The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) provides a set of standards for literacy and mathematics and aims to “...ensure that all students, no matter where they live, are prepared for success in postsecondary education and the workforce.”1 As mathematicians and math teachers, we support the aims of the CCSS, the effort, and the resources that have been devoted to its creation. Without a simultaneous focus on equity, however, the benefits of the CCSS will not reach all students equally. The success of the CCSS as an educational reform depends on delivering appropriate resources to all schools; empowering students, families, and communities; and using assessment as a tool to improve teaching and learning, rather than as the basis for high-stakes decisions about the futures of students, teachers, or schools.
In order to truly ensure the success of CCSS, all efforts should be made by district, city, and state education departments to provide sufficient resources for schools to implement the standards as intended. Our poorest school district spends 10% of the amount spent per student by our richest school district.2 This inequity will undermine implementation efforts. To actualize the vision of the common core movement, all students must have access to small classes, highly-trained teachers, and adequate technology.

The success of the CCSS will also depend on the active participation of teachers, students, families, and communities. Teachers should be given time and support to learn new content, create CCSS-aligned curricula, and empowered to make decisions about teaching methods within their schools. Each school’s implementation of the curriculum should be tailored to the diversity in thinking and learning styles as well as the history and experiences of the students and community. For this to happen, families and communities must have a significant voice in the schools’ decision-making about the implementation of CCSS, including the design of curriculum and assessments.

Indeed, assessment is an essential element of improving teaching and learning. If we are going to successfully implement the CCSS, we should reduce the pressures of high stakes testing. Testing should be primarily for teachers and students to improve teaching and learning, not wholly evaluative. Tests given at the end of the year deny teachers the ability to utilize information and students the benefit of using feedback. Students will benefit from CCSS-aligned, teacher-created tests that are directly related to the context of their learning. All assessments must be varied in style and format; individual differences and learning styles must be taken into consideration when creating assessments. For example, a student with limited access to technology would be at a disadvantage if asked to take only computerized tests.

The common core has the potential to create a greater generation of mathematically proficient Americans. If we boldly face the difficulties that education will face during implementation, the complexities of the different communities involved, and the opportunity of reinventing our assessment environment, then the implementation could result in the most significant change to our country’s achievement gap that has ever been seen.

1: http://www.corestandards.org
2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-mike-honda/extreme-disparities-in-sc_b_131651.html

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