COMMON CORE AND ELL
BIRE Meeting
May 17, 2012
BACKGROUND
Council long supporter of the Common Core
State Standards
Council member feedback during and since
development to writers, assessment consortia,
and others engaged in the work
Lead district support
Partnerships with the writers and lead groups
Opportunity for collaboration within and
across districts
COLLABORATION
Within a district– being at the table together
from the start
Across districts and states
AREAS OF COUNCIL SUPPORT
Strategic Communications
Building Awareness and Capacity
of Urban Schools
Development of Tools to
Implement the Standards
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
 Parent Roadmaps in mathematics and English
language arts and literacy shaped by member
feedback
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Parent-friendly language
Rationale
List of most emphasized standards illustrating shifts
Progression across three grade levels
Questions to ask of teachers
Activities to support students at home
Translations in most common languages
 Three broadcast quality public service
announcements
 Translation expertise, please
 Implementation survey
Language
Spanish
Chinese
Haitian
Creole
Hmong
Vietnamese
Cantonese
Arabic
Somali
Tagalog/
Filipino
Bengali
Korean
District with high District with high
numbers
numbers
English/
Language
Arts
Mathematics
Albuquerque*
New York*
Broward
Chicago
Boston
Miami-Dade
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
St. Paul
Seattle
San Francisco
New York
Minneapolis
San Diego
Fresno
San Diego
Oakland
Hillsborough
Seattle
Los Angeles
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
K- 5
6 - HS
New York City
Los Angeles
CharlotteMecklenburg
BUILDING AWARENESS AND CAPACIT Y
 Hear directly from writers of the Common Core
 Advisory Committees in math and ELA include
representatives who lead ELL and special education
in their districts
 Overview videos
 Voice of CCSS writers from Council meetings
 Build shared understanding
 Common Core strand at all conferences, including
upcoming
 Special Conferences
 Basal Alignment Project
 Math Progressions
IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS
High-leverage tools
 Response to Intervention White Paper with examples of Tier I
differentiation
 Update current materials to align with the standards
 Partner with other organizations developing tools
Professional development tools
 Work with EL experts to extend the standards to help teachers
differentiate instruction and enhance ELD
 Videos with facilitator guides
 Guidelines for professional development to share across districts
Providing feedback to districts on their work
PUBLISHERS’ CRITERIA
THIRD REVISION, APRIL 2012
Revised based on feedback, including
feedback from the ELL community
 achievethecore.org
 1) Removed sections where the criteria went beyond the
standards and intruded too much into instructional details.
 2) More explicitly emphasized the important role teacher
judgment plays in choosing materials.
 3) Clarified that the standards require wide -ranging
reading/research and reading of full novels, drama, and
poems, as well as close reading of shorter texts.
SO YOU WILL KNOW
4) Worked closely with the ELL community to
ensure that the work on scaffolding responded
to the needs of all students to gain access to
high quality complex text.
5) Noted that high quality questions are
usually text specific as well as text dependent;
that is, that good questions are not typically
generic for any text but address the specific
text or texts being examined.
6) Drawing on the speaking and listening
standards, noted the vibrant role of
conversation between students in developing
literacy.
 7) Left room for a wide range of instructional approaches,
while setting some basic parameters based on the standards;
scaffolds do not
pre-empt or replace the need to read the text,
for example, the standards require that
but there are many ways open for teachers to engage and
students in reading.
 8) More clearly articulated the central importance of the
foundational skills in K -2 and the need for systematic
attention to the foundations of reading.
9) Following the standards, emphasized the
central role of academic vocabulary —higher
level words that appear commonly in many
different types of text—in reading, writing,
listening and speaking.
 10) Clarified several sections that were found confusing or
idiosyncratic, to ensure that the criteria reflect the standards
as faithfully as possible.
URGENCY
Tension: We have very little time
(2014), but need to do this right.
Tight Budgets
Touch: How do we shift practices of our
434,000 teachers and our
administrators for real rather than
surface implementation?
Test our work: Did it have an impact?
How do we know?
LESSONS LEARNED
Be at the table
Set high-leverage goals– impossible to
implement everything at once
Make it seamless for teachers– not
separate initiative
Passion counts– so does strong planning
and change management