Meredith Brannon

Annotated Bibliography

April 29, 2013

Kendall, John S. Understanding Common Core State Standards, n.p.: ASCD, 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Mar. 2013. In his e-book, Kendall provides an overview of the Common Core Standards and gives the rationale for their development in the United States. He begins by giving an overview of the history of educational standards, outlining key educational aspects for three sets educational paradigms: before standards-based education, during the movement toward the development of educational standards, and finally, under the new Common Core State Standards. Kendall then outlines both the advantages and drawbacks associated with the development of the Common Core, arguing the need for a set of standards that will actually serve to close the achievement gap in education. Next, he gives examples of the Common Core Standards in Math and English, emphasizing the advantages of the Common Core in regards to its organization and specific content. Regarding the mathematics Standards, Kendall explains the difference between the Mathematical Content and the Mathematical Practice Standards, and he gives examples of each type of standard in order to demonstrate how they differ and eventually connect. In the end, Kendall explains the major differences between the old standards and the Common Core in terms of scope, coherence, and specificity. Afterwards, he concludes that the Common Core represents the implementation of intentional instruction using unified curricula and assessments that remains manageable while promoting increased student and teacher performance nationwide. Though Kendall talks at length about the various drawbacks and dissenting opinions regarding the implementation of the Common Core, he still argues for their adoption and implementation across the nation. He pulls examples directly from the Standards themselves and does a good job of highlighting the key benefits of the Standards when compared with the traditional, disparate standards of the individual states. Kendall also talks at length about the

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challenges he thinks will be encountered when attempting to implement such rigorous standards across the board. While Kendall supports Common Core implementation, he clearly recognizes that adopting the Standards is just the first hurdle to be encountered when attempting such a dramatic shift in American educational standards. The fact that Kendall gives equal treatment to both sides of the argument shows he is almost completely impartial in his portrayal of the issue of Common Core. Therefore his arguments seem credible and this fact makes him seem very knowledgeable and believable on the subject of Common Core, regardless of whether or not he supports the initiative. This e-book will help my inquiry by giving me a great source of foundational knowledge regarding the Common Core State Standards and the arguments associated with their adoption and implementation. I also found the explanation of the Math Standards to be very helpful because I was confused as to the differences between the Math Practice and Math Content Standards and why these were separated at all. I plan to use the examples of Math Content and Math Practice Standards to show how the Math Standards connect to one another. I also plan to use this article to show how the Math standards will connect and build upon one another across the grade levels to show how teachers will expose students to concepts on multiple levels, the fact of which calls for a drastic change in math teaching methods. The Common Core Mathematics standards differ from many state mathematics standards in a variety of ways: the focus for instruction is made clear for each grade; there is a significant emphasis on students conceptual understanding of mathematics; and the Standards for Mathematical Practice are raised to the same level as the Standards for Mathematical Content (24).

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Annotated Bibliography

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The most notable differences appear in middle school: probability and statistics begins in 6th grade, and students begin working at expressions of ratio and proportion in 7th grade. In 8th grade, students are expected not only to apply the Pythagorean Theorem but also to prove it. Teachers may find that the specific descriptions, arguments, and proofs required present a greater challenge than their states standards for middle school (25).

The essence of the Common Core initiative can be induced from its name. The nature of the core is of an essential and irreducible set of knowledge and skills, while common suggests a social contract and all that it implies: shared benefit and equitable treatment (27).

Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, et al. Plans to Adopt and Implement Common Core State Standards in the Southeast Region States. Issues and Answers. REL 2012-No. 136. Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (2012): ERIC. Web. 17 Mar. 2013. This study describes how six different southeastern states have planned to analyze, adopt, and implement the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English. The researchers said the research came about as a result of a need to gather and compare each states particular plans so that information can be used in research on the outcomes associated with a particular plan of action. Then each of the plans for each state were stated and compared on the following points: the rationale given for adopting the Common Core standards; the communication strategies used to build support for the adoption of the Common Core; the timetables for implementation of the Common Core and the rationale given for the implementation year; the

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Annotated Bibliography

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preparation timelines for the first year of teaching; the approach to training educators on the Common Core; and finally, the timeline and plans for aligning state assessments to the Common Core Standards. For North Carolina in particular, researchers reported that the state educational board reviewed the Common Core State Standards extensively prior to seeking support for their implementation, and officials eventually decided to adopt the common standards as given with a plan to implement them beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. Researchers reported that all the states have plans for implementing the Common Core Standards that focus on developing curricular and instructional resources as well as training educators on the Common Core by using multiple formats. Though the states each adhere to a unique implementation timeline, researchers emphasized that all states will be aligned with the Common Core Standards in time for Common Core-based assessments to be administered beginning in 2014-2015. This article provided a wealth of information and did so in a fairly organized manner given the sheer volume of data, but at times it was very difficult to keep track of the differences between each states unique implementation plans. Each different criterion was explained for each state in copious detail, making the article very long and tedious to read and interpret. Thankfully, the researchers simplified the data by providing useful tables that made comparisons between the states very simple. That said, after viewing the tables based on each of the criteria, the descriptions of how each state addressed each specific concern seemed redundant. Since there was very little analysis of the trends in the data by the researchers, it is not clear why the authors felt the need to exhaustively describe data already given concisely in the tables. Even with all the redundancies of data, this article was very informative in its specific comparisons of Common Core implementation plans and does serve as a good source of unbiased information about the plans for implementation specific to North Carolina. Since the information compiled in

