States that have adopted the Common Core State Standards report that higher education is playing an increasingly important role in CCSS’ implementation. N.C. State’s College of Education is helping public schools across North Carolina adopt these standards.
CCSS is a set of math- and language-arts-based educational standards for all public schools in the United States, developed by the National Governors Association in 2009 and released in 2010. Though not mandatory, all but five states have already adopted the standards. President Obama’s Race to the Top program, which required that states adopt CCSS or similar standards to become eligible for federal grants, is credited as providing a major push for states to adopt CCSS.
In a national survey report released recently by the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University, the states that have adopted the CCSS indicate that their K-12 and higher education systems have begun working together to implement the standards.
North Carolina is among the states that have adopted CCSS. N.C. State has helped public schools implement the standards by educating current College of Education students and by providing professional development training for current principals.
“We’ve been implementing common core for a couple of years now,” said Michael Maher, assistant dean for professional education at N.C. State, “All the new teachers coming out of N.C. State have been schooled in common core.”
Maher said College of Education graduates have also helped teachers in North Carolina who are less familiar with CCSS implement the standards into their classrooms.
Additionally, N.C. State offers a Massive Open Online Course to teach frameworks for implementing CCSS. The MOOC, which is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and the Oak Foundation, is recommended for elementary and middle grades educators seeking a deeper understanding of students’ learning of fundamental mathematics.
Maher said these efforts to help implement CCSS are not mandated, but they help the College of Education meet its service work goals.
“At N.C. State we do a lot of service work,” Maher said. “There are tons of things that go on in public schools that are really driven by faculty from this University. This is part of our overall mission to provide service to public schools.”
Maher said it’s also important to note that education standards are often updated on a rotating basis, and CCSS should be viewed as one of these updates.
“Every year or every several years, we’re re-evaluating our education standards,” Maher said. “For example, we implemented English language arts and math from the Common Core last year. Next year might be the year that we adopt new social studies standards.”
Maher said CCSS was a more sweeping change than usual, but teachers are used for these kinds of updates.
“[CCSS] requires some different teaching, some different ways of teaching,” Maher said. “It requires teachers to be a little more thoughtful in how they prepare lessons and the kinds of lessons, but this is the work of teachers. That’s what teachers do. It’s not like we’ve completely flipped education upside down.”
Other North Carolina education programs are also helping implement CCSS. Kaitlin Gastrock, managing director of regional communications for Teach For America in Eastern North Carolina, said she has not worked with N.C. State to implement CCSS, but TFA still incorporates the standards in its training programs.
“Teach For America in North Carolina incorporates the Common Core standards into our intensive pre-service teacher training and ongoing support to ensure our teachers are able to align their lesson and unit plans to state-adopted Common Core standards,” Gastrock said.
Representatives from the North Carolina State Board of Education could not be reached for comment about this article.
The Center on Education Policy survey was administered electronically to state deputy superintendents of education or their designees from February through May 2013. Only representatives from the 45 states that had adopted some form of CCSS already received the survey. Representatives from 40 states responded, including 39 that had adopted the CCSS in both English language arts and math and one that had adopted the standards in English language arts only.
Thirty-five state education agencies responded to the survey and reported that they have forged formal partnerships with postsecondary education officials to implement CCSS. Only five states said they have not established any of these types of partnerships.
