The Common Core initiative is a significant step forward in the standards movement. And it is important to put its progress in some context given how previous efforts have stalled. However we are still in the very early stages of this initiative and there are several significant challenges that threaten to derail it.

Standards are an important and necessary component of education reform and rigorous accountability systems. They clearly establish the academic goals for students and help teachers know what is expected of them. But the 1990s standards reform movement showed us that the adoption of standards is just one important step and, by itself, will do little to change education. The process of transitioning to the new standards, including developing assessments that interpret and measure the standards, providing professional development, and equipping classes with aligned instructional materials and tools–are needed for real change to occur.

In many respects, Common Core is still in its infancy and faces at least four major challenges that threaten to derail its efforts:

Overpromising: Some advocates are overpromising what Common Core will do for education. Some suggest that Common Core will usher in the next generation of innovation since developing products and services for a common set of standards is easier than developing products for 50 different standards. Yes, it will lower some development and customization costs but these costs pale in comparison to the substantially more difficult policy and regulatory hurdles providers face. Standards do little to address the lengthy procurement processes used by districts to buy services. And unlike other sectors like healthcare and energy, education innovators face federal government programs that favor non-profits over for-profits. State policy is also still riddled with caps on online learning and barriers to competency-based learning.

Breaching Federalism: As with past efforts, the Common Core has attracted critics, who suggest these “national” standards are or will become “federal” standards which violate principles of federalism as well as existing prohibitions in current law that prevent the Department from getting involved in curricula decisions. Secretary Duncan has attempted to walk a fine line, supporting the Common Core efforts without federalizing it, the main exception being the Administration’s proposal to tie Title I dollars to state adoption of the standards. But then last week, the Secretary issued a statement criticizing the South Carolina legislature for considering a bill that would withdraw the state from the Common Core. It isn’t clear how such a statement helps supporters in the state and, worse, it has antagonized the critics by calling them “conspiracy theorists” while actually validating their concerns of the federal government getting too involved in standards. The decision to jump into a state political debate is strange given the amazing wave of education reform bills we saw passed at the state level over the last two years; for example, advancing needed teacher effectiveness reforms, charter schools, online learning, and more. None of these attracted any statement of support by the Secretary, and some could have used it, so it is odd for him to choose the one issue where weighing in could hurt rather than help.

Blurring the Line Between Standards and Instruction: One of the key reasons why the standards were adopted by so many states is because the drafters, along with NGA and CCSSO, limited their efforts to establishing learning goals. In turn, the decisions around intervention strategies and instructional approaches to states and schools. However, that carefully brokered arrangement is at risk of falling apart. The authors of the Common Core are now delivering workshops with their interpretation of how the standards should be taught. This is leaving teachers with the mistaken notion that only those sets of strategies are acceptable for Common Core while others cannot be used.

For example, there is wide agreement that learning to read is a developmental process and there are sound, research-based practices that support all children in the early grades. What isn’t predictable is how quickly each child acquires the skills needed for successful reading, which is why differentiated instruction is so important. Differentiated instruction enables teachers to meet students where they are and, using customized, targeted instruction, quickly bring them up to grade level expectations, particularly with complex text. Most of the research based strategies require using some form of leveled reading or guided reading and small group instruction to help individual students strengthen their skills and confidence.

The initiative will fail if a small group of individuals collectively decided that they have the correct and only interpretation of how the Common Core should be taught. Instead, the drafters should focus on explaining what the Common Core is and leave decisions with instructional strategies to schools and their partners.

Assessments: Districts are in various stages of Common Core implementation, but nearly everyone we’ve talked with has said that they’re waiting to see how the two assessment consortiums interpret the standards in their assessments. In the end, that is what will guide local decision making, curriculum, and resource decisions.

Andy Rotherham and I conduct a monthly survey of the savviest political and policy “insiders” related to education policy trends and forecasts. One of the new tracking questions we’re asking is if support for the Common Core is increasing, staying the same, or decreasing among key constituency groups. Surprisingly, 33% of Insiders see support declining among state leaders and 38% see support declining among Congressional leaders. Some of our other surveys suggest that we should expect some additional states to withdraw from the Common Core over the next year or so, particularly when they face politically difficult decisions with the evaluations. This is a notable warning sign that decisions made in the next few months will have dramatic implications for the Common Core.

Given how polarized the education debate is these days, it’s rare when a consensus emerges on a strategy to help improve instruction and ensure students are learning the knowledge and skills they need for the 21st century knowledge economy. Using research, educational expertise, standards from high-achieving countries and states, and, yes, common sense as their guide, common core standards have been developed that hold all students to the same rigorous standards, regardless of where they live. Teachers, school administrators, state superintendents and governors got on board and now, 46 states have adopted the math and English language arts standards, which will enable all students to be held to the same high expectations no matter where they live in America. The Common Core State Standards are an essential building block for a better education system—not a new educational craze, a federal intrusion, or an untested idea.

