The many flaws in Common Core’s standards are finally beginning to be discussed in state after state, especially the damaging expectation that all American high school students should be prepared for college, whether or not they are willing or able to do the reading that college coursework requires.  The hidden problem with such an expectation is that it can be achieved on tests of college-readiness only when empty skills (e.g., find the main idea) are applied to non-demanding texts and when per[...]

The Massachusetts Legislature should require the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to reinstate passage of the U.S. history MCAS exam as a high school graduation requirement and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should provide teachers in grades 6-10 with examples of specific texts that could be assigned to prepare students to read a seminal historical text such as Federalist #10 in grade 11 or 12, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.[...]

State and local education policy makers in the 46 states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards should emphasize the literary-historical content that already exists in the standards and add an additional literature-based standard to address Common Core’s lack of literary content.[...]

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/04/23/why-states-should-hop-off-the-national-standards-bandwagon/ When “states signed on to common core standards, they did not realize…that they were transferring control of the school curriculum to the federal government,” said Sandra Stotsky, 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality at the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, speaking at The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. Stotsky and four other education scholars from around the nation met to di[...]

http://educationnext.org/the-battle-over-common-core-math-standards-will-a-larger-federal-role-help-or-hinder-curriculum-improvement/ CAMBRIDGE, MA – More than 40 states have now agreed to adopt the Common Core standards in English Language Arts and math.  In a forum released today on the website, www.educationnext.org, former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman and Johns Hopkins University professor of mathematics W. Stephen Wilson offer differing opinions about the standards.  W[...]

Essay Review of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learnfrom Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg (NY: Teachers College Press, 2011) Author(s): Sandra Stotsky — Publication date: 2012-03-05 Category: Education Abstract: About four decades ago, Finland introduced major reforms to grades 1-12 and teacher education, with noteworthy results. In 1970, less than 10% of its students graduated from high school. By 2010, most high schoolage students attended high school and most of these stude[...]

First-Class State Standards Are Better than Third-Class National Standards Author(s): Ze’ev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky — Publication date: 2010-02-23 Category: Education Abstract: The case for national standards rests on more than the need to equalize academic expectations for all students by remedying the uneven and often deplorable quality of most state standards and tests. The case also rests on the urgent need to increase academic achievement for all students. In mathematics and science[...]