The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have brought about changes in reading instruction in order to better prepare students for post-secondary education and productivity in all career fields. An important feature in the elementary (K-5) CCSS is the increased exposure to informational texts and the requirement for students to read expository…

Traditional grading practices have been used for over one hundred years, and to date, there have been no meaningful research reports to support it. As such, some schools are transitioning to standards-based grading, a practice based upon several evidence-based principles. The purpose of this research primer is to provide an overview of the…

In January 2014, the GED Testing Service significantly redesigned the GED test to incorporate the Common Core State Standards and the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education. The purpose of this study was to examine the significant changes made to the test in 2014, examine the impact of the changes on Washingtonians, and make…

While there is considerable scholarship describing principles for effective professional development, there have been few attempts to examine these principles in practice. In this paper, we identify and examine the particular design features of a mathematics professional development experience provided for middle grades teachers over 14 weeks. The…

This new working paper uses survey responses and student grades and test scores to examine how math instruction and student outcomes have changed in schools with differing levels of CCSS professional development since the implementation of the new Common Core Mathematics standards (CCSS-M) in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2014-15. It found that…

When CME Group Foundation (CME) was formed in 2007 with an endowment from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Trust, its founders set out to engage in grantmaking that would improve education from cradle to career and strengthen the region's economy. During its first decade, nearly a quarter of CME's grants targeted early childhood education with an…

Evaluating a school system requires benchmarks of success. In order to know whether it is successful we need to know not only what is happening, but what should be happening. This paper interprets, and comments on, the aims California has for its public school system, and offers ways of thinking about the evidence in the light of those aims, and…

A standards-based model of reform has dominated public education for 30 years. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), it will continue to dominate education policy. Is that model working? State boards of education share an intrinsic interest in this question. While there are many ways to investigate it, one approach that shows promise treats…

Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk," some scholars have argued that a national curriculum and national testing are necessary to hold school personnel accountable for student achievement and, ultimately, to raise educational standards. The idea of developing a nationwide curriculum has been widely debated in the United States,…

This article recovers a 1972 essay from James Moffett entitled "Who Counts?" that the National Council of Teachers of English commissioned at the onset of US standards and accountability reforms. The essay historicises NCTE's positions on teacher accountability by comparing its recent positions on teacher evaluation and the Common Core…

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Systems (SBAC) started in the 2014-2015 academic year and has been regarded by many in the field as a radical effort to improve the American English Language Art (ELA) educational standards. These two consortia, being aligned with Common…

The goals of problem-solving activities in the elementary grades often include making sense of story problems, developing a range of strategies, and reaching accurate solutions. These are important mathematical aims, but they do not fully address the demands of modeling with mathematics as described in the fourth of the Common Core's eight…

The Common Core's Standards for Mathematical Practice encourage teachers to develop their students' ability to reason abstractly and quantitatively by helping students make sense of quantities and their relationships within problem situations. The seventh-grade content standards include objectives pertaining to developing linear equations in…

Teachers face many challenges helping students meet the expectations set forth in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010). CCSSM content standards not only introduce new concepts at each grade level but also require teachers to learn new terminology for old concepts and consider how students' understanding of concepts…

Many elementary schools across the nation are scaling back or cutting arts curriculum altogether. This article presents classroom teachers with an activity for integrating art with mathematics. Through a three-phase exploration of reasoning with shapes and their attributes, students will get to know a classmate better, work with defining and…