The hard part is not the development of standards or their adoption, but the implementation. These standards must be supported by a comprehensive system that includes development of aligned curriculum; support and time for appropriate professional development; instructional materials and other resources including model lesson plans; collaborative planning efforts; and assessments that are aligned but must inform instruction and not be used excessively or punitively.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led, highly collaborative, voluntary effort designed to help teachers prepare all students for college and career readiness. The writers listened to frontline educators who are in the classroom every day teaching our children. A nationally representative team of AFT teachers were involved in the development of the common core standards for English and math, reviewing the drafts and presenting recommendations to the writers of the standards. If implemented comprehensively and collaboratively, these standards can bring our nation closer than we have ever been to public education that is both equitable and excellent, helping to prepare students for the 21st Century knowledge economy.

Here in the United States, we are long on pursuing the next best pedagogical, management and accountability fad, yet short on moving the needle in a way that helps all children succeed. Nations whose students outperform those in the United States have used common, robust standards to guide the teacher and bring coherence to the whole education endeavor. I just returned from an Asia study mission, visiting schools, teachers and ministry officials in Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo—places that are doing what works to succeed. The contrast between what they do to succeed and what goes on in U.S. schools is stark: common core standards vs. 50 sets of standards; building instructional capacity and creating incentives vs. simply measuring student learning through test scores and sanctions if we don’t measure up; collaborative efforts vs. top-down management. We need to learn and heed the lessons of high achievers.

As Linda Darling-Hammond wrote in The American Educator, Winter 2010-2011, “If ‘no child left behind’ is to be anything more than empty rhetoric, we will need a policy strategy that creates a rich and challenging curriculum for all students, and supports it with thoughtful assessments, access to knowledgeable, well-supported teachers, and equal access to resources.”

As we state in the AFT’s Quality Education Agenda, common core standards are just one, albeit essential, element of a robust quality education system. The Common Core State Standards supported by an aligned curriculum, instructional resources, professional development and timely assessments that inform instruction, will help improve teaching and learning and will put U.S. education on a path toward true equity of opportunity.

As is so often the case in this wise and diverse community, I find myself agreeing with the ideas of many of this week’s contributors. But I think a few other issues are worthy of consideration.

STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISM

Literally hundreds of my client schools and districts have adopted what I call a “strict constructionist” approach to implementing standards. That is, for each standard and sub-standard, a lesson is attached such that a year of teaching is prescribed in such a way that, if followed strictly, 100% coverage of all standards is guaranteed.

Unfortunately, learning is not.

I have been working in one such district recently where teachers show me long lists of the lessons they are required to teach and the sequence they are told to follow. The district has even provided a searchable database of written out lesson plans perfectly aligned to our state’s official course of study in each subject.

Unfortunately, by my count in the area of reading, approximately 90% of the lessons teachers are told to teach are what I call “low pay-off” lessons. That is, research tells us that even when taught well, these offerings have little positive effect. Also on the list was a small number of “high pay-off” lessons.

My suggestion to the school, which I demonstrated successfully over many days of teaching in classrooms, was simple: “Drop the low pay-off lessons and use the time saved to teach the high pay-off lessons more often, across more content, and with increasingly refined delivery.

This is a very simple idea. And I was able to demonstrate that it works almost instantly. Nonetheless, educators at this school do not feel that they can depart from district mandates. As one brilliant but frustrated young teacher said, “I just feel obligated to teach the things I am told to teach.”

Since obligation was a very powerful concept for this woman, I suggested that she try switching things around and imagining that she was obligated not to teach certain concepts but to make sure kids learned them. After all, that is the intent of standards, testing, and just about every aspect of reform.

But we all know which road is paved with good intentions.

As I surveyed the entire staff in small group settings, it became obvious that all were well aware that teaching kids lessons about things they either did not need, were not ready for, or that simply made no sense to either teacher or student had produced unsatisfactory results: stagnation for many kids; frustration for many teachers.

Regardless of how good a set of standards might be, a “strict constructionist” approach will always be sub-optimal. My most-often uttered statement in the last few years has been, “Teach students, not standards.”

But I don’t think people like to hear that very much.

THE EFFECTIVENESS EFFECT

A set of standards is merely a description of a domain. The Common Core State Standards for reading, for example, are simply a committee’s definition of what reading is and what good readers can do.

But what if a teacher already knows what reading is and what good readers can do? In fact, since standards are measured by tests where proficiency is often defined at arbitrarily low levels, most effective teachers need never even consult a set of standards or a set of prescribed lessons and aligned assessments in order to educate their students well.

None of my music teachers needed standards or a curriculum; they had played and listened and studied music and musicians most of their lives. None of my coaches needed standards or a curriculum either; here, too, authentic life experience, a passion for their domain, and a desire to transfer their knowledge and skills to others did the job quite well.

Actually, I find it fascinating that we have seen extraordinary improvement over the last 30 years in virtually all of the arts and the many forms of athletics—with significantly less improvement in other parts of school.

When I was a third string quarterback on the freshman-sophomore squad, we were lucky to be able to run a simple I-formation offense with at most two or three pass pattern combinations. Today, even average high school teams run complex "packages" like the “read-option” and flashy four-receiver shotgun setups.

Today, it is not at all unusual to find high school students in the arts with professional resume credits prior to graduation. The high school musical at my alma mater sells out thousands of tickets each year and is widely regarded as “one of Seattle’s best entertainment values.”

