Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

This blog entry links to an online lesson in the Federalist papers, from Groningen University, Nederlands. The relationship of this blog entry to the new SAT essay is not made clear.

Interested parents may do well to **** go directly to the source.

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/

http://www.corestandards.org/other-resources/key-shifts-in-english-language-arts/

Yes! As previously shared, the official CCSS website, corestandards.org, links to many other common core resources including but not limited to:
- achievethecore.org
- commoncoreworks.org
- Science standards being developed (http://www.nextgenscience.org/)
- World Language standards being developed (http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Aligning_CCSS_Language_Standards_v6.pdf)

Web pages may be subject to frequent update, and related web pages may not always agree with each other. Inconsistencies and discrepancies may also provide insight or knowledge.

U.S. Department of Education Links related to common core include:
- "Race to the Top Program Executive Summary", dated November 2009, and available online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf.) The document mentions that standards are not stand-alone when it states, "... developing a rollout plan for the standards together with all of their supporting components;" (emphasis added). Interested parents may read the document for information on "all of their supporting components".
- factsheet on "Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems", dated July 2009, and available online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/slds/factsheet.html, may also be of interest.

These are not documents created by opponents to common core, rather these are documents created by common core proponents. While some may see the statements in these documents as positives and others may see them as moving in a direction opposite to the best interests of our students, few may question whether these sources are "biased" against common core.

I don't understand the significance of "supporting components" you keep bringing up. Standards are just meaningless statements unless put into practice by curriculum, and measured by assessments. It has never been a secret that these "supporting components" will be necessary, and it has never been a secret that this work will be left to businesses, states, and school districts.

It may be instructive to note that the 2009 documents mentioned above were published *before* the common core standards were developed (that process was started in 2009 and the standards were published in 2010), and thus while they may comment on the *idea* of the standards, they are not really relevant to the content of the standards as they exist now. I would agree with Dude that the core standards web site itself (i.e., the links he provided) is a good place to start if you want to learn about the standards.

Indigo, the College Board has stated that the new SAT will include reading passages from "Founding Documents". She was trying to point out that those documents contain some of the "arcane vocabulary" that the new SAT claims to eliminate. If you read some of her other blog posts, there are comments on the new SAT which make her thoughts clearer.

The significance of "supporting components" is that looking only at the STANDARDS themselves (as some may suggest) provides information on only one piece of common core. To better understand the common core, interested parties may wish to understand the "supporting components" as described by the U.S. Department of Education.

Understanding the "supporting components" provides context for major changes in SAT, potential impact on higher education, teacher evaluation, student privacy, and extensive data collection & sharing. Understanding the "supporting components" may also shine a light on the features of the educational landscape within which parents may be trying to navigate and advocate for appropriate level and pacing of instruction for their gifted children.

Families seeking common core resources other than those compiled by HSLDA have many to choose among, including links from the official CCSS website, and those from the U.S. Department of Education. Several have been shared in previous posts in this thread.

The documents are relevant to Race to the Top, and the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems, supporting components of the standards. There was no attempt to present them as standards content.

Yes, that is a great starting point for learning about the standards. Interested parties may wish to read further and explore the websites which common core links to, and also learn about the supporting components, as described by the US Department of Education (linked upthread).

Web pages are easily updateable; dated documents possibly less so. Each may serve a purpose toward "gaining the maximum insight or knowledge possible from each source".

and
Agreed. Readers may understand due to making connections with information from other sources, however in the blog entry the point was not made clear.

No, because that's equivocation.

Yes, the SAT is going to make changes in order to align with Common Core. But the SAT is not Common Core, it's the SAT. Learning about changes to the SAT doesn't teach you about Common Core, it teaches you about changes to the SAT.

There's nothing in the standards that says that the SAT should be testing for high-frequency vocabulary words rather than archaic ones. That's a choice they made on their own.