The document discusses the deficiencies of high school students in key workforce skills such as written communication and critical thinking, emphasizing the relevance of Common Core Standards to prepare students for college and career readiness. It outlines the importance of critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity in future job skills, while highlighting the benefits of a unified approach to education across states. Additionally, it suggests teaching practices for educators to effectively engage students and meet Common Core requirements, focusing on discussion, discovery, real purposes in assignments, and text complexity.

1. Common Core Standards
A Challenge and an Opportunity

2. Workforce Needs: Employee
Deficiencies
Of the high school students that you recently hired, what were their
deficiencies?
Written Communication 81%
Leadership 73%
Work Ethic 70%
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving 70%
Self-Direction 58%
Source: Are They Really Ready to Work?
(2006) The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for
Working Families, P21, and SHRM

3. Why Now?
• Global competition
• Today’s jobs require different skills
• Thinking and Reasoning will become basic
skills

4. Why is This Important for
Students, Teachers, and Parents?
• Prepares students with the knowledge and
skills they need to similar standards across
states
• Student mobility
• Succeed in college and work
• Ensures consistent expectations
regardless of a student’s zip code
• Provides educators, parents, and students
with clear, focused guideposts

5. Kindergarten Students
• 2012 • 2028
– Starting School – College Graduation
• 2018 • 2071
– Middle School – turning 65
• 2020 • 2096
– 8th grade promotion – turning 90
• 2024
– High School • Some maybe living in
Graduation the 22nd Century

8. VIDEO

11. Workforce Needs: What skills and
content areas will be growing in
importance in the next five years?
Critical Thinking 78%
I.T. 77%
Health and Wellness 76%
Collaboration 74%
Creativity and Innovation 74%
Personal Financial Responsibility 72%
Source: Are They Really Ready to Work?
(2006) The Conference Board, Corporate Voices

13. Standards
Definition – Level of quality accepted as norm
Types of Standards
• State Standard
• Common Core
• College Readiness (ACT)
• National Organizations
• International

14. There is a greater focus on:
• Non-fiction text
• Self directed learning
• 4 C’s
• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Creativity

15. Advantages to Common Core
Standards
• A focus on college and career readiness
• Inclusion of the four strands of English Language Arts:
• Reading
• Writing
• Listening and speaking
• Language
• The benefits of an integrated literacy approach – all educators have a shared
responsibility for literacy instruction, regardless of discipline or content area.
• A focus on results rather than means – . . .―the Standards leave room for
teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be
reached and what additional topics should be addressed.‖ (p. 4)
• Efficiencies of scale – common standards allow for greater collaboration among
states in the areas of:
• Professional development
• Resource development
• Teaching tools
15

16. Rothman’s Key Points
• Common Core have paired down the list of
topic to allow teachers to focus on subject.
(Depth, not breath)
• Common Core Lessons and testing get
more complex as students progress.
(Ramping up difficultly)
• Common Core focuses on both aspects of
literacy. (Speaking and Listening)
• Robert Rothman Michigan State University

18. VIDEO

19. 16 Habits of Mind
• Persisting • Thinking & Communicating
• Managing Impulsivity with clarity and precision
• Listening with understanding • Gathering Data through all
& empathy senses
• Thinking flexibility • Creating, imagining,
• Thinking about thinking innovating
• Striving for accuracy • Responding with
wonderment & awe
• Questioning & posing
problems • Taking responsible risks
• Applying past knowledge to • Finding humor
new situations • Thinking Interdependently
• Remaining open to
continuous learning

20. Rigor

21. What is Depth
of Knowledge (DOK)?
• A scale of cognitive demand (thinking) to align
standards with assessments
• Based on the research of Norman
Webb, University of Wisconsin Center for
Education Research and the National Institute for
Science Education
• Defines the ―ceiling‖ or highest DOK level for each
Core Content standard for the state assessment
• Guides item development for state assessments

22. Webb’s Four Levels of
Cognitive Complexity
• Level 1: Recall and Reproduction
• Level 2: Skills & Concepts
• Level 3: Strategic Thinking
• Level 4: Extended Thinking

23. Same Verb—Three Different DOK Levels
DOK 1- Describe three characteristics of metamorphic rocks.
(Requires simple recall)
DOK 2- Describe the difference between metamorphic and
igneous rocks. (Requires cognitive processing to determine
the differences in the two rock types)
DOK 3- Describe a model that you might use to represent the
relationships that exist within the rock cycle. (Requires
deep understanding of rock cycle and a determination of
how best to represent it)

24. ―Extending the length of an activity
alone does not necessarily create
rigor!‖

25. The Standards cultivate three mutually reinforcing writing
capacities:
– To persuade
– To explain
– To convey real or imagined experience
Distribution of Communicative Purposes by Grade
in the 2011 NAEP Writing Framework
To Convey
Grade To Persuade To Explain
Experience
4 30% 35% 35%
8 35% 35% 30%
12 40% 40% 20%
25