There could, of course, be many explanations for these dramatic improvements, but I think it’s interesting simply to note that the areas of our education system that have been the least standardized and the least tested have shown by far the most improvement.

Perhaps some teachers, in a narrow band of the system we don’t ever think to measure, have improved by leaps and bounds, and we just haven’t noticed.

Highly effective teachers tend to derive some of their effectiveness from domain knowledge. And it seems only obvious that teachers who know their domains, don’t need anyone to define those domains for them with sets of standards.

Ironically, for very weak teachers, a state-prescribed definition of a given domain is also of little help. After all, the definition of a weak teacher is one who cannot facilitate learning. Knowing what to teach isn’t nearly as important as knowing how to teach. Standards are all “what” and no “how”.

Only when standards are supported by dramatic methodological changes in instruction (the “how” part) do they seem to improve student achievement. But is it the standards here, or simply better teaching, that accounts for the improvement? I would put my money on the latter.

THE MYTH OF LINEARITY

The Common Core State Standards are identical to virtually every other set of standards we have seen in at least one way: they, too, are based on the “myth of linearity.” It’s easy to see that the standards build upon each other in a simplistic linear fashion.

Some people think this is very good. I think it makes it tough for teachers who have kids who don’t follow the linear model—and by my estimate, that’s a very high percentage of kids.

As we scoot those tots along the assembly line of our factory model school system, things get just a little harder, just a little more complex. And where the standards leave gaps (because no set of standards prescribes a complete day-by-day progression), teachers, districts, and states attempt to fill those gaps with linear progressions of their own.

But learning rarely occurs in a linear fashion.

One of the common “learning trajectories” is not really a trajectory at all; it's more like a stair-step. In this pattern, learners seem to make a large leaps all at once, and then settle in to consolidate their gains for a while before they rise abruptly once more.

One could still impute linearity here, but for most kids, the rising and the falling aren’t predictable or even symmetrical. Therefore, what we think of as linear growth over time is actually the result of when and how kids are assessed, and not a reflection of what and how they learn. However, a view of learning as inherently linear comes from our predilection for the simplest possible explanation of natural phenomena—such as learning—which we do not understand.

Finally, the entire idea of a “learning trajectory” is itself a myth. The word “trajectory” implies a contiguous path. But most learning is not contiguous. Different kids learn different things in different sequences. The notion that there are fixed pre-requisites for mastering concepts measured along a continuous axis, or even a winding path of incrementally increasing difficulty, is far from a proven fact. it may not even be provable at all.

When learning is “digitized” through standards and testing, there is always data loss, just as there is when any natural phenomenon is broken into unnatural pieces. The pieces we use today for standards and testing are coarse-grained. Therefore, our measurement systems are “lossy” and thus often misleading.

What happens, for example, if a test derived from a set of standards does not provide “deep coverage” of several areas of a particular domain? Children who posses skills in that domain suffer from “quantization errors” as their ability measured by coarse-grained “low resolution” instruments cannot be accurately captured.

Similarly, children with non-standard talents (and non-standard deficits) may not even show up on the “grid”. Since learning is neither linear nor easily expressed as a contiguous path, basing our instruction and assessment on the premise that it is distorts reality and often instruction as well.

THE OWNERSHIP DEFICIT

One of the first questions I pose in my workshops is this: “Why is it generally better to own than to rent?” Most people think about real estate in this context, though it applies to other things just as well.

Of course, most people can cite may reasons why they prefer owning a home to renting one—even in a housing crisis where asset appreciation is unlikely to occur.

For most of us, the best thing about owning something is that we feel like taking ownership of it.

When my wife and I were renters, we really didn’t worry too much about what happened to our landlord’s property . We were good tenants but we made no effort to effect needed repairs or even basic maintenance.

We certainly appreciated it when our landlord took care of these things for us, but when he didn’t, we simply went about our business and left the care of his property to him—the owner of it. In turn, he seemed always happy to keep up the upkeep of his own house.

But when my wife and I became home owners, things were different from day one. We made significant improvements before we even moved in. And now, we save a portion of our income for basic maintenance, small improvements—and even a little bit each year for a long-term fund to add a two-story addition some day.

As obvious as it sounds, owners take ownership of what they own. This often results in added value over time—or preserved value over a longer time. For example, my wife and I each drive 20-year old cars. Our mechanic tells us that with regular maintenance, he believes they will run for at least 30 years. On trips, do we take care of rental cars to ensure that they will last long as possible? Of course not.

The same is true of teaching.

People who know what and how to teach, own their teaching. People who rely on being told what and how to teach, are renters. This does not mean that renters are bad people. Virtually all of us rent things throughout our lives. But virtually all of us add value to the things we own, while almost none of us takes care even to preserve value in the things we rent.

And what’s the biggest obstacle renters face when they try to buy? The down payment, of course. Will standards help teachers build up their instructional bank accounts? Or will they merely encourage “moral hazard” as teachers continually “borrow” against the educational credit of the state?