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this report was given by the education agencies of each state, it makes for an interesting question: did any states change their implementation strategies in response to this report, and if so, why would they do so? I plan to use this report as a source of unbiased information regarding the implementation of the Common Core in North Carolina. The information in the report allows me to understand the plans and timelines specific to my inquiry about North Carolina schools. This is helpful because it gives me credible, specific information on the state specific to my inquiry. This report also helps me see that North Carolina educational agencies recognized the need to develop methods that would train educators to best implement the Common Core standards in their own classrooms. Since my inquiry involves the teaching methods developed to implement the Common Core, I can use the information in this article to understand how teachers are educated to teach to its standards, ultimately affecting the successful implementation of the Common Core. In adopting the common standards, states agree that they will not pick and choose which standards to adopt but will adopt and implement the full set (3). North Carolina reported that their state could benefit from the cross-state collaboration fostered by common standards, such as shared instructional resources and textbooks, joint professional development efforts, and the use of common assessments (7). Respondents in all six states reported that their state will use a combination of approaches to teach educators statewide. All six will use the Internet to provide online training sessions, including webinars and professional development modulesAll six states also reported offering some combination of face-to-face, direct training for school staff and a train-the-trainer approach in which state education agency staff train district

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Annotated Bibliography

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teams (a small number of district office and school staff) who in turn train school staff throughout the district (13).

Achieve, Inc. Comparing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and Japans Mathematics Curriculum in the Course of Study. Achieving the Common Core. Achieve, Inc (2010): ERIC. Web. 17 Mar. 2013. This short article is written by one of the organizations responsible for the development of the Common Core State Standards and defines how the Japanese Course of Study was used as a foundation upon which to base the Common Core Standards in Mathematics. The organization begins by outlining the basic tenets of both the Common Core State Standards and the Japanese Course of Study specific to Mathematics standards, explaining that the Japanese Course of Study was of particular interest because of the repeatedly high performance of Japanese Mathematics students in comparison to US students. The researchers compared both sets of standards in terms of rigor, coherence, and focus. They determined that the Common Core State Standards are similar to the Japanese Course of Study in all three of these areas, and that the Common Core Standards are slightly more detailed and therefore more useful to teachers seeking to implement them in the classroom. This article gives useful examples of the similarities and differences between the Common Core State Standards and the Japanese Course of Study, and does a good job of showing where they differ in elementary, middle, and high schools. Since the brief was authored by an organization involved in the development of the Common Core State Standards, the bias

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towards the superiority of that set of standards should be taken into account. This makes the article slightly skewed in terms of its conclusions. Still, the organization does do a convincing job of showing how the Common Core State Standards in Math have attempted to address the achievement gap as a result of being designed meet and even exceed the standards of Japan. They do this by first showing how the Common Core Math Standards are extremely similar in rigor and intensity to the Japanese Course of Study in each of the three educational levels. Then they use the same examples to show how the Common Core State Standards are more specific than the Japanese standards for these same topics by quoting directly from each set of standards. Even if this study does seem a bit biased in places, the direct quotations do contribute to the overall credibility. I plan to use this brief as a source of background information on the development of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics, particularly with regards to the information it provides on the development of the Common Core to suit its aims. The article also gives a succinct explanation of the middle grades math education under the Common Core, which I can use as a part of my inquiry to emphasize the goals (and the challenges associated with meeting these goals) that teachers must understand in order to successfully implement Common Core math standards in their own classrooms. Because of its quality, the Japanese [Course of Study] was an important resource in the development of the [Common Core State Standards] (2). The level of specificity in the [Common Core State Standards] shows the progression of content from one grade to the next, making the coherence and the developing rigor of the content more evident. As a result, teachers who use the [Common Core State

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Annotated Bibliography

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Standards] will be more likely to understand the expectations and how content progresses from grade to grade (3). While they are substantially similar in terms of focus, the [Common Core State Standards] provide greater detail about the conceptual knowledge that complements necessary skills (3).

