Common Core State Standards and Implications for Teacher Education Programs

Common Core State Standards and Implications for Teacher Education Programs Marilyn S. Howe The Common Core State Standards have been applauded for t...
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Common Core State Standards and Implications for Teacher Education Programs Marilyn S. Howe

The Common Core State Standards have been applauded for their emphasis on rigor and preparing K-12 students to be college and career ready. It is clear that the CCSS have implications for basic education. This article addresses the implications for teacher education and how these programs might address the Common Core.

Marilyn Howe is associate professor at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Teacher Educator

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics are taking the forefront for curriculum leaders, teachers, and administrators. For some this shift is wrought with optimism. For others, it is a time of apprehension and perhaps even skepticism. These positions are polarized, but no matter on what end of the continuum one finds oneself, the CCSS and the expectations of the CCSS must be addressed. This article attempts to respond to the following question: How might teacher education programs address the implications of increased rigor conveyed by the CCSS as it pertains to curriculum, instruction, and assessment? Paradigm Shifts The Common Core State Standards initiative is a state-led effort that began in the spring of 2009 through the work of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. The thrust for this initiative was to create a curricular baseline that transcends geographical boundaries providing a similar curriculum for students regardless of the state in which they would attend school. A second reason for the initiative was to ensure that students are ready for college, the demands of careers and society, and international competition with the world’s highest performing countries. The result was a set of standards that provide for a curriculum with increased rigor. The Common Core Standards present fundamental differences that set them apart from the Pennsylvania Academic State Standards. These differences or shifts focus on several components. First, K-12 students must be prepared for college and the workplace. Second, the Common Core Standards will have an impact on all teachers. Because of the literacy component in the English language arts (ELA) standards, teachers who instruct history/social studies, science, and technical subjects have literacy-related standards in addition to the regular state content 29

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standards. Third, and most important, according to the National Governors Association for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers the Common Core Standards represent higher levels of rigor. Rigor is defined as the degree of cognitive demand that is necessary to meet the expectations of the standards. With increased rigor and the fact that K-12 students must meet the requirements of being college and career ready, planning, instruction, and assessments need to complement the cognitive expectations embedded in the standards.

topic without providing a coherent picture of how the topics fit together. Understanding mathematics is paramount for tomorrow’s needs in an advanced society. Students may develop a distinct knowledge base and be quite capable of procedural skills; however, understanding, including explaining and justification, are important for meaningful application and transfer. The CCSS math standards are divided into two major components: (1) content standards, and (2) Standards for Mathematical Practices. The math standards’ emphasis on understanding is evident not only in the content but specifically in the Standards for Mathematical Practices as listed below. These practices assume habits of mind that require understanding and critical thinking.

The majority of the states that have adopted the CCSS plan to implement the standards by 2014-15 (Kober & Rentner, 2012). Pennsylvania is following this timeline. As school districts are considering the new standards, teacher education programs need to ensure that both new and experienced teachers are prepared to address the paradigm shifts that these standards present.

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 4. Model with mathematics. 5. Use appropriate tools strategically. 6. Attend to precision. 7. Look for and make use of structure. 8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

The CCSS Initiative: English Language Arts and Literacy and Mathematics ELA/literacy and math were selected initially because they represent the content that is typically tested by states. The research that supports the ELA/literacy standards demonstrates the importance of reading for success in college, careers, and in society. According to the ACT Report (2010),

Addressing the Level of Rigor in the Common Core: Curriculum

Relative to the Common Core, only 31% of students are performing at a college and career-ready level with respect to successfully understanding complex text. The Common Core State Standards define a ‘staircase’ of increasing text complexity designed to move all students to collegeand career-ready levels of reading by no later than the end of high school.

The Common Core is more than a set of standards worthy of adoption or superficial alignment with the K-12 curriculum. By analyzing the alignment documents that depict the alignment of the PA Academic Standards with the CCSS, K-12 standards in both ELA/literacy and mathematics represent a higher degree of rigor with an emphasis on understanding. Teacher education programs must encourage preservice and practicing educators to embrace these standards, not in a cursory fashion. but by understanding their intent as they pertain to cognitive demand. Examples of the CCSS and the PA Academic Standards for ELA and mathematics are listed on the following page. These examples demonstrate the level of rigor in the CCSS.

