adoption of netTrekker offers Arkansas districts access to safe, reliable and relevant educational resources
CINCINNATI, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ — The Arkansas Department of Education (ADOE) has signed a two-year agreement with netTrekker, a leader in the delivery of digital K-12 educational content and developer of the leading educational search tool, to provide districts statewide with access to online instructional resources. Through the partnership, more than 460,000 public school students and teachers will have access to the netTrekker search tool for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years. Students enrolled in teacher education programs also will gain access to netTrekker, allowing them to become familiar with its features and capabilities to incorporate resources in their own classrooms in the future.
“The Arkansas Department of Education is pleased that netTrekker’s resources and features are now available to all public school students and teachers in Arkansas,” said Jim Boardman, assistant commissioner of research and technology for the Arkansas Department of Education. “The netTrekker tools ensure that students and teachers will receive excellent, educationally relevant Internet search results and instructional resources.”
netTrekker provides students and educators with over 300,000 educator-reviewed and state standards-aligned digital resources. A universal design for learning and a variety of unique features designed to support personalized learning enable netTrekker to support every student’s individual learning needs. Read the rest of this entry »
Turning Technologies Launches QuestionPoint 2.0; New Web-Based Assessment Bank for Interactive Student Polling
Youngstown, OH – October 7, 2009 – Turning Technologies LLC, a leader in the student response industry, announced today the new release of QuestionPoint, Turning’s K-12 item bank of standards-based questions. The new web-based application easily allows educators to develop quality assessments aligned to state standards for use with Turning’s various student response applications including TurningPoint® and TurningPoint AnyWhere™.
Brad Gant, Vice President of Turning’s Education Division commented, “QuestionPoint 2.0’s web interface is a strategic shift in development that will allow us to quickly and easily expand and roll out quality content resources to new as well as current customers. We strive to provide effective solutions and complimentary tools that will enable educators to increase student learning. The release of QuestionPoint 2.0 is another cycle in the evolution of that vision.” Read the rest of this entry »
Academic Benchmarks plans to attend two great events on the K-12 calendar over the coming weeks.
Denver, Colorado for T+L (October 28-30)
Austin, Texas for VSS (November 15-17).
These shows have proven to be productive venues to learn about the overall trends in the market and the specific initiatives of the leading providers. If you would like to schedule time to sit down with us, please contact Matt Doherty via email – matt at academicbenchmarks dot com.
