Common Core

In 2011, New York adopted the Common Core State Standards, a national effort to raise the bar and strengthen instruction so that students can succeed in college and beyond. The evidence-based standards emphasize development of higher order skills, literacy and integrated learning across subject areas.

Teachers must change how they teach in their classrooms, evaluate student work and communicate with parents.The Common Core asks teachers to engage in tougher assessments of student learning, more writing across disciplines, mathematics that leads to abstract thinking and problem solving, and cross-disciplinary classes that avoid siloing content in one area.

In our network of public district schools, we are piloting new strategies for helping teachers rethink how they teach literacy and math. In our charter high schools, we are building these standards into the very organization of our schools. In our pioneering teacher-residency program, we are developing a new generation of teachers fully immersed in the Common Core from the start of their careers.