41. Emphasis on
Informational Text
Distribution of Literary and Informational Passages
by Grade in the 2009 NAEP Reading Framework
Grade Literary Information
4 50% 50%
8 45% 55%
12 30% 70%
41

42. Overview of Text Text Complexity
Text complexity is defined by:
Qualitative measures – levels of
meaning, structure, language conventionality
and clarity, and knowledge demands often
best measured by an attentive human reader.
Quantitative measures – readability and other
scores of text complexity often best measured
by computer software.
Reader and Task considerations – background
knowledge of reader, motivation, interests, Reader and Task
and complexity generated by tasks assigned
often best made by educators employing their
professional judgment.
42

43. Step 1: Quantitative Measures
Quantitative Measures
Measures such as:
• Word length
• Word frequency
• Word difficulty
• Sentence length
• Text length
• Text cohesion
43

44. Step 2: Qualitative Measures
Measures such as:
• Structure
• Language Demands and
Conventions
• Knowledge Demands
• Levels of
Meaning/Purpose
44

45. Step 3: Reader and Task
Considerations such as:
• Motivation
• Knowledge and experience
• Purpose for reading
• Complexity of task assigned
regarding text
• Complexity of questions asked
regarding text
45

46. What’s the same? What’s different?
CCSS – M (Grade 4) State Standard (Grade 4)
• Draw and identify lines and angles,
• Uses properties or attributes of angles
and classify shapes by properties of
(number of angles) or sides (number of
their lines and angles
sides, length of sides, parallelism, or
perpendicularity) to identify, describe, or
• 1. Draw points, lines, line segments, distinguish among triangles, squares,
rays, angles (right, acute, obtuse), and rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids,
perpendicular and parallel lines. hexagons, or octagons; or classify angles
Identify these in two dimensional relative to 90 degrees as more than, less
figures than, or equal to.
• 1. Classify two-dimensional figures
based on the presence or absence of
angles of a specified size. Recognize
right triangles as a category, and
identify right triangles
• 2. Recognize a line of symmetry for a
two- dimensional figure as a line
across the figure such that the figure
can be folded along the line into
matching parts, Identify line-symmetric
figures and draw lines of symmetry

47. What’s the same? What’s different?
CCSS – M (Grade 4) State Standard (Grade 4)
• Draw and identify lines and angles, and • Uses properties or attributes of angles
classify shapes by properties of their lines (number of angles) or sides (number
and angles of sides, length of sides, parallelism, or
perpendicularity) to identify, describe,
• 1. Draw points, lines, line segments, rays, or distinguish among triangles,
angles (right, acute, obtuse), and squares, rectangles, rhombi,
perpendicular and parallel lines. Identify trapezoids, hexagons, or octagons; or
these in two dimensional figures classify angles relative to 90 degrees
as more than, less than, or equal to.
• 1. Classify two-dimensional figures based
on the presence or absence of angles of a
specified size. Recognize right triangles as
a category, and identify right triangles
• 2. Recognize a line of symmetry for a two-
dimensional figure as a line across the
figure such that the figure can be folded
along the line into matching parts, Identify
line-symmetric figures and draw lines of
symmetry

48. 5 Things Every Teacher Should
be Doing to Meet the Common
Core State Standards
Number 1
Lead High Level, Text-Based Discussions
When you ask students to discuss a text as
a whole class or in small groups, make sure
that your questions are grounded in the text,
and that students refer to the text in their
responses.

49. 5 Things Every Teacher Should
be Doing to Meet the Common
Core State Standards
Number 2
Focus on Process, not just Content
The Common Core State Standards stress the
importance of student discovery. In other
words, we cannot merely fill students’ heads
with content; we should provide them with
opportunities to discover information on their

50. 5 Things Every Teacher Should
be Doing to Meet the Common
Core State Standards
Number 3
Create Assignments for Real Audiences and
with Real Purposes
There is an importance of writing for a
variety of audiences. Students should ―write
routinely over extended time frames...for a
range of tasks, purposes, and audiences‖.

51. 5 Things Every Teacher Should
be Doing to Meet the Common
Core State Standards
Number 4
Teach Argument, Not Persuasion
The CCSS favor argument over persuasion
because it requires more logic and reason,
and is more in line with the kind of writing
that students will be expected to do in
college.

52. 5 Things Every Teacher Should
be Doing to Meet the Common
Core State Standards
Number 5
Increase Text Complexity
Look for balance: material should be difficult
enough that students are learning something
new, but not so hard that they give up.

53. Most Importantly
• Ensure that the movement towards Common Core is
only a part of a larger M.S.A.D. No. 27 district reform
effort.
• School reform needs to center on the relationships
among students, teachers, parents, educational leaders,
and the community
• The quality of those interactions will be what leads to
high student learning more than any set of standards

54. Burning
Questions