Common Core and Other State Standards: Superintendents Feel Optimism, Concern and Lack of Support

For months, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been debated throughout the media, legislatures, education organizations, and households across the country. Education groups have released statements both in favor of the standards and opposed. As these arguments are being tossed around, 44 states and D.C. are implementing CCSS and other states are implementing new college and career ready state standards outside of the CCSS. AASA supports high standards for all students, be they through the CCSS or other state-specific standards, but believes that schools and districts should be given the time necessary to fully implement the standards before judging their success, and assessments should be used in the manner for which they were designed and evaluated before any high-stakes outcomes are attached to their results. AASA proposes a purposeful approach of "slow down to get it right," to ensure that schools and teachers have the resources they need to successfully implement the standards and aligned assessments in a way that bolsters student learning. This includes time and support for teachers to meaningfully adopt the standards into their teaching with curriculum and instructional materials aligned to the standards. It also requires a deliberate effort to ensure that the related assessments are used for the purposes for which they were designed. The CCSS-aligned tests were designed to assess student achievement, and any effort to rush implementation of them that includes using the test data to inform teacher evaluation is ill-conceived. Frustration over an arbitrary deadline to implement tests in a manner for which they were not intended threatens the good that stands to be gained from successful implementation of the CCSS and related assessments. Whatever happens in the news and the political debate, districts are already hard at work implementing these new standards and their related assessments. In order to see how the implementation of the new standards is faring. AASA conducted a survey of superintendents and administrators throughout the country in April, 2014. With 525 responses representing 48 states, the survey provides a glimpse into the planning and implementation of the new standards and assessments as well as the support superintendents are receiving from the state and community. Overall, most superintendents have already begun to implement the new standards, which they see as much more rigorous than previous standards. The new standards w