Educators in Search of Common-Core Resources

From left: Tamara Reavis, Dan Englender, and Janice Nolan are among the District of Columbia teachers and administrators who meet each month to discuss the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Educators nationwide say they are frustrated by a lack of curriculum materials.

—Andrew Councill for Education Week

As states and districts begin the work of turning common academic standards into curriculum and instruction, educators searching for teaching resources are often finding that process frustrating and fruitless.

Teachers and curriculum developers who are trying to craft road maps that reflect the Common Core State Standards can find themselves in a dispiriting bind: Their current materials fall short, and there is a dearth of good new ones to fill the void.

“Teachers are struggling, and very few people are helping. Almost nothing is available for them to use,” said Aaron Grossman, a former 5th and 6th grade teacher in Nevada’s Washoe County district who now works at the district office writing curriculum.

Many school leaders are finding a rough road as well.

Greg Netzer, the principal of Van Horn High School in Independence, Mo., said he hasn’t heard much from his district about new curriculum. Teachers at his school have banded together to search for material to inform course development and meet weekly to discuss and share what they’ve found.

Tamara Reavis, an official in the District of Columbia state superintendent’s office, takes part in a monthly meeting of a task force set up to carry out the Common Core State Standards in the district’s classrooms. Educators nationwide are frustrated by what they say is a scarcity of curricular materials aligned with the English/language arts and math standards.

—Andrew Councill for Education Week

“There seems to be very little out there, or it’s just not in places we can find it,” Mr. Netzer said. “To say we are prepared for common core would be a misconception.”

Such frustrations are widespread. A report last fall by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy found school districts divided about how much curriculum change was truly required and reluctant to move forward with common-standards implementation, in part because of inadequate guidance from their states. In an Education Week webinar on the common standards last summer, the question most frequently asked by the 1,600 participants was where to find instructional resources for the new standards, which cover K-12 English/language arts and mathematics and have been adopted by all but four states.

Ironically, educators’ frustrations are unfolding during an unprecedented buzz of activity to build knowledge about the standards and prepare resources for them. States and districts are bringing educators together to discuss the fundamental shifts demanded by the standards, which were unveiled in 2010. Advocacy groups and architects of the standards are holding workshops and posting documents and videos on the Web to illustrate new ways of thinking about and teaching what many now call simply “the core.”

But those messages have yet to reach everyone, and the resources and discussions taking shape online can be tough to locate.

Not everyone supports the new standards, however. And some educators ...

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Vol. 31, Issue 22