College & Workforce Readiness

Comparing State Standards to Common Standards

By Catherine Gewertz — July 05, 2010 1 min read
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As you know very well if you read us regularly, common standards adoption season is in full swing. In the run-up to adoption decisions, states have been trying to figure out how their own standards compare to the common core.

We’ve told you about the side-by-side comparisons some states have been conducting on their own. We mentioned in that blog item that Achieve was gearing up to release an online comparison tool as well.

It’s out now, and states have been using it. Thirty-six states have completed orientation webinars, according to Achieve spokeswoman Sandy Boyd, and about half of those have already begun using it. (You can go to the organization’s web page for the tool, but it doesn’t look like much because state teams need to contact Achieve to set up sign-in and password information.)

For the states that participate in Achieve’s American Diploma Project, the organization also created side-by-side comparisons between the common standards and that initiative’s benchmarks in math and in English.

Later this month, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is expected to release a report showing comparisons between each state’s standards and the common core as well. If state adoptions keep up their current pace, it’s a good bet that half the states in the country will already have adopted the standards by then.

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