Research studies in mathematics education, particularly in relation to high-performing international countries, have concluded that math must be more than a mile wide and an inch deep. Cogan and Schmidt (1999) were the first to apply the expression “a mile wide and an inch deep” to U.S. math and science curricula that jump from topic to

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Common Core Standards

PA Academic Standards

R.L.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

1.1.8.A. Apply appropriate strategies to interpret and analyze author’s purpose, using grade level text.

7.RP.1 Analyze proportional relationships and use them to solve real-world and mathematical problems. Compute unit rates associated with ratios of fractions, including ratios of lengths, areas, and other quantities measured in like or different units. For example, if a person walks 1/2 mile in each 1/4 hour, compute the unit rate as the complex fraction (1/2)/(1/4) miles per hour, equivalently 2 miles per hour.

2.1.7.F. Understand the concepts of ratio, proportion, percents, and rates to determine unknown quantities in equations.

1.3.8.C. Analyze the use of literary elements by an author including characterization, setting, plot, theme, point of view, tone, and style.

7.RP.2b Identify the constant of proportionality (unit rate) in tables, graphs, equations, diagrams, and verbal descriptions of proportional relationships. 7.RP.2d Explain what a point (x, y) on the graph of a proportional relationship means in terms of the situation, with special attention to the points (0, 0) and (l, r) where r is the unit rate.

Unpacking or deconstructing each standard is essential to overcoming the tendency to design instruction that is not aligned to the actual content and performance expectations. This process consists of identifying the key ideas or concepts (nouns or noun phrases) in the standards and identifying the key performances (verbs). The nouns depict the content and the verbs represent the performance and the level of cognitive demand that the performance warrants.



To take full advantage of the standards and to develop an appreciation for the level of depth (cognitive demand or rigor) they represent, Webb (2002) provides a four-level structure through which the Depth of Knowledge may be assessed: 



DOK-1 – Recall and Reproduction: Recall or reproduce knowledge and/or skills. The subject matter content at this particular level usually involves working with facts,

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terms, and/or properties of objects. It may also involve use of simple procedures and/or formulas. DOK-2 – Basic Application of Skills/ Concepts: Requires students to contrast or compare people, places, events, and concepts; convert information from one form to another; classify or sort items into meaningful categories; describe or explain issues and problems, patterns, cause and effect, significance or impact, relationships, points of view or processes. DOK-3 – Strategic Thinking: Items in this category demand a short-term use of higher order thinking processes, such as analysis and evaluation, to solve real-world problems with predictable outcomes. DOK-4 – Extended Thinking: Curricular elements assigned to this level demand extended use of higher order thinking

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processes such as synthesis, reflection, assessment and adjustment of plans over time.

making or understanding, and (3) transfer. These three phases comport with Anderson’s (1983) stages of skill acquisition: (1) cognitive, (2) associative, and (3) autonomous. For students to achieve the goals of understanding and transfer and to meet the demands of rigor, they should be engaged in experiences that encourage the construction of meaning such as generalizing, explaining, hypothesizing, researching, defining and solving problems, predicting, brainstorming, reflecting, revising and refining, and solving problems in different contexts, etc. Designing instruction that encourages exploration, inquiry, and uncovering the meaning that lies beneath the surface of the content, promotes understanding. However, we should not conclude that initial declarative knowledge acquisition has no place in relation to the CCSS. Indeed, meaningful declarative acquisition is an important prelude to understanding and transfer.

To determine the level of cognitive demand, not only is the verb analyzed, but more importantly the context surrounding the verb or what follows the verb is assessed. For example, the following general objectives include the same verb. However, the cognitive demand suggested by each are quite different because of the context surrounding the verb. 1. Describe three characteristics of the historical fiction genre. 2. Describe the implied differences between historical fiction and fantasy. 3. Describe a model that you might use to represent the relationships that exist between the genres. In the preceding examples, the degree of cognitive demand increases from the first to third objective. The verb, “describe,” in the first objective represents recall (DOK-1), whereas the same verb in the second objective refers to DOK-2. The verb in the last objective represents DOK-3. The identical verb can suggest different levels of cognitive demand as determined by the context of the objective. The task of analyzing the standards instead of interpreting them superficially provides the opportunity to design curriculum, instruction, and related assessments that actually address their cognitive demands.

