Standards Blog

Aligning Literacy Instruction with the Common Core State Standards
Thommie Piercy, Ph.D.
10/14/2011
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Literacy is exploding with complexity and opportunities! Today’s literacy needs, in conjunction with expectations in the Common Core State Standards, call for explicit and direct literacy instruction. In particular, Disciplinary Literacy instruction increases students’ comprehension of increasing levels of complex text, as demanded in Standard 10. This type of instruction may represent a significant change for English Language Arts teachers and teachers in different disciplines, as indicated in Achieve’s, On the Road to Implementation, (2010).

One question that has arisen is how Disciplinary Literacy instruction coexists with Reading Across the Content strategies. What Disciplinary Literacy experts and studies have disclosed is the lack of generalizability of strategies. That is, secondary students require discipline-specific instructional support as text complexity increases, as noted in the groundbreaking work by experts including the Shanahans: “In literacy development, progression to higher levels in the pyramid means learning more sophisticated but less generalizable skills and routines.” This passage continues, “By the time adolescent students are being challenged by disciplinary texts, literacy instruction often had evaporated altogether or has degenerated into a reiteration of general reading strategies" (Harvard Ed. Review, 2008). As text...

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How Close Reading Increases Student Access into Complex Text As Expected in the ELA Common Core State Standards
Thommie Piercy, Ph.D.
09/08/2011
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The ELA Common Core State Standards provide enormous opportunities for all students while creating challenges for instruction. With Standard 10 establishing the high expectation that all students read and understand complex text, the key word receiving much attention is, “all.” Yes, the expectation is for every student to independently read complex texts with understanding from Grade 2 through Grade 11 and into College and Careers. Currently, the most frequently asked questions revolve around Standard 10. These questions include, “How can I provide instruction to support my students’ capacity to read complex text?”Also, “Specifically, how can I support my students, who entered my classroom not reading on their enrolled grade level, to read such difficult texts in my content area, (including History/Social Studies, Science/Technical Subjects, Mathematics, and English Language Arts?”

In addition to providing student access to complex text by providing text-dependent, discipline-specific questions, as described in an earlier blog, guiding students to improve their close reading of text increases their understanding of complex text. Questions which focus directly on the text require students to practice close reading.

What is Close Reading?

Close Reading is keeping your eyes on the text to read the content very carefully, paying attention to details. Being quite different from a...

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The Text Complexity “Staircase” in the Common Core Standards
Thomasina Piercy, Pd.D.
04/08/2011
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Just as the Aorta carries blood from the heart, Common Core State Standard number 10 carries increasing levels of text complexity up from Grade 2 through Grade 12 and into College and Career Readiness. In many respects, text complexity is the hallmark of the CCSS as it reveals the depth of educators’ commitment to providing American students every opportunity to be prepared to meet future global challenges. Providing a specific Standard 10 presence in each grade level, including a place-holder in both Kindergarten and Grade 1 to allow foundations to be established, the Common Core’s text complexity standard provides a backward-mapped format to scaffold instruction. Notice the scaffolded expectations in the Staircase for Text Complexity within the following (Grades 11 – Career and College Readiness):

GRADES 11-CCR: By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature (informational texts) at the high end of the grade 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently. By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature (information texts) in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band proficiently, and with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

The combination of the increased text complexity and the depth of cognitive demand within the task,...

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States Hold the Key to Core Standards Implementation
Hayes Mizell
01/13/2011
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Findings from a survey of state education agencies published Jan. 6 by the Center on Education Policy reveal that states may undercut their own implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

On the one hand, states say they adopted the standards because of their “rigor” and “potential to guide statewide education improvement.”  However, states are also “expecting, rather than requiring, districts to…make complementary changes in curriculum and teacher programs.”  Districts may or may not develop new curricula, materials, and instructional practices, provide relevant professional development, and implement standards-related teacher induction programs and evaluations.

Maybe state education agencies deserve some sympathy.  Local school officials frequently deride them for being heavy-handed and intrusive. Sometimes that is true, but sometimes when school districts want to fend off complaints from disgruntled educators or parents, they use their state department of education as a convenient scapegoat: “The state requires us to do it…”

If one thing is certain in efforts to improve student performance, it is that courageous leadership is necessary from each level of school governance—local, state, and federal.  Adopting the Common Core State Standards is an important step, but that is not enough.  States have been down this road many, many times in the past....

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How can we as educators ensure that we are focusing on standards while simultaneously developing student creativity?

Douglas B. Reeves, Ph.D.
01/12/2011
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  1. Standards yes, standardization, no.

    2. We embrace standards not because they are perfect, but because they are vastly superior to the Bell Curve—the way that students were evaluated before the standards movement.  The Bell Curve gave us the worst of all worlds—it made some students inappropriately complacent just because they “beat” other students, and it labeled other students as failures even if they were proficient.  Neither the Wisconsin State Standards nor the new Common Core State Standards are perfect, but they are far better than the Bell Curve.  Embracing standards does not mean that teachers have to be like robots—the same standard can be taught in a variety of different ways.  Wisconsin teachers have, as have teachers around the world, created new scenarios and new performance tasks to teach standards in different and unique ways so that students are engaged in learning.

  2. Fairness yes, mindless repetition, no.

    3. One of the fundamental commitments of standards-based reform is that of fairness—all students have an equal opportunity to achieve proficiency.  But that does NOT mean that teaching needs to be reduced to mindless repetition and identical instruction.  Think of a great music...

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