There have been many recent policy and program changes in K-12 education across the United States, particularly in area of mathematics. Changes, such as the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and standards-aligned year-end summative assessments, require an increase in student-centered, cognitively demanding activities in the classroom.…

The Language and Writing strands of the Common Core State Standards place a heavy emphasis on sentence-level conventions including syntax/grammar and mechanics. Interventions targeting these foundational skills are necessary to support struggling writers, as poorly developed sentence construction skills inhibit more complex writing tasks. This…

Recent recommendations for the teaching of mathematics place an emphasis on the Common Core's Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) (CCSSI 2010). The SMPs emphasize constructing viable arguments, critiquing the ideas of others, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, and using computational procedures. These skills, including the use of…

This article presents a descriptive case study that describes a secondary history teacher's expression of sociocultural-oriented technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in the classroom, the execution of which we describe as TPACK+. TPACK+ describes sociocultural-oriented teacher knowledge requisite for the dynamic execution of TPACK…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require students to read and comprehend complex content texts. They specify three dimensions of a text that simultaneously contribute to text complexity across the curriculum: qualitative dimensions, quantitative dimensions, and reader and task considerations. In literacy instruction, recognizing and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influences of various facets of middle school mathematics teachers' practical rationality on their instructional decision making as they plan to enact the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice, CCSS-MP1 (perseverance in problem solving) and CCSS-MP3 (communicating and critiquing). The…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in ELA/literacy call for increased rigor, close reading of complex texts, evidence-based argumentation in academic English, and collaborative conversations. For English language learners (ELLs), achieving the standards requires that they double their efforts to simultaneously learn both academic English and…

Purposes: This study uses think-alouds and cognitive interviews to provide validity evidence for an online formative assessment--i-Ready Standards Mastery (iSM) mini-assessments--which involves a heavy use of innovative items. iSM mini-assessments are intended to help teachers determine student understanding of each of the on-grade-level Common…

Visual art teachers have often been the producers and directors of their own curricula, turning to various resources and objectives (local, state, and national) to form their own sets of standards. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have provided new opportunities to integrate the arts into content-based curricula. The author, a classroom art…

In addition to being one of the authors of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), David Coleman has become the Standards' "most visible advocate" (Smith, Appleman, & Wilhelm, 2014, p. 10) and one of their "most prominent and articulate promoters" (Rabinowitz & Bancroft, 2014, p. 4). In a talk titled "Bringing the…

Indigenous sovereignty is an essential component of civics education. Historical and contemporary examples of infringements on the sovereign rights of Native nations exist, in part, due to the disregard of tribal sovereignty, nationhood, and citizenship. Given the aims of inquiry leading to informed action, we see a strong fit for using the…

The overarching goal of the Common Core State Standards is to graduate students from P-12 schools who are college and career ready (CCR). School-university partnerships play an important role in preparing students, families, and teachers to achieve this goal. University partners can be especially helpful as children begin to imagine how they can…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted in an effort to create a consistent set of standards across schools, districts, and states in order to ensure equality of educational opportunities for all students in the country. Educational reform through standardization implies that across thousands of miles and millions of students,…

This study investigated initial implementation processes of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in public and private schools in a single Louisiana district. Results suggested participants' high level of concern in many aspects of the implementation of the CCSS in public schools related to timeline and instability of curriculum decisions, which…

California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was signed into law in 2013, and represents the most significant change in California education finance and governance in 40 years. It moves additional funds to districts with students in poverty, English language learners, and foster youth. The LCFF sends supplemental funds to districts based on…