aboutlearning

How is the use of 4MAT aligned with a common set of standards?  Simply because now we can stop arguing and obsessing over WHAT will be taught and get the important business of HOW it will be taught and how it will be CONNECTED to learners. Once we know the entire WHAT, we can get to work creating the concept maps and learner connections that will bring this material to life for kids.

Most States Coming on Board

What should students know when they finish high school? Who should decide? Should we all agree on this? Yes, of course we should. All our students need to know what successful, educated 21st century citizens need to know. So far forty-six states have agreed to tackle this complex task. Missouri, Texas, South Carolina and Alaska may come on board when the common sense aspect of this becomes clearer to them.

As far as we are concerned here at About Learning, Yea! At last teachers can get a good look at what rigor is in major content areas and act accordingly. The list of those who will decide is impressive: ACT Inc., writing college admissions standards since 1959, Washington based Achieve, the New York City College Board, and the Iowa City organization that creates the college entrance test.

The Timing for National Standards

The standards will be presented in grade-by-grade format. The public will be invited to review them as early as July of this year. The experts who will perform this important task will be chosen by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State Officers.

When they are ready, the states will need to adopt them. For us at About Learning and our professional development work, the quicker the better. We will then have the same set of student goals in all content areas to work with as we help teachers cluster and manipulate the standards into strategies and designs that will work for all students in whichever states we are in. The standards must include study skills, job skills and critical thinking.

These “grade-by-grade” standards are set to be completed in draft form in December. A validation committee made up of independent national and international experts in content standards will review and comment on the drafts. Theses standards will be called a common core and will need to represent at least 85% of the states’ standards and be adopted in three years by all states who agree.

One influential organization that has always focused on rigorous subject matter, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, is asking that state officials consider the work they have already done as this work moves forward.

I am waiting to see if appropriate monitoring is built in for reviewing the relevance of the standards from year to year as the knowledge curve moves at a much faster pace than committees and formal lists.