Standards

Washington State ‘Provisionally’ Adopts Common Standards

By Stephen Sawchuk — July 20, 2010 1 min read
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The fabulous Catherine Gewertz is on vacay this week, but common standards stop for no one! And so we bring you the news that the latest common-standard adoption tally is 26 states, kind-of-sort-of, now that Washington state has provisionally approved the common content guidelines in mathematics and reading.

If you’re wondering what “provisionally” means, the bottom line is that state Superintendent Randy Dorn must give the legislature a final review in January 2011, complete with an analysis of the costs of implementation and a comparison of the current academic-content standards with those produced by the Common Core State Standards initiative. Final adoption wouldn’t happen until after that report.

Of course, it’s not yet clear how the federal Education Department will interpret this adoption. Remember, states get extra Race to the Top points for adopting the CCSSI by Aug. 2.

This week is likely to be a busy one, with major adoptions scheduled in New York, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts, where stakeholders have had quite a vigorous debate over the merits of the standards. Stay tuned.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.