A big bet on Common Core implementation

Category: yes Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 1, 2012

Since states began to adopt the Common Core ELA and math standards en masse, the big question was how well those standards would really be implemented. As I’ve mentioned before, there isn’t yet a clear consensus about what Common Core implementation should mean for instruction. Nor are states necessarily targeting their implementation efforts on the highest-impact activities.

Enter the GE Foundation. In the hopes of providing a big boost to the Common Core implementation efforts, the foundation announced a 4-year, $18 million grant to Student Achievement Partners—the group co-founded by CCSS architects David Coleman, Jason Zimba, and Sue Pimentel. According to GE, the grant will support several implementation efforts, including:

• Direct collaboration with teachers to produce and share examples and best practices of excellent instruction aligned with the Standards;
• A website, www.achievethecore.org, to distribute free resources designed to support teacher understanding and implementation;
• Standards Immersion Institutes designed to cultivate teacher experts who can build knowledge in their districts and states;
• The development of tools to track implementation and evaluate the quality of student work; and
• Partnerships with a network of non-profits to provide ongoing technical support to district and state leaders guiding implementation.

Of course, the pressure is now on to deliver on these lofty goals. There will certainly be other investments in nonprofit groups looking to provide school- and district-level implementation support, but this will undoubtedly be the largest.

In a strong initial move, Student Achievement Partners will hold no intellectual property rights over the materials they create or share—they will be open source and they will be provided at no cost. In addition, the group will “have no financial interests with any publisher of education materials.” In a field quickly being overrun by textbook publishers looking to make a quick buck on “Common Core” support, this is a welcome approach to take.

In the end, there is no one right way to implement the standards. But hopefully giving the voices of the CCSS authors a big microphone will help guide and shape state, district, and classroom-level implementation discussions in the right direction.

Standards, Testing, & Accountability