Creating Coherence and Impact in the Common Core Era

Creating coherence amidst a host of initiatives is a key challenge for nearly every educator today.  Perhaps no current initiative is more comprehensive or daunting than the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which have potential for transforming our daily work and our impact on students in many profound ways.  This blog post is designed to stimulate thinking about ways to promote coherence and impact for school leaders within the emerging educational terrain, the Era of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Perhaps the greatest danger with the Common Core is perceiving it as yet one more initiative or program to add to an already burgeoning plate.  In such a mindset, we might revise our curriculum to incorporate the Common Core and then hope that implementation, and subsequent boosts in student achievement, naturally occurs.   However, without a focus on the associated and necessary shifts in practices, the impact of these curriculum revision efforts on student learning is likely to be minimal.

In a recent article from Educational Leadership, Sandra Alberti describes several shifts in practice that need to occur, in combination with integration of the CCSS, if we are committed to delivering on the ambitious promise of the Common Core -- every student ready for college and career upon graduation:

Shifts Related to English CCSS Language Arts and Literacy Standards

1)   Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction

2)   Reading and writing grounded in evidence

3)   Regular practice with complex text and academic language

Shifts Related to CCSS Mathematics Standards

1)   Greater focus on fewer topics

2)   Linking topics and thinking across grades

3)   Rigorous pursuit of conceptual understanding, procedural skill, and application

I am thankful for the synthesis of analysis provided by Alberti at the 30,000-foot level for the clarity and opportunity for focus it provides on such a comprehensive topic as the Common Core.  For to be sure,  we cannot provide coherence for others if we do not first possess it ourselves.  Creating coherence in our own minds as school leaders about the major shifts of the Common Core is one way of helping build coherence in those we lead.  In such a way, we help others not lose the forest for the trees. 

But I am most interested in reflecting about how such coherence of understanding can transfer into coherence of action, especially action that can harness the impact of the many working deeply in a few vital areas to maximize impact on student learning.

Times of great change are times of great opportunity.  The transition of our field into the Era of the Common Core is, thus, an opportune time to reflect upon what vital few priorities for adult action we should develop deeply -- and what initiatives we should stop doing – in order to have the largest positive impact for our students in the emerging educational terrain.  With such a mindset, as I reflect upon the shifts required of the Common Core, priority around deep teaching and learning practices arise in the following areas:

·      A focus on non-fiction across content areas that pays close attention to text complexity and academic vocabulary.

·      A focus on writing that is grounded in evidence, especially evidence based in close reading of the text.  Such writing emphasis can also elevate the level of conceptual understanding, procedural skill, and application needed.

·      Deep implementation of professional learning communities to promote vertical and horizontal articulation and data-based responses to student learning in an ever more rigorous environment aimed at college and career readiness for all.

In closing, through this blog, I am attempting to model one way that school leaders might find focus for leveraged, high-impact action even in an era of great complexity and change arising from the Common Core.  Certainly, your local student learning data should play a large role in guiding school-wide instructional decisions. But I hope this example attempt at finding coherence and focus among the clutter provides some thoughts for further reflection and consideration.