Standards intrude upon the most essential aspects of ownership for teachers: the ownership that comes from exercising the responsibility to choose what teach, to discover and decide what different kids need, to know what is important and what is not, to teach as they believe and not merely as they are told.

In the last few years, I’ve done a fair amount of teaching at the college level in ed schools. I see eager kids clamoring for classroom experience. But I also see legions of drones who have been inculcated with the belief that good teaching is defined by good coverage, that coverage is determined by standards, and that learning is not their first consideration.

I may be stretching an idea here past the breaking point, but after many years, I have seen thousands of teachers broken by standards.

Teaching holds three essential joys: the joy of determining what students need to learn (on an individual basis); the joy of lesson creation and delivery that addresses those needs; and the joy of applying a heartfelt measuring stick based on deeply held personal values.

Standards, and the tests that come with them, undermine each of these essential joys. And teachers who take less joy in their work often produce students who take less joy in their learning.

EDUCATIONAL TAYLORISM

In the late 19th century, Frederick Taylor gave us “scientific management”. And it was good. It made our Industrial Age economy stronger by assuring that we would have a workforce of interchangeable “cogs” whose performance, if measured frequently and adjusted regularly, could be tuned for optimal efficiency.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with scientific management or the measuring of things with intent to improve them. But Taylorism, as it is today applied to children and to learning, is inappropriate because children are not to be treated as future fodder for an industrialized economy. We live in the Information Age now. Mapmakers, not map readers, will carry the day (tip-o-the-hat to Seth Godin and his new book on education).

Standards and testing do not have to be applied in Tayloristic fashion. In fact, the very best teachers I know ignore standards and testing (and Taylorism) altogether. It is far more often the case, however, that Tayloristic teaching dominates our districts, schools, and classrooms. And that efficiency, rather than quality, is the goal.

We see this played out most perfectly when teachers get excited about mere proficiency only to discover that the mountain they have climbed with their kids is but a mole hill because state cut scores are set so very, very low.

SO NU?

What are we waiting for? The Common Core has already pulled into the station, the passengers are boarding, and the train is about to embark on the next grand tour of education reform. Little wizards everywhere are heading off to Hogwarts to learn their potions and spells.

The question, then, I think is not, “Will standards help?” But “What will standards help?”

I think standards will help people make a lot of money. (Nothing wrong with that at all.) And I think standards will definitely improve the standardization of teaching and schooling. (Maybe something wrong with that; we’ll see.)

Test scores will rise because teachers will be teaching more closely to what is on tests. The experience of schooling will be more consistent across our country. And teaching will probably begin a slow regression to the mean.

This might not be bad. In fact, if we use standards (and accompanying test scores) as part of teacher evaluations, we will have a Tayloristic tool for improving our system. Or will we?

That’s the weird thing, isn’t it?

Why would standards not work? Why would any of us anywhere even think to question whether standards would work? They seem to work quite well in many other sectors of our society.

But kids—our kids, your kids, my kids, everybody’s kids—are not exactly “sectors of our society”. They’re individual human beings. As such, they resist standardization by their very nature.

The most interesting thing I would say about this issue is that I am surprised that any of us has anything to say at all other than “By all means, carry on!” And yet, that’s not exactly what most of us are saying here this week. To me, it sounds more like, “Let’s give it a try; it might work better than it did last time.”

Hmmm…

Don’t standards improve compatibility? Don’t they lower transaction costs? Don’t they scale more effectively? Don’t they lower barriers to entry into new markets? Are these not all good things?

Sure, if you’re selling widgets.

But kids aren’t widgets. (Though apparently TNTP’s research says that teachers are. Will standards make this problem better or worse?)

We are very sure that standards are good for “things”. But we are not so sure that they are good for people—especially the little people that many of us care about more than life itself.

When it comes to our own kids, most of us, especially here in America, are not so keen on this standards business. Most parents want their children to be treated as individuals. supported in their specific challenges and acknowledged for their unique gifts.

So, yes, I worry a little about standards. Maybe even more than a little. Forgive me. I’ve seen far more harm done with them than good across the hundreds of schools in which I have worked.

I hope that this time, the better angels of our nature prevail and that we do not give in to temptations like “strict constructionism” or “the myth of linearity”. If we are pure of heart, things may go well. But there is no indication I have seen—in schools, in research, in politics—that yet convinces me that we adults have learned our lessons, and that we are willing now to apply even very good standards in a responsible way.

After all, we didn’t apply standards responsibly the last few times. What do we think has changed?

I predict, that it is precisely the answer to this question that will define the difference between success and failure for the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Here is a guest response from David Griffith, public policy director for ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development):

We at ASCD believe the national dialogue on the Common Core State Standards has reached a turning point. With 46 states adopting the standards, it is no longer a question of if the standards should be adopted, but how they will be implemented.

In one recent survey of deputy state superintendents of education conducted by the Center on Education Policy in January 2012, providing professional development in sufficient quantity and quality was the most-often cited teacher-related challenge to implementing the Common Core State Standards.

This data underscores the fact that to successfully implement these standards, it is critical that educators at all levels—teachers, principals, superintendents—receive the necessary professional development. This, we believe, is the key to moving the Common Core State Standards from words to action. It's not enough to simply distribute the new standards to educators and expect positive, meaningful change to happen. We need to provide educators with targeted professional development to help them understand the new standards, plan lessons and deliver aligned instruction, evaluate learning to determine mastery, and provide additional support to the students who need it.

