Sweeping changes to hit schools

The standards are designed to provide teachers and parents with a common understanding of what students are expected to learn at each grade level. The objective is to make sure students graduate high school prepared to succeed in a global economy and society.

Educators appear to be on board with the changes, though some worry about too much upheaval.

“Just as educators across the state were finally getting on board with and up to speed on the [Georgia Performance Standards], Common Core comes along to pose new challenges,” said Tim Callahan, spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, the state’s largest teachers association.

Parents also are still smarting from the last big change, a move to teaching three math concepts in a single course that had thousands of high school students struggling and tutoring services booming. Some school districts still have integrated math, but because of a public outcry, they were given the option to drop it.

Now, districts are working to learn more about the new standards and hoping they will bring the desired results.

“I have a community that’s just edgy,” Fulton County Superintendent Robert Avossa said. “They are nervous. Are we going to get it right? Is the state and this Common Core really going to do what they say?”

Through Webinars and other training exercises, teachers across the state are prepping for the changes, which infuse reading and writing into almost every subject, including science, where many Georgia students have struggled.

Improving literacy across subject areas — helping, for example, a student to understand a scientific term so he or she could complete an assignment — should improve performance in those areas, state education officials say.

Common Core curriculum changes are coming for science and, later, for social studies, but those changes are years away. A new national test to measure student performance, which in Georgia would replace the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, could be offered as soon as the 2014-15 school year.

Georgia was one of the first states to adopt the new standards in English, language arts and math. Indeed, the new standards have a close Georgia connection: In June 2010, they were rolled out to the nation at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee as a nod to the influence of then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, a key, early proponent.

Schools in Georgia have a head start over those in other states in embracing the new, national standards because changes here had already begun to increase the rigor of some coursework.

Brian Butera, a seventh-grade math teacher in Fayette County, said he has high hopes for the Common Core, which replaces the current Georgia Performance Standards and was developed by experts across the country, not just in Georgia.

“So, the best minds worked on getting this right,” said Butera, an 11-year teaching veteran. “I think they help strengthen what was already in place with the GPS. Our students are beginning to think critically and communicate mathematically.”

Georgia is receiving $400 million in federal Race to the Top grant funding, some of which has been used to help the state’s Department of Education prepare for the national standards.

States that wanted Race to the Top funding were pushed to adopt the national standards. Georgia Department of Education officials said they don’t feel the state has been strong-armed into adopting the new standards.

“What you hope happens is you can share best practices with other states,” said Mike Buck, chief academic officer at the Georgia Department of Education. “It’s not just to say, ‘We’re No. 1.’ It’s to help all boys and girls.”

In addition to sharing tips on what works, Buck said Georgia districts could see some savings through reduced textbook costs. With schools across the country teaching similar material, the hope, Buck said, is that they could band together, buy in bulk and drive costs down.

Two dozen staff members at the state Department of Education, who earn a combined $1.3 million per year, are helping to implement the new standards. The department expects to hire three more. The staff members are paid with money from the Race to the Top grant and from department funds.

In addition to Race to the Top money, districts are already spending thousands on training, as well as substitute teachers.

In Cobb County, for example, the school system has incurred some expense by bringing in national presenters who train large groups of teachers, said Jay Dillon, communications director for Cobb County Schools, the second-largest school system in the state.

“These sessions may run $3,000 for the trainer and $8,000-$30,000 for subs. We have held multiple sessions of this nature throughout the year,” he said.

In large districts, getting teachers the training they need hasn’t been easy.

“In a district that has 114 schools and 15,000 staff members, getting the highest quality training to all teachers is an enormous task,” Dillon said. “The needs of our schools are very diverse, and providing training that meets their individual and collective needs poses a unique challenge.”

Teacher training has been ongoing in Gwinnett County, the state’s largest school district, all year and will continue over the summer, said Mary Elizabeth Davis, the system’s curriculum director.

Avossa said it’s not been easy in Fulton County, either.

“It’s a lot of changes, a lot for a district of our size to handle,” he said. “I have a communication struggle on my hands right now making sure people understand what’s happening.”

Still, most educators see this as necessary if students in the state and nation are to be competitive globally.

“We are excited about the possibility of moving education in the right direction,” said Calvine Rollins, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, “so we are definitely on board.”

COMMON CORE BASICS

• Common Core is a new set of national academic standards designed to give students knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college or in the work force.

• The standards are to improve reading, literacy and critical thinking, and they are, eventually, to lead to a national assessment in which student performance can be reliably compared from state to state.

• Georgia agreed to adopt the Common Core in 2010, with classroom implementation beginning this fall in English/language arts and math. New standards for science and social studies are expected to be introduced in two to three years.

EXAMPLES OF COMMON CORE CHANGES

The new Common Core standards will lead to curriculum changes in Georgia schools this fall. Some examples:

In math:

• Shapes introduced in kindergarten, not the first grade.

• Factoring, prime numbers, composites and adding, subtracting and multiplying fractions introduced in the fourth grade, not the fifth grade.

• Negative numbers introduced in the sixth grade, not the seventh grade.

• Solving inequalities and basic probability introduced in the seventh grade, not the eighth grade.

• Calculating the mean absolute deviation introduced in the sixth grade, not the ninth grade.

• Determining the volume of a sphere introduced in the eighth grade, not the 10th grade.

• Use of the Pythagorean theorem to find distances introduced in the eighth grade, not the ninth grade.

In English/language arts:

• The function of adverbs introduced in the third grade, not the fourth grade.

• Abstract nouns introduced in the third grade, not the sixth grade.

• Specific verb tenses introduced in the third grade, not the fifth grade.

• Pronoun-antecedent agreement introduced in the third grade, not the seventh grade.

• Comparative and superlative adjectives introduced in the third grade, not the seventh grade.