The big clock in Dowan McNair-Lee's 8th grade classroom in the Stuart-Hobson Middle School is silent, but she can hear the minutes ticking away nonetheless. On this day, like any other, the clock is a constant reminder of how little time she has to prepare her students--for spring tests, and for high school and all that lies beyond it. The…

Using an article about labor leader Cesar Chavez's grape boycott and hunger strike, students at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, D.C., are doing a "close read," a skill prized by the new Common Core State Standards being put into practice in the District of Columbia. As an English/language arts teacher in the common-core era, Ms. Dowan…

Returning from spring vacation, Dowan McNair-Lee's students find their desks in neat rows, facing forward. For the previous seven months, the 8th graders had sat in clusters, facing one another, to facilitate discussion. But janitors used the break to ready the classroom for the year-end tests that are only two weeks away. The new arrangement is…

With the debut of common assessments less than two years away, states and districts are worried about the accountability systems that hinge on those tests. A growing chorus of policy groups is urging more flexibility in how states evaluate teachers, label schools, and enforce other high-stakes consequences during what's likely to be a messy…

Even as the Common Core State Standards are being put into practice across most of the country, nearly half of teachers feel unprepared to teach them, especially to disadvantaged students, according to a new survey. The study by the EPE Research Center found deep wells of concern among teachers about their readiness to meet the challenges posed by…

New York is ahead of most states in its work to design detailed curricula and professional development for the common core and to build brand-new tests to reflect them. What's unfolding in the Empire State as a result of that work illustrates the way the common standards can pressure changes in the education landscape, and torque the tensions…

As the common core is brought to life in classrooms this year, some English/language arts teachers are finding themselves caught in a swirl of debate about whether the new standards require them to cut back on prized pieces of the literary canon to make room for nonfiction. A recent spate of news reports has ignited a new wave of anxiety about the…

A group that is developing tests for half the states in the nation has dramatically reduced the length of its assessment in a bid to balance the desire for a more meaningful and useful exam with concerns about the amount of time spent on testing. The decision by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium reflects months of conversation among its…

Pondering a math problem while she swings her sneakered feet from a chair, 12-year-old Andrea Guevara is helping researchers design an assessment that will shape the learning of 19 million students. The 8th grader, who came to the United States from Ecuador three years ago, is trying out two ways of providing English-language support on a…

Brittany Rollins is hanging out a lot at the local animal shelter this year. Delving into the issue of pet euthanasia and writing about it will help her earn English/language arts credits toward graduation. The 17-year-old senior at Newfound Regional High School, in the rural central New Hampshire town of Bristol, is part of one of the most…

As states and districts begin the work of turning common academic standards into curriculum and instruction, educators searching for teaching resources are often finding that process frustrating and fruitless. Teachers and curriculum developers who are trying to craft road maps that reflect the Common Core State Standards can find themselves in a…

An intensifying focus for teachers across the country is how to develop students' skills at reading and understanding informational texts. Teachers are rebalancing their fiction-and-nonfiction scales because the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts demand it. Since all but four states have adopted those guidelines, millions of…

A group of states that is designing tests for the common academic standards has taken a key step to ensure that the assessments reflect students' readiness for college-level work: It gave top higher education officials from member states voting power on test-design questions that are closest to the heart of the college-readiness question. At its…

Sparked by the Common Core State Standards, teachers and literacy experts are arguing about the role of a time-honored pillar of English/language arts instruction: classroom activities designed to help students understand what they are about to read. The attacks on--and defenses of--"prereading" are unfolding largely in cyberspace, through online…

Dozens of teachers and literacy specialists from across the country hunkered down in Baltimore at round tables, with laptops, pens, and paper, intent on rewriting the collections that wield tremendous influence over the way millions of U.S. children learn literacy skills: the big-name basal readers. Hailing from 18 school districts in 11 states,…