Common Core State Standards

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have released the draft copies of the new common core state standards. The drafted standards are available for review and for public comment until October 21st. The standards and the rules for comment can be found on the Common Core State Standards Initiative Website. Illinois is working closely with this project as is 47 other states. State Superintendent Dr. Koch provided some specific information about the goals of the new standards as well as projections for where we will be in the future. I for one am very excited about the new standards, I think they will assist us in making our curriculum more meaningful and rigorous for our students. The standards were written to prepare students for "success in entry-level, credit-bearing, academic college courses and in workforce training programs." It is important that we understand that there shouldn't be differences in expectations between traditional college bound students and workforce bound students.

On my original post I discussed the problem of negative information coming from school employees and that my posts would always include something positive. So this post is a thank you to Jim, Josh, Sandy, Sandy, Jane and Cindy. I'm currently getting to teach six professional educators how to create a web presence for their classroom/office. It's a lot of fun to get to work together for a couple of hours each week trying to help them create their vision for parent/student/community communication. (Well at least it's fun for me). They have all worked very hard and their sites are going to be a wealth of information. Only three more classes and their sites will be attached to the district website. It's a tremendous sense of accomplishment to learn a new skill and then apply those skills to creating something that can be shared with a worldwide audience. I hope they feel the same way.

Thanks for reading
Tammy