Common Core Accelerates Interest in Online PD

Educators plan to share resources across state and district lines

Now that all but five states have adopted the common-core state standards, education leaders are working to create and distribute high-quality professional development to guide teachers through the transition.

Those leaders cite the Internet as a powerful tool for sharing resources and materials across state and district lines.

“We’ve always had the ability to share resources, but now those resources are aligned with the same student expectations,” said Greta Bornemann, the project director for the implementation of the common standards for the office of public instruction in Washington state. “Especially during the fiscal crisis that we’re in, we can really tap into the power of working together [as a nation] around professional development.”

But many states have not begun to take the essential steps toward putting in place the work of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, including providing face-to-face or online professional development for teachers and other education stakeholders, according to a surveyreleased in September by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy.

In fact, more than half the 315 districts surveyed indicated they had not provided professional development for teachers of mathematics or English/language arts—the two common-core subject areas—and were not planning to provide PD for implementing common core for those teachers during the 2011-12 school year.

Inadequate funding and a lack of state guidance on the new standards were cited as two top challenges in their implementation, the survey found.

Regardless, professional development is critical to the overall success of the common standards, said Timothy Kanold, the past president of theNational Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, a Denver-based leadership network that provides professional development for math teachers.

“To help the stakeholders—teachers, counselors, administrators, paraprofessionals—in order for them to be confident in the common core and teaching deeper into the standards, they need meaningful and supportive professional development,” he said.

For most states, shifting to the common standards will require a shift in instruction.

“There are only 28 standards [for math], which is fewer standards than ever before, but ...

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