The Common Core Standards emerged from a joint effort of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to ensure equity in learning standards nationwide. The Common Core seeks to align learning standards in English language arts and mathematics for students in grades K-12. Forty states have agreed to adopt the Common Core, but most of them are in the beginning stages of implementation. The states have formed two consortia – the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) – to guide the development of new student assessments that are at once more rigorous and more flexible in how they measure learning growth in increasingly diverse student populations. Implementation details, though, will be critical to the consortia’s work, as discussed in a December 2010 paper from CTQ and three expert teacher co-authors.

Currently, high-quality assessments of student performance can provide useful information on gains in student subject matter knowledge. But student assessment systems in use today often fail to account for all aspects of student learning or all aspects of the work of teaching. They are just one gauge of what a student has accomplished during an entire school year or of what a teacher has accomplished. Student assessments can provide a stronger picture of learning gains if they:

• Incorporate multiple measures of student learning, including assessments other than standardized tests
• Are administered throughout the school year to allow teachers to adjust instruction to meet student needs
• Include elements that measure higher-order conceptual understanding, regardless of the type of assessment
• Give children opportunities to practice effective, multi-layered problem solving

Use the resources below to learn more about the Common Core Standards and characteristics of high-quality student assessments.

RESOURCES

Articles and Research

• New Student Assessments and Advancing Teaching as a Results-Oriented Profession - CTQ’s Barnett Berry and Alesha Daughtrey (with expert teacher co-authors Renee Moore, David Orphal and Marsha Ratzel) explore research- and classroom practice-based perspectives on the Common Core. They assert that the standards alone cannot transform teaching and learning without better assessment practices. Moreover, states and districts should involve accomplished teachers in developing new assessments and implementation considerations must include giving teachers time not only to assess students and collect data, but to work with that data to drive stronger pedagogy.

In the News

• New York Times: “A Trial Run for Schools Standards that Encourage Deeper Thought” – A hundred New York schools are implementing Common Core standards on a trial basis. Although the standards are theoretically an improvement, these schools find implementation challenges – including a lack of flexibility in how the standards allow high-needs and English language learner students to be assessed.