1. Common Core State Standards The New National Initiative West Hempstead UFSD Board of Education Meeting March 19, 2013

2. Instead of going a mile wide and an inch deep… Go an inch wide and a mile deep.

3. Why Standards? Why Common Core Standards? Common Core State Standards establish consistency across the states. Standards provide a shared vision for teachers and administrators. Standards provide a shared vision of what students should know and be able to do.

4. 46 states and Washington DC have adopted the Common Core Standards

5. 6 Shifts in ELA Literacy Balancing Informational and Literary Text Building Knowledge in the Disciplines Staircase of Complexity Text-based Answers Writing from Sources Academic Vocabulary

6. Building Knowledge in the Disciplines: 6-12 Every Teacher a Teacher of Literacy Content teachers outside of the ELA classroom emphasize literacy experiences. Rather than referring to the text, students are expected to learn from what they read.

7. GradesLiteratureInformational K-250% 3-550% 6-1230% -fiction -poetry -drama -Shakespeare 70% “substantially more literary non-fiction” -essays -speeches -opinion pieces -biographies -journalism -historical -scientific -contemporary events -nature -the arts -Founding Documents Reading Types Across the Grade Levels

8. 6 Shifts in Mathematics Focus - deeply on concepts prioritized in standards. Coherence – connect learning within and across grades. Fluency – students are expected to have speed and accuracy with simple calculations. Deep Understanding – Teach more than “how to get the answers” and instead support students’ ability to access concepts from a number of perspectives. Applications – Use and choose the appropriate concept for application even when not prompted. Dual Intensity – Practicing and understanding both occurring with intensity.

9. What students can learn at any particular grade level depends upon what they have learned before. K-12…Strength As One

10. Goals of the Common Core: Ensuring college and career readiness for all Rigorous curriculum and instruction Assessing what students know and can do Using assessment data to improve student learning and to improve teaching practices

11. Changes to NYSED Grades 3-8 ELA and Math Tests: Assessing the Common Core Beginning with the current school year (2012-13), NYSED is re-designing its assessment program to measure what students know and can do relative to the grade-level Common Core State Standards.

12. Specific changes to the Grades 3-8 ELA and math tests include the following:  Increases in Rigor – The CCSS are back-mapped, grade-by-grade, from college and career readiness. Many of the questions on the Common Core assessments are more advanced and complex than those found on prior assessments that measured prior grade-level standards.  Focus on Text – To answer ELA questions correctly, students will need to read and analyze each passage completely and closely, and be prepared to carefully consider responses to multiple-choice questions. For constructed response items, students will need to answer questions with evidence gathered from rigorous literature and informational texts. Some texts will express an author’s point of view, with which not all readers will agree.  Depth of Math – Students will be expected to understand math conceptually, use prerequisite skills with grade-level math facts, and solve math problems rooted in the real-world, deciding for themselves which formulas and tools (such as protractors or rulers) to use.

13. Accountability: The first New York State tests to measure student progress on the Common Core will be administered in April 2013 for Grades 3-8 ELA and math. Because the new tests are designed to determine whether students are meeting a higher performance standard, we expect that fewer students will perform at or above grade-level Common Core expectations (i.e., proficiency) than was the case with prior-year State tests.

14.  New York State, for the first time, will be reporting student grade- level expectations against a trajectory of college- and career- readiness as measured by tests fully reflective of the Common Core and, as a result, the number of students who score at or above grade level expectations will likely decrease.  Student scores on the Common Core assessments will not be directly comparable to scores from prior-year tests because the assessments are based on different, more rigorous standards. As such, the number of students meeting or exceeding Common Core grade-level expectations should not necessarily be interpreted as a decline in student learning or as a decline in educator performance.

15. PARCC: Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College/Careers Nearly every state in the nation is working individually and collectively to improve its academic standards and assessments to ensure students graduate with the knowledge and skills most demanded by college and careers

16. PARCC is an alliance of 22 states, educating nearly 25 million students, that are working together to develop a common set of K-12 assessments in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers.

17. The PARCC Goals 1. Create high-quality assessments 2. Build a pathway to college and career readiness for all students 3. Support educators in the classroom 4. Develop 21 st century, technology-based assessments 5. Advance accountability at all levels 6. Build an assessment that is sustainable and affordable

18. Implementation Timeline School Year 2011 – 2012  Recommend initial phase of CCSS implementation.  Math and ELA tests continue to be aligned with 2005 Standards. School Year 2012 – 2013  Ongoing CCSS rollout happens in the schools. NYS tests aligned to CCSS in Grades 3-8 School Year 2013 – 2014 Full implementation of CCSS in schools. NYS tests aligned to CCSS. School Year 2014 – 2015 Full implementation of CCSS PARCC assessments (if adopted by the Board of Regents)

19. Common Core Resources NYSED:  http://engageny.org/ (see Parent Toolkit)http://engageny.org/  http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/common_core_standards/http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/common_core_standards/ Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College/Careers:  http://parcconline.org/http://parcconline.org/ National PTA:  http://pta.orghttp://pta.org