The public draft of the Common Core State Standards is considerably improved from the version that was circulated two months back and it's evident that the drafters are trying to incorporate responsible feedback. I trust they will continue to. We're still reviewing the latest version but at first glance it appears that the math standards, while not perfect, have a lot going for them. The "English" standards are harder to appraise. They're not actually English standards, but, rather, standards for reading, writing, speaking and listening. The drafters acknowledge that they would need to be accompanied by solid curriculum content, and they've provided a handful of examples--good ones, mostly--of such content. But they've also left most of the heavy lifting to states, districts, schools and educators. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it also means that the "common core" standards, at least in this version, are more a vessel waiting to be filled with curriculum than an actual framework for what teachers should teach and students should learn.
Keep in mind, too, how much remains to be done. Even after these end-of-high-school standards are further revised, the drafters must "backward map" them down through grades K-11. Then someone must develop good assessments to accompany them and give them traction in the real world. And someone must develop the curriculum and instructional materials needed to bring them to life in America's millions of classrooms. The governors and chiefs are pointing the nation in a promising direction but it's a very long road down which today's drafts are just the first few steps.
