Curriculum

Lack of Common-Core Ready Materials Challenged California Schools

By Jaclyn Zubrzycki — November 23, 2015 1 min read
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Five years after California adopted the Common Core State Standards, school districts say that a lack of textbooks and materials aligned to the standards has been an ongoing issue.

California’s State Board of Education first approved math textbooks aligned to the standards in 2014, four years after the adoption of standards. It approved English/language arts textbooks just this fall.

California students have been taking new standardized tests aligned to the standards. But the Fresno, Elk Grove, Garden Grove, and San Jose Unified school districts all told EdSource, an online news site, that finding common core-aligned materials has been a significant obstacle.

California is not alone. In Colorado, the Denver school district reported last year that the district was not able to locate common core-aligned materials, especially for English language learners, several years after the state adopted the standards.

Things appear to be changing: Several of the California-approved books are specifically noted as being appropriate for English-language learners. And the superintendents in the EdSource report say textbooks are increasingly likely to actually be created with the new standards in mind, instead of being old books marketed as core-approved. But the EdSource report is a striking reminder of how schools in many states been caught in between for years now, working with old materials and new standards.

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