In Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Schools, educators have leapt into the Common Core with both feet, creating an internal website for teachers to share performance tasks and implementing systemwide, school-based professional learning that has put the standards into practice and tested students on them in the 2012-13 school year. The district began…

When the former principal of Viewmont Elementary School arrived there three years earlier, he found a still-new facility, a friendly teaching staff, and a solid, if noninclusive, core of parents eager to be involved. However, a deeper look revealed a school struggling with change, including recent demographic changes. A closer look at the data…