After the authors reviewed the "State of State Standards--and the Common Core--in 2010" they found that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were clearer and more rigorous than the English language arts (ELA) standards in 37 states and stronger than the math standards in 39 states. States were encouraged to adopt the CCSS. By 2013 the…

Purpose: School choice policies are expected to generate competition leading to improvement in school practices. However, little is known about how competition operates in public education--particularly in charter schools. This paper examines charter-school leaders' competitive perception formation and the actions taken in response to competition.…

Recently adopted state standards for middle grades and high school mathematics content have an increased emphasis on statistical topics. With this change, teacher education programs may need to adapt how they prepare preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) to teach statistics and require measures related to statistics teaching to assess…

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states' current…

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states' current…

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to identify how PLCs influence the high school English teachers' practice in response to key instructional shifts within teaching standards in the Southwest United States. Legislation from the last two decades puts expectations in place that raise the bar for American students and their teachers…

This memorandum provides a summary of the indicators of college- and career-readiness used in nine states: Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. This scan was conducted at the request of the California Comprehensive Center, and focuses on data from states' Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

The Common Core Standards require students to learn content and mathematical practices, and so teachers must have content knowledge and be able to engage in practices themselves. This raises the question of how novice teachers learn to engage in mathematical practices. I investigate pre-service secondary teacher learning of mathematical practices…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 English language arts/literacy and mathematics, released in 2010, have been adopted by 49 states and territories; the District of Columbia; and the U.S. Department of Defense schools, which serve the children of U.S. service members around the world. The widespread adoption of the CCSS is a major…

This study explored the enactment of formative assessment practices in 89 observed lessons across 15 middle and high school science teachers before and after they participated in workshops that coalesced around formative assessment, teaching science to English learners (ELs), and integrating Next Generation Science Standards with Common Core…

This article argues for the importance of teaching research as a creative practice. The authors recommend geography and conversation as generative metaphors for teaching and learning creative research methods, offering examples from their undergraduate composition courses. Creating knowledge as a researcher requires posing the question to be…

The Common Core State Standards present the greatest opportunity in decades to improve the quality of education afforded to all students. Uniformly raising standards across the majority of states and increasing the rigor of assessments sets an ambitious bar of college and career readiness for all students. Furthermore, assessing students against…

Tasks to Advance the Learning of Mathematics (TALMs) were developed to stimulate grades 5-8 students' curiosity about complex mathematical relationships, inspire them to reason abstractly and quantitatively, encourage them to consider and create alternative solution approaches, develop their skills to persuade others about the viability of one…

This paper outlines each state's definition of college and career readiness and shows whether they associate with the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), ACT College and Career Readiness System (ACCRS), or both. The general definition that emerges can not only facilitate interstate discussions on multiple levels, but also provide…