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How to sustain Common Core efforts

Most U.S. states have pledged to implement the Common Core State Standards.

Educators and policy makers are heavily invested in the Common Core State Standards [1], and a new ASCD report aims to help school leaders effectively implement the standards to begin educational transformation.

Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards: Moving from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability [2]” identifies activities that educators and policy makers at all levels can undertake to implement the standards successfully.

The recommendations come from data gathered from field work, surveys, and educator summits. While focusing on tactics and strategies that educators across the nation can use to implement the new standards, the report delves deeper into the needs, input, and activities of educators in four states that are diverse in location and education practice—Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, and Utah.

The statewide summits presented an opportunity to determine educators’ level of understanding about the new standards and their professional development needs.

Across the nation, many educators’ perspectives were similar:

Based on the data gathered at the statewide summits and field work, ASCD recommends the following priorities to move implementation of the Common Core standards forward:

More information about how to undertake each of these steps is available in the report.

“We asked educators to tell us what steps need to occur to successfully implement the Common Core State Standards, and they told us,” said ASCD Executive Director and CEO Gene R. Carter. “This report offers education leaders at all levels key recommendations for successfully implementing the new standards. ASCD will continue to work hard to provide educators the highest-quality programs, products, and services to support these recommendations in the future.”

The report is one of the projects funded through a three-year, $3 million dollar grant awarded to ASCD last year by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support implementation of the Common Core standards.