Current News

The Georgia Department of Education, with the help of $600,000 in state funding, is collaborating with Microsoft to provide access to Microsoft's IT Academy to public high school students across the state. These specialized classes enable students to obtain industry certifications and prepare them for college and careers.

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has requested public comments on the new Career Technical Education (CTE) Model Curriculum Standards that is defined as the knowledge, concepts, and skills students need to acquire at each grade level. State law requires the development and adoption of these standards, which should incorporate career technology into academic education for grades 7-12.

The Common Core Standards must be fully implemented in Arizona by the 2013-14 school year, and state leaders have unveiled a website to help teachers and the community understand and adhere to the standards. The Arizona Department of Education has held over 400 training sessions and trained more than 14,000 of the state's nearly 70,000 teachers so far.

On Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, at 11 a.m. EDT the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, will host a live webinar to explore the results of a groundbreaking assessment that used technology and tools comparable to those in America’s workplaces to test the writing skills of 8th- and 12th-grade students.

The 2012 annual Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward Public Schools, which polls the public on a number of education topics, contains positive findings for the Common Core. According to the report, most Americans believe the Common Core standards will allow U.S. schools to compete globally, and three out of four Americans believe the standards will provide more consistency in the quality of education between school districts and states. In addition, half of those polled believe the standards will improve the quality of education in their community schools.

Minneapolis Star Tribune (08/30/12) McGuire, Kim; Brandt, Steve Minnesota officials announced that 213 schools would be subject to new state Multiple Measurement Ranking (MMR) labels and corrective actions. These schools were listed as underperforming and will receive federal Title I money to address higher levels of poverty. Schools received one of five designations: Reward, Celebration, Continuous Improvement, Focus, and Priority.

In Maryland, the new school year marks the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Most school districts are incorporating the new reading and math standards into existing lessons, rather than buy new textbooks, and some smaller counties are working together to write a new curriculum.

Louisiana students and teachers will face news ways of learning and teaching as the state implements the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in its curriculum. State Superintendent of Education John White says, "It represents a significant shift of what we are expecting of students and teachers. It's more rigorous on one hand and representative of basic skills, on the other hand." The new standards will be implemented first in English language arts/literacy and mathematics, with a full assessment of how students are performing under the new standards in the 2014-15 school year.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear recently signed an executive order that will reform the state's career and technical education (CTE) system and unite the two CTE systems under the State Department of Education to ensure they are more unified and efficient. "Bringing the Office of Career and Technical Education into the Kentucky Department of Education is an excellent move.

The Solano County Office of Education (SCOE) in California is working hard to prepare educators for the implementation of the Common Core State Standards in the 2014-15 school year. SCOE has partnered with Pearson to provide training to teachers and administrators, with intensive training on the new math standards held Aug. 20-21 and additional training sessions on both the math and English-language arts standards slated for September and October.