The professional development provided cannot be a singular event. Instead, the professional development must be sustained, job-embedded, and involve feedback and follow-up observations. It should be tied to specific instructional goals. And just as we evaluate students and teachers, we must evaluate the professional development itself to make sure it is meeting teachers’ needs. Building local capacity and enabling educators to help one another collectively deliver standards-based instruction will ultimately lead to improved student performance.

Hand in hand with an ongoing, job-embedded professional development effort should be an increased focus on the Whole Child approach to learning. ASCD believes each child, in each school, in each community deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. ASCD supports the Common Core State Standards because we support learning that challenges each student. However, for each child to succeed we must also set equally high standards and expectations for the school culture, family engagement, and student’s social-emotional wellness.

Educators know that no single program or initiative provides the silver bullet for student achievement or school improvement. But we do know that the newer, higher standards will require schools and communities to more comprehensively support meaningful student learning. We believe they promote a level of academic preparedness for graduates to successfully pursue further education, a career, and civic participation. We believe they will encourage school instructional staff to develop and deliver effective, engaging instruction reflective of individual student needs and strengths. Perhaps most importantly, we know the standards necessitate an understanding of all the factors related to learning - health, safety, connectedness to school, personalization, relevance, and so forth - to ensure the long-term success of students.

So, as our national dialogue around Common Core State Standards continues, let’s turn our attention to how sustained professional development and the Whole Child approach to learning can help us meet our shared goal of supporting the success of each learner.

Here is a guest response from Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett and Massachusetts Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Dr. Mitchell Chester.

On their own, academic standards do little to affect student learning. It’s the instruction they receive aligned to those standards that is most influential. In his latest Brookings Institution report, Tom Loveless asserts that the Common Core State Standards will have no effect on student achievement. Unfortunately, Loveless and others who have made this assertion fail to acknowledge or recognize the full range of efforts happening in states to support the new standards.

The Common Core initiative involves much more than the adoption of content standards. It is also about the implementation of well-constructed tests aligned to the standards and states supporting local districts and teachers in their work to implement the standards and align local curriculum and instruction.

In a 2009 opinion piece written by Russ Whitehurst—a colleague who Loveless heavily references in this report— he indicated that following the “completion of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, we need a plan for next steps at the state and national level and a theory of action by which those steps together will be sufficient to improve instruction and learning.” States have taken on this challenge head on, and those “next steps” are already well underway.

Indiana became the first state to align teacher preparation standards with the new standards and required colleges to incorporate them into their pre-service preparation programs. This will guide schools of education in shaping the way teachers teach. As a result, students will receive instruction that reflects the new standards and better prepares them for college and careers.

Furthermore, feedback from current teachers speaks volumes. Indiana teachers have been very vocal about their enthusiasm and support for the new standards. We have heard directly from teachers who say the new standards are clearer, easier to use, and do nothing to narrow their curriculum.

Massachusetts, long before adopting the Common Core State Standards, had already moved to implement its own frameworks and accompanying assessments. These standards and assessments – in place for more than a decade – are considered among the best in the nation. With them, expectations were raised for all students. Student achievement in the Commonwealth outpaces that of the other states – an outcome that is hard to imagine without commitment to strong academic expectations.

Careful analysis convinced us that the Common Core is an advancement compared to the earlier Massachusetts standards. We made the decision to adopt, in part, in anticipation of the benefits of collaboration among states to improve the education of our students. In fact, a group of state teams and national experts (led by the Council of Chief State School Officers) meets regularly to share resources and effective strategies for making the Common Core work for our schools and students.

If we were talking about standards adoption alone, we might share some of the skepticism being expressed. However, for the first time, with the Common Core State Standards as the centerpiece, states are bringing into play all elements for an aligned approach. The Common Core effort is about building a system that supports high quality instruction and ensures students experience a course of study that prepares them for life after high school – whether they pursue a career or post-secondary education.

In today’s world, where state and national boundaries are increasingly irrelevant to economic opportunity, it makes great sense for the 50 states to collectively define the knowledge and skills that are core to opportunity and success in the 21st Century. We are two of the more than 40 chief state education officers who are convinced of the potential of cross-state efforts to develop and implement high-quality curriculum materials, instructional resources, aligned assessments, and professional development based on the Common Core.

The naysayers at Brookings are the same ones who protest the validity of international education standards. In a global economy, they don’t like comparisons. Then they don’t like voluntary efforts by the states to educate their students to meet these global challenges.

They also underestimate the combined efforts of the states. The development and adoption by 46 states representing 90 percent of all students was a historic event in US education history. The effort was led by Republican and Democratic governors and chief state school officers. While implementation is a long commitment, there is no reason that the same justification and commitment won't be present in this next stage.

Beginning in 2006—long before President Obama and Race to the Top—state leaders found the will and the commitment to begin developing these standards. They worked collaboratively, both among themselves and with business, education and policymaker groups. By jointly arriving at these standards, they also established the precedent for sharing the best practices of implementation with each other. The naysayers want to reference an old model where each state acted individually on almost every education decision or practice. With the common standards, states can work jointly much more easily than before because the education goals are the same.