Sawchuk, Stephen. Many Teachers Not Ready for the Common Core. Education Week 31 (2012): S12-17. Print. In this article, Sawchuk discusses the concern shared among many educational researchers that there is a need for a big push towards professional development. In particular, he discusses how the Common Core State Standards will fail if this push is not made rapidly and effectively. Sawchuk outlines the challenges school officials are facing in terms of developing tools for a staggering number of educators, many of which are resistant to the changes associated with teaching to the Common Core. The author also cites studies showing teachers to be already failing to provide adequate instruction to help students become critical thinkers--a skill heavily emphasized in the Common Core Standards and another important consideration in the implementation of professional development strategies. The author then gives examples from school districts in Michigan and Delaware, whose early implementation of the Common Core has resulted in the swift development of effective professional development strategies. One of these examples is the improved teacher assessments aligned directly to the Common Core so as to close the gap between the assessments of teachers and students. Another example given by

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Annotated Bibliography

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the author is the implementation of professional development plans designed to give teachers exposure to Common Core concepts first as students themselves; this tactic ultimately serves to help teachers better understand where the new Standards demand change in the instructional methods. Sawchuk concludes that effective professional development strategies are possible, but in his opinion, there is much more work left to do in the field if state educational agencies are to adequately prepare teachers for the Common Core. In his article, Sawchuk presents an unbiased account of the challenges facing state agencies with regards to the professional development aspect of implementing the Common Core State Standards. He proves his point by citing noted researchers studying the problem of implementing the Common Core standards and discussing the results of several important studies performed on this subject by reputable educational researchers or foundations. Though his examples are thorough in regards to the response to a need to develop professional development tools to help teach the Common Core, the author fails to give a good explanation of how implementation of these tools has directly resulted in improved educators. So how is success measured or even identified when assessing the effectiveness of these professional development strategies? Even so, Sawchuk does give good examples of the challenges associated with content standards of both Math and English, and this serves to draw similarities between the different educational fields that may allow for the development of professional development strategies applicable to both subject areas. This article was useful to my inquiry because it emphasized just how important a factor professional development is to the successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards. It was also useful because it provided a good explanation of some of the very real challenges state officials are trying to overcome so as to further the implementation of these new

Meredith Brannon

Annotated Bibliography

April 29, 2013

Standards. I plan to use the article when I talk about the future of the Common Core Math Standards in North Carolina because it brings up key points of consideration that I will use when analyzing whether the Common Core implementation strategies developed for North Carolina have prepared and implemented effective professional development strategies. With the new assessments aligned to the standards rapidly coming online by 2014-15, the implementation timeline is compressed. Teachers are wrestling with an absence of truly aligned curricula and lessons (17). Evidence from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study suggests that teachers already struggle to help students engage in the higher-order, cognitively demanding tasks emphasized by the standards, such as the ability to synthesize, analyze, and apply information (18). But the Common Core emphasizes understanding of the logical, structural concepts underpinning mathematicsthe idea being that understanding how and why algorithms work is as important as crunching numbers (18).

Burns, Marilyn. Go Figure: Math and the Common Core. Educational Leadership 70.4 (2012): 42. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. In her article, Burns theorizes that the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics will require teachers to improve their students mental math and numerical reasoning skills if they are to adequately prepare them for college and the workforce, as well as the new Common Corebased Math assessments. She describes the Common Core Math standards and gives examples

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of the different Content and Practice standards in order to show how they differ from and relate to one another. Then she relates these standards to an example of a mental Math problem and argues how the development of mental Math skills must be emphasized in the Common Corealigned classroom if students are to be educated to the Standards and eventually assessed based on them. Burns then explains how the need to determine how students reason through and solve Math problems occasioned the development of the Math Reasoning Inventory (MRI), a tool that can be used to understand students numerical reasoning skills and highlight areas where they need improvement. The author concludes with the thought that the need to assess and implement strategies to improve numerical reasoning skills is very important to teaching students to the Common Core because of the emphasis on development of analytical reasoning skills. The author was effective at explaining the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics in the context of what needs to change in a Math teachers understanding and teaching strategies. She is not a little biased towards the use of the MRI assessment as the tool of choice when assessing a students Mathematical ability, but it is a test she helped develop, so the bias is expected. This begs the question: are there any other inventories or tools out there that are comparable to the MRI in terms of assessing numerical reasoning? Burns also gives useful examples of how different learners use their reasoning skills to solve a Math problem, making it clear that educators need a tool such as the MRI in order to determine which students need more help than others so that each student is adequately educated under the Common Core. I plan to use this article as an example of one of the many challenges educators face when implementing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics; developing numerical reasoning is clearly essential to the Common Core standards and preparing students for the Common Core-based assessments will require a shift in what skills teachers emphasize in the

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Annotated Bibliography

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classroom. This article also helps me to more fully understand the subtle differences between the Math Content and Math Practice Standards so that I can adequately explain them in my inquiry. I was reminded that one of the challenges of teaching is to listen to how students reason, rather than listening for responses we expect to hear (43). Assessing students facility with numerical reasoning is essential to implementing the math standardsThis means, for example, that students should be able not only to figure out the answer to a problem like 15 x 12, but also to demonstrate an understanding of multiplication as defined by the practice standards (44). The inventory is designed to assess students and then instantly provide a detailed report of the reasoning strategies and understandings that they do and dont demonstrate, which enables teachers to focus on strengthening any deficient reasoning strategies and underlying understandings about mathematics (46).