Instruction can be designed and implemented effectively if preservice and practicing educators deconstruct the standards to determine the level of cognitive demand. The performance in the standards dictates what the students should be able to do and at what level. A cursory inspection of the standards will not produce the kind of instruction that is required by the CCSS. For university students to be successful in meeting the cognitive demands of the Common Core, they must have opportunities to provide instruction that encourages their learners to be meaningfully engaged with the content and ultimately to understand. Quick fixes such as test preparation seem to be a practice in some schools. This will certainly not suffice with the Common Core. To meet the expectations of being college and career ready, the students must understand the content at a higher level than previously expected.

Addressing the Level of Rigor in the Common Core: Instruction Instruction must also adhere to the rigor of the standards. Preservice and practicing educators frequently ask, “What might a classroom look like if it adheres to the cognitive demands depicted by the CCSS?” Classroom instruction should engage students. This does not mean that students are merely physically active, although activity may be present. Because the CCSS represent increased cognitive expectations, students must be meaningfully engaged in instruction that matches this cognitive complexity. In any instructional episode, three distinct phases may be present: (1) initial declarative knowledge acquisition, (2) meaningPennsylvania Teacher Educator

Addressing the Level of Rigor in the Common Core: Assessment The Common Core will require common assessments. Currently, two assessment consortia are designing the assessments that will measure college and career readiness. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium are state-led consortia that are devel32

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oping next-generation assessments that align with the CCSS. The assessments are currently works in progress and will seek to measure higher order skills and applications with multiple assessment formats. This may include the design of assessments that seek to provide evidence on higher order skills and applications and that require students to apply their understanding. Selected response formats, which tend to typify standardized assessments, measure different types of knowledge quite well and may even measure evidence of reasoning, but perhaps multiple assessment formats are needed. Providing opportunities for students to construct their responses, whether written or verbal, and to demonstrate their performance can elicit evidence of understanding and their relative depth of understanding. The common assessments are considering the inclusion of performance tasks that relate to authentic problems. Hence, it would be prudent for the assessments to require students to perform with understanding in real situations. Pennsylvania has chosen to design its own assessments that align with the Common Core. Even though Pennsylvania is a participating state in both PARCC and Smarter Balanced, its assessments will be designed independently.

in the standards. Designing curriculum that aligns with the level of rigor and taking the necessary steps to ensure not only acquisition, but depth, will help students to understand the content instead of memorizing facts and superficially addressing topics. If deconstruction of the standards and aligning with the level of rigor implied by the standards is practiced in relation to curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the expectations of the Common Core State Standards can become a reality. REFERENCES ACT. (2010). A first look at the Common Core and college and career readiness. Act, Inc. Retrieved January 2012 from http://act.org/commoncore/ pdf/FirstLook.pdf. Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cogan, L., & Schmidt, W. (1999). What we’ve learned from the TIMSS. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved November 2010 from http:// www.timss.msu.edu. Kober, N., & Rentner, D. (2012). Year two of implementing the common core state standards: States’ progress and challenges. Center on Education Policy. Retrieved January 2012 from http://www. cep-dc.org.

Preservice and practicing educators can benefit from opportunities to design performance assessments that are authentic and aligned with the level of cognitive demand as indicated by the standards. Performance tasks that require students to apply their understanding and to solve ill-defined problems will prepare them for the types of assessments that correspond with the CCSS.

Webb, N. (2002). Depth-of-knowledge levels for four content areas. The School Board of Broward County, Florida. Retrieved November 2010 from http://www.broward.k-12.fl.us.

Summary As the educational community moves toward the challenges of the Common Core it is imperative that preservice and practicing educators understand the importance of overall alignment with the CCSS. This requires opportunities for preservice students to scrutinize the standards, as opposed to simply acknowledging their existence. They should have numerous and ongoing opportunities to explore the Common Core, not just for the content, but for the degree of cognitive complexity exemplified in the standards. Deconstructing the standards to determine the level of complexity or rigor is necessary to understand the expectations that are embedded Pennsylvania Teacher Educator

For more information, contact: Dr. Marilyn Howe Clarion University of Pennsylvania 840 Wood Street Clarion, PA 16214 E-mail: [email protected]

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