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Research Alert

Ready or Not for the Common Core?

What's your best estimate of student performance on the Common Core State Standards? ACT, an organization involved in developing the standards, wanted to know how well today's students are meeting them. To find out, it analyzed the test results of 256,765 11th graders who took selected forms of the ACT test in spring 2010. In its report, A First Look at the Common Core and College and Career Readiness, ACT found that across all Common Core domains, strands, and clusters, only one-third to one-half of 11th graders are reaching a college- and career-ready level of achievement.

Only 31 percent of students understood complex texts.
Only 35 percent of students performed at college- and career-ready levels in their abilities to use language skillfully; use a rich vocabulary; and differentiate among different language varieties (such as formal and informal English).
Only 24 percent of students fully comprehended science texts.
Only 34 percent of students met the benchmarks for Number and Quantity, skills that build the foundation for success in math.
Hispanic and black students performed well below their white counterparts in all Common Core math domains.
For each of the eight Common Core Mathematical Practices standards—such as "making sense of problems and persevering at them" and "reasoning abstractly and quantitatively"—only one-third of students reached the college- and career-ready level.

The report recommends specific instructional strategies and interventions as well as steps policymakers can take to improve student achievement. A First Look at the Common Core and College and Career Readiness is available at www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/FirstLook.pdf.

Relevant Reads

College Admissions for the 21st Century by Robert J. Sternberg

(Harvard University Press, 2010). Traditionally, students are admitted to college on the basis of their high school transcripts and SAT or ACT scores. Sternberg argues that other qualities—creativity, practical intelligence, and ethical values—are also important in identifying students who will succeed in college and develop into leaders.

Project Kaleidoscope, which Sternberg helped develop as dean of Tufts University, gives college applicants the opportunity to demonstrate these abilities. In its four years of implementation, Project Kaleidoscope has predicted first-year academic success better than standardized college admission tests and high school grade point averages do. It has also predicted the extent of first-year college students' involvement in extracurricular, leadership, and active citizenship activities.

"We need to move beyond our horse and buggy mentality in educational instruction and assessment, and to admit students to college not just on the basis of their academic skills with a few other extras thrown in, but rather on the basis of a student's overall potential to make a positive difference to the world. (pp. ix–x)"

Only Online

An Eye on the World

On the Peace Corps for Educators site (<LINK URL="http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/lessonplans/section.cfm?sid=9">www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/lessonplans/section.cfm?sid=9</LINK>), educators can access more than 50 interactive lessons that incorporate firsthand accounts of Peace Corps volunteers in the field. One lesson on the Dominican Republic (where Columbus first landed) features an 18-minute video on the island's geography and demographics, looks at its legacy of dictatorship, and considers the effects of recent Dominican immigration to the United States.
The New Internationalist Magazine (<LINK URL="http://www.newint.org/features/2010/12/01/low-carbon-past-and-future">www.newint.org/features/2010/12/01/low-carbon-past-and-future</LINK>) offers an activist stance on a range of world issues. A current article speculates on what life in Great Britain would be like if the world's rich nations instantly cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent.
National Geographic offers a giant 26-by-34-foot vinyl traveling map; younger students can have a total body experience of geography by crawling on the continents (<LINK URL="http://www.ngsednet.org/community/showcase_view.cfm?community_id=482&showcase_id=903">www.ngsednet.org/community/showcase_view.cfm?community_id=482&showcase_id=903</LINK>).

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World Spin

Art for All

In Australia, the new national curriculum stipulates that all students, from their first year of school through year 8, will learn five art forms: dance, drama, media arts, music, and visual arts. The five forms are to be organized around three strands: generating, which deals with the creative impulse; realizing, which deals with how artists use instruments, materials, and media to create art forms; and responding, which involves aesthetic appreciation. Every student will receive a minimum of 140 hours in each art form in the proposed curriculum.