Don't underestimate the strong voice of the business community who largely have expressed active support for the common core standards—see the $18 million grant—the largest in its history—from General Electric, as well as support from various business leaders. Nothing reinforces a state policymaker's resolve like having the CEO of a major employer emphatically declare support for a measure.

Here is a response from Dorothy Strickland, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor
of Education, Emerita and Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), Rutgers, The State University of NJ:

The Common Core State Standards initiative is an unprecedented and positive catalyst for reform that promises a more coherent and effective system of education in the US. The fact that the Standards evolved from a collaborative effort among the states themselves, gives them an authenticity and authority they could not otherwise claim.

Although the Standards represent a shared vision among the states involved, the pathways to implementation are wisely left to the individual states themselves. This may be the most useful and instructive part of the process, as it serves to ensure a sense of ownership and investment. It may also be the most arduous and challenging part of the process. Effective implementation takes considerable time and a great deal of thoughtful planning, deliberation, and collaboration. Educators at all levels - teachers, principals, supervisory staff, and superintendents - must reflect on and rethink past practices and weigh their usefulness. They may determine a need to adjust current priorities and embrace new “best practices”. The transition process, though uncomfortable at times, is also incredibly enlightening and powerful. It has enormous potential to improve education at all levels.

As a literacy educator, I am pleased that the standards emphasize critical thinking and problem solving, meaningfully applied to content of interest and importance to students. These skills and abilities are essential to success in all areas of the curriculum, beginning with the early learning years and extending throughout the years of schooling and beyond.

I am pleased to be among those who advocate for this important work and to express my support for the countless educators, at all levels, who are working hard to address a unique, though challenging, opportunity to improve learning and teaching in the United States.

The Common Core is not a panacea, but it represents an unprecedented opportunity to help students reach the higher standards for learning necessary for success in college and careers. In today’s knowledge economy, the U.S. must increase the proportion of the population that completes some form of postsecondary education. Students, parents, employers, and policymakers all understand that future prosperity – both for individuals and the nation – depends on improved educational performance. But the lack of alignment between K-12 standards and the level of performance necessary for success after high school is a significant problem. All too often, states have set their standards in isolation, and without benchmarking them to genuine college and career readiness. The Common Core represents the first approach with the genuine potential to change this. It is an effort led by states. In most states, it has achieved strong bipartisan support. There is a lot of innovative work underway – including projects supported by Lumina and other foundations to assure higher education is engaged in aligning the Common Core with college readiness standards. A lot remains to be done to turn the promise of the Common Core into reality, but it would be a tragic waste to lose the momentum that has been building.

The Common Core standards are not the “silver bullet” for education reform, but we do know this: they represent a new opportunity for Latino students who are disproportionately affected by low standards. The evidence is clear that the Common Core represent a set of learning guidelines that are significantly more rigorous than those currently adopted by states – that alone is movement in the right direction.

Of course, strong, thoughtful and proper implementation of these standards is also necessary for them to be successful. Standards alone can only go so far. If they are implemented correctly, Common Core standards will ensure that historically underserved students, especially English-language learners (ELLs), are taught to high standards that will prepare them for college and careers. The Common Core will help level the playing field by providing a foundation for solid instruction, assessments, and professional development – it will be the framework for developing a strong infrastructure in schools that fully supports the academic achievement of all students.

Latino and ELL academic success is critical to the strength of the U.S. economy as these students represent a large and growing share of the U.S. student population and future workforce. The Common Core holds much promise for Latinos, but it is vital that we support educators at all levels – teachers, principals, superintendents – as they work to implement their states’ new academic standards. Doing so will guarantee the delivery of a high-quality education to our Latino students, regardless of where they live.

In his Brookings Institution report, How Well Are American Students Learning?, Tom Loveless tells us that there is no correlation between the quality of the standards in a given state, as measured by the Fordham Institute reports, and the quality of student performance in that state, as measured by NAEP. And so he concludes that the Common Core State Standards will have little or no influence on student performance. The implication is that we should not look to standards as a winning strategy if we want to improve student performance. But he got the question wrong. The question is not whether standards by themselves greatly improve student performance, but what other elements must be combined with good standards to improve student achievement.

Everything I have learned from almost a quarter century of study of highly successful national education systems suggests that standards by themselves are a very weak reed on which to depend to improve student performance. It is only when well-wrought standards are used to inform the development of a national instructional system that we observe very powerful effects. Such systems include curriculum frameworks, curriculum (including carefully crafted syllabi), high quality examinations based directly on the curriculum to be implemented in the schools and training of the teachers to teach the courses well. If the Common Core State Standards fail, it will be because we have implemented only part of the winning formula, not because we have been barking up the wrong tree. Loveless is not alone in trying to find a silver bullet to improve student achievement. What the United States needs, however, are not silver bullet interventions, but effective systems, something singularly difficult to implement in this country. I write about this in more detail in my Education Week blog, Top Performers.

