What is Common Core?

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)--What are they?

“The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt. The standards are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit bearing entry courses in two or four year college programs or enter the workforce. The standards are clear and concise to ensure that parents, teachers, and students have an understanding of the expectations in reading, writing, speaking and listening, language and mathematics in school.” (corestandards.org)

Curriculum

Our teachers will continue to use the resources that are currently in place. We will work to align the current textbooks to the new standards and begin to design curriculum to support the standards and practices embedded in the CCSS. Our district will be distributing Common Core unit lesson plans which are aligned to CCSS. Evergreen School District will pilot CCSS textbooks in the coming years as we move to full implementation of the standards.

Shifts

We will practice teaching and learning through a Common Core lens. Our first steps involve examining the major teaching shifts in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics (MA). The focus in ELA will be finding the evidence in a text, providing students with more complex texts where appropriate, using informational texts at least 50% of the instructional time, using critical thinking questioning strategies and incorporating opinion writing in all grades. The focus in MA will be mathematical thinking and going in depth rather than covering a broad base of concepts.

Assessment

As a district, students will no longer take the California STAR assessments. API rankings have been suspended indefinitely. Evergreen School District have opted to take the Smarter Balanced assessments in the Spring at all schools in 3rd through 8th grades. These Common Core assessments have a performance based component. Individual student results on this new assessment will be reported to parents and used only to establish baseline data.

The District ELA and MA Benchmarks will change this year to align with the CCSS and performance based assessments. The results, however, will not be reported on the report cards during the school year. These assessments will be used for teachers to guide their instruction. In future years, they will be reported on the report card. BPST (grades 1 and 2), Writing Benchmarks and Fluency assessments will continue to be administered and reported on the report card as they were last year.