Common Core Standards Initiative, Part 2

[Eric Bateman]

As part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), the draft K-12 standards are now available for public comment. These draft  standards, developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts, seek to provide a clear and consistent national framework to prepare our students for college and the workforce.

I am particularly interested in this initiative since in New York State, the Board of Regents may adopt these standards as early as July 2010. So...I wanted to know how much they integrate 21st-Century Skills. It turns out, quite a bit.

Two sets of standards are currently up for discussion -- English Language Arts and Mathematics. I studied the ELA standards to get a feel for how they are organized, and to determine where the correlations with information literacy skills could be found.

I prepared a presentation, both to help organize my thoughts and to report out what I felt were the closest connections between the draft standards and 21st-Century Skills...lets see if it works!

Common Core State Standards Draft on Prezi

[Renee Rogers]

Thanks for putting this together and sharing. This is very helpful as we start to look at the standards and evaluate our curriculum. May I share it with the school librarians in my district?

[Eric Bateman]

Thank you for your comment. And no problemo! That's why it's here! I see you're in New Jersey...if you haven't seen it already, here is the NJDoE adoption and implementation plan:

http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2009/

The presentation doesn't cover ALL of the 21st-Century Skills correlations, just the areas I thought were the most obvious:

Reading: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Writing: Research to Build Knowledge
Speaking & Listening: Comprehension & Collaboration

Really, you could probably make the case that the entire document covers 21st-Century Skills; I was just trying to hit the highlights.