This is why I find the General Electric Foundation’s recent grant to Student Achievement Partners so promising. It aims to help teachers understand the shifts in instruction that will be needed to utilize the new standards. Another goal of the partnership is to create a storehouse of instructional materials that will enable teachers to implement the standards in their classrooms. The fact that these curriculum materials will be available at no charge, through public web sites, was applauded and not at all surprising given earlier policy preferences expressed by the Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation. This aspect of the plan, however, deserves a closer look.

Several decades ago, in the late 1950s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) organized some of the most talented minds in mathematics, science, and engineering to develop a new curriculum for schools. Once they started producing materials, they were left with the issue of what to do with them. Because they were developed with public funds, NSF decided they should be put in the public domain, available to the schools for free. Unfortunately, this policy failed to provide for the costs of collecting, assembling and distributing the instruments and materials; finalizing the texts by editing, proofing, and formatting, and moving the texts to the market.

All of this to say that the brilliant curriculum work was not making it into the hands of teachers and students. The NSF was forced to change their policy. They licensed the not-for-profits that had developed the materials to retain the intellectual property rights. These organizations were required to enter into negotiations with commercial publishers to publish the materials and sell them to schools at competitive prices. The NSF further authorized the not-for-profits to retain the royalties received from the publishers and to use those royalties to revise and create curriculum materials as needed.

This change in policy spring boarded the process. Publishers found more cost-effective ways to accomplish the goals of the developers than the developers had found and produced the final product at a price the schools could afford. Developers, committed to the sound implementation of the curriculum, created powerful programs of professional development for teachers that would have otherwise been unavailable. All in all, it was one of the best examples of public-private partnerships in the public education arena.

One could argue that this cautionary tale has no place in today’s world of iPads, cloud computing, open sourcing, and eBooks. Incentives that school people face have also shifted from keeping teachers, parents, and communities happy to improving student performance. Perhaps this is enough to overcome the probability of schools buying what they are sold in favor of actively looking for something that is most likely to improve student performance.

Or perhaps not. The quality of the best of the NSF-supported curriculum development programs is difficult to replicate without significant funding. The General Electric Foundation’s $18 million commitment to the implementation of common standards is impressive, but in the grander scheme of things, where text publishers can invest $10 million or more in the development of just one text, it also represents a drop in the bucket. By convincing American schools that they should obtain free materials from web sites like the one GE is funding, we risk destroying the market for textbook publishers. If that happens, who will come forward to fund curriculum development in the United States? Who will be responsible for updating materials when they become outdated? How will we communicate new developments to the people who are now reached by the publisher’s salesman? Can we really expect school staff to invest time in an exhaustive search for the right materials based on analysis of sophisticated data?

There are a number of next steps required in implementing common standards. The GE announcement highlights the importance of creating a sustainable process for the development of high-quality curriculum materials. These materials will only be successful if they are matched to standards, assessments are based on the curriculum, and the teachers are taught how to use the materials in a powerful instructional context. It remains to be seen whether we can pull that off.

Here is a response from Paul Lingenfelter, president of State Higher Education Executive Officers:

More than fifteen years ago the MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts collaborated in funding a “formative evaluation” of the New Standards Project. Over several months I had the privilege of participating in intense conversations about the project’s theory of change with Marc Tucker, Lauren Resnick, their colleagues, and two very wise and penetrating consultants, Dick Elmore and the late Don Schön. The New Standards Project was one of many educational reform strategies in the air (recall also “New American Schools”), and most of us who lived through that era learned some things from our enthusiasms, our passionate arguments, and our disappointments.

Paul Hill and Mary Beth Celio in Fixing Urban Schools articulated the most unforgettable lesson I drew from that era, the insight that “every reform includes a zone of wishful thinking.” In that zone lie all the essential elements of educational success not incorporated in the reform strategy. If any proponents of the Common Core State Standards have a substantial “zone of wishful” thinking, they should read educational history. The notion that the simple act of formally establishing the Common Core State Standards will improve education outcomes is foolish.

But it is equally foolish to believe that we can get better educational outcomes by keeping students guessing about what it will take to succeed in college or in a knowledge-intensive, 21st century career. It is equally foolish to believe that any other strategy of educational improvement – improved teacher education, better instructional materials, more freedom of choice, or more rigorous (or even more skillful) “accountability” regimes – has a shot of being successful without clear learning objectives and useful assessments of what each student knows and can do and what she or he has yet to learn.

If we do it right, the Common Core State Standards, unlike earlier “standards” efforts, have the potential of making the educational enterprise in the United States more coherent. To admit that we really have common standards for communication, language comprehension, and quantitative reasoning is not to deny the freedom of thought and action that we treasure. But to admit we have such standards, to make them explicit in terms of learning objectives, and to focus on helping every student realize his or her potential in mastering them is surely essential to any kind of educational progress.

Those of us in higher education have a huge stake in better student preparation, and an equally large responsibility to improve the capabilities of teachers and school leaders to help students become better prepared. And the importance of using learning objectives to discipline and improve teaching and learning is not confined to K-12. Check out “Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education,” here.

