pfc newsletter O A K
P A R K
H I G H
December 2012
The Principal’s Message If you’re the type of person who reads educational journals or browses the California or U.S. Department of Education websites you may be familiar with the terms “Common Core State Standards” (CCSS) or “Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium” (SBAC). If you haven’t, you are probably among the majority of parents who spend their time figuring out how to access “Q” or where and when the next tryout/practice/rehearsal/SAT is and how much it’s going to cost. However, Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced Assessments are going to become more familiar terms to Oak Park parents and students over the next two years as we prepare for the first round of SBAC assessments in 2014 and begin the implementation of CCSS in our schools along with districts across the nation. What this means is that our current ninth graders will be the first students to be assessed in their junior year on their achievement of the Common Core Standards with the new SBAC computer adaptive tests and performance assignments. Adopted by 46 states including California in August of 2010, the Common Core Standards are national academic standards in English Language Arts, Literacy in History/Social Studies and Science as well as Mathematics, and were created through a collective effort by teachers, college professionals, and business leaders from the participating states. The Standards development and writing process was led by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors’ Association for Best Practices. The CCSS not only address the importance of critical content knowledge in English, Mathematics, History, and Science but also the skills necessary to achieve in college and the workplace and to use and apply these skills to solve
S C H O O L www.oakparkusd.org/ophs problems in novel and innovative ways. California and Massachusetts already had rigorous state standards and were important resources in the development of the Common Core. I know you’ve heard of No Child Left Behind, but did you know that this federal standards-based reform act sunsets in 2014 and has not been reauthorized, therefore requiring a redefinition of academic success and college and career readiness. The new Common Core Standards set a rigorous definition of what it means to be college and career ready, not by piling topic upon topic but by demanding that students develop a depth of understanding and ability to apply complex concepts to realworld problems. Although the U.S. Department of Education did not develop the CCSS, it has, through the Race to the Top Initiative provided grants to two assessment consortiums to design the assessments that will be given to students beginning in 2014-15 school year. The SBAC is the consortium that California has joined and the assessments are currently being piloted in several schools throughout the country. Standardized testing has a long and controversial history and critics have argued that the focus on standardized testing as the means of assessment, encourages teachers to teach a narrow subset of skills that the teacher believes will increase test performance, rather than focus on acquiring deep understanding of the full, broad curriculum. The new Smarter Balanced assessments promise to change this practice and will be a much more dynamic approach to summative and formative assessment that include a greater focus on the application of conceptual knowledge and skills through computer adaptive testing, writing, research and performance assignments. The Common Core Standards do not dictate curriculum nor do they prescribe how instruction must be designed, that will Continued on page 2