We’ve had enough experience with confusion and incoherence, and we know how well that works. The only risk of common learning objectives and assessments is ending blissful, and dangerous ignorance about how well we are doing in the educational enterprise.

Nobody ever said--or should have said--that better standards per se will boost student achievement or school performance. Huge challenges await any (serious) academic standards on the implementation, assessment and accountability fronts. But it's a bunch better to have standards worth attaining, rigorous standards set forth with enough specificity and clarity (and content) to provide real guidance to curriculum designers, classroom teachers, test developers and more. I commented further on the Brookings (Brown Center) report in last week's Education Gadfly.

The Common Core state standards (for English/language arts and math) are no panacea but they represent a far better destination for U.S. schools than those that most states set on their own. We at Fordham have been monitoring and evaluating state academic standards for eons and that's where we come out. But they're no panacea--and they're fraught with three big risks.

The first, already alluded to, is that states (and others) won't take implementation seriously--which means neglecting curriculum, teacher preparation (and professional development) and more. In that case, "adoption" of the Common Core will amount to lip service only.

The second is that the under-development assessments meant to accompany these standards will falter in any of a hundred ways and/or that many states will bail on them.

The third is that the politics enveloping the Common Core will grow toxic, whether because the tiny band of staunch critics will get traction and/or that these generally commendable standards will become tangled in the presidential election and/or the NCLB-ESEA reauthorization debate. (The critics, of course, are doing their best to cause that to happen, and Secretary Duncan doesn't help matters when he weighs in!)

No, the Common Core is NOT the "only game in town". Even in Washington, it is rivaled by arguments over the future federal role in K-12 education, by disputes about waivers and various races-to-the-top. In states and communities, it is overshadowed by budget cuts, teacher evaluations, various union battles, and more.

But it's important. It's got much positive potential. Bravo to G.E. for investing in making it happen--and for groups like the Hunt Institute and Student Achievement Partners that are trying their best to make it work as intended.

I'm a big fan of Tom Loveless. He has done important and distinguished research over the years. His research has been extremely valuable to both fellow researchers and policymakers.

He is right here to point out that there has been no correlation, much less a causal relationship, between the simple adoption of better content standards and higher levels of student achievement.

Yet, somehow this research leads Tom to the unwarranted conclusion that the Common Core initiative is likely to have "very little impact" on student achievement.

If this initiative were only about the content standards, he might be right. But it isn't.

As Tom surely knows, this effort is much more comprehensive than the adoption of content standards alone. States, along with partners of all sorts, are working at improving curricula, preparing teachers to be more effective, developing stronger assessments, and finding more accurate performance markers - all aligned to the standards, and with the intention that instruction become more effective in delivering successfully to the standards' goals.

An "apples to apples" comparison might indeed show that a mere change in content standards may have no different impact than such changes in the past.

But it's "apples to oranges" to compare what's going on here to the mere adoption of content standards in the past.

And "apples to oranges" comparisons is not typical of the remarkably fine work Tom usually does.

I don't know how much difference this initiative will make in lifting student achievement across the nation. Given all the work I see emerging in the implementation phase, I am very hopeful it will make a significant difference, and for the better.

But it's really inappropriate now to pass judgment. I would invite Tom and others to hold off on making conclusions, give folks time to do their work, prepare proper tools for evaluation, and then measure results after the initiative has been thoroughly implemented.

Most states have adopted the Common Core; some have not. There's great variety in how states are moving forward with implementation.

It could be a heckuva evaluation project. Have at it, Tom!

The standards movement was in its heyday when I first became superintendent of schools in Fairfax County Virginia back in 1997. The following year Virginia implemented its Standards of Learning (SOLs) and much of Virginia was in shock over the unexpected low performance of many of our students, including schools in heralded Fairfax County. Several years later No Child Left Behind came along and the scenario was repeated as schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress. The pattern, though, became easily recognizable. Initial testing of new standards yielded disappointing results that then led to a focus on improvement that more often than not emphasized teaching to the test for short term gains.

There is no reason to believe that the Common Core standards in and of themselves will lead to higher achievement. They are not a curriculum, they are not innovative pedagogical strategies, they are not professional development activities that will produce better teachers. They are standards like Virginia's SOLs (Which may well be the reason why Virginia has not adopted the Common Core). And if we have learned anything from experience, the initial round of assessments after implementation will be shocking and certainly in a direction opposite from improvement.

So why implement the Common Core? From my perspective there is only one reason. When it comes to education we are not the United States of America. We are the Fifty States of America. Every state clings to its Constitutional mandate to provide a system of education and consequently we have fifty sets of standards with fifty sets of tests to measure them. Our ability to compete on international tests against countries that have national standards is diminished. The need for publishers and developers of curriculum and testing materials to customize products for fifty states leads to inefficiency and higher costs. We don't want a national curriculum developed by the federal government but we do need United State Standards adopted by each state.

Unfortunately the Brookings report may slow down the adoption process and may even lead to some states backing out of their adoption a la South Carolina. But if a significant block of states move forward with adoption and if they then adopt a common assessment instrument, it will put us on the road to an eventual set of United State Standards. However, that in and of itself will not be sufficient to raise achievement but it could be a contributing factor.