Oregon students could face tougher math and English standards as soon as next year if the State Board of Education adopts Common Core State Standards at its meeting this week.
Already, 37 states have adopted the new standards that combine best practices, the latest education research and include international benchmarks in an effort to make students more competitive in a global economy.
They also make it easier to collaborate and compare results across state lines. Currently, states develop their own benchmarks, which makes it difficult to evaluate how they're doing nationally or internationally.
"I see benefit in going with the common core standards,"said Salem-Keizer assistant superintendent Salam Noor, "The content is really rich."
If adopted, the standards would take effect in 2014, but the transition takes as long as three years, so teachers would start preparing as soon as next year.
A small survey of Oregon teachers and administrators shows strong support for adopting the core English Language Arts standard. English is past due for new standards based on the state's seven-year cycle, and the new ones would be an easy fit and come highly recommended. They were developed by the same group that helped build Oregon's current standards.
But they boast six years of additional research and experience on ways to improve reading in grades 4-12 and writing in K-12.
The standards encourage writing routinely with an emphasis on writing on demand, using technology, honing summarization skills, researching and writing about sources and practicing argument and informative writing in all high school classes, according to a Department of Education topic summary for the board.
The new standards would cost money in terms of training, textbooks and support material, but it's an expense that many districts, including Salem-Keizer, were preparing to pay for English anyway.
Math standards, on the other hand, are a tougher sell.
Oregon developed new standards in 2007 for middle school and 2009 for high school, which cost about $2.46 million to implement in Salem-Keizer. If the new state standards are adopted, districts would then need to possibly buy new materials and retrain teachers again.
"We're hoping the content standards in mathematics will be closely aligned to national standards, which means we wouldn't have to buy a lot more materials," Noor said.
Right now the state is looking at a "crosswalk" between the two standards to help show the similarities and differences.
The biggest difference in math is a shift in content that means students will take algebra and geometry in middle school instead of the high school, and high schoolers will focus on advanced algebra and statistics. The elementary math also emphasizes formulas and arithmetic more than the process, said Lesli Ficker, Salem-Keizer elementary math specialist.
For example, Oregon's standards might have students work on place values and a sense of numbers so they better understand multiplication tables versus focusing on the tables and the answers, Ficker said. The new standards also ask more of students at a younger age, she said, which isn't always developmentally appropriate.
The real test will be how the state implements the standards, she said. Overall she supports the idea of national standards.
Next week, Oregon Department of Education will share a timeline for the new standards as well as state support if they're adopted, but much of the responsibility will fall to districts to train their teachers and purchase materials.
But the benefits of adopting the standards far outweigh the short-term costs, said Susanne Smith with the Oregon Department of Education.
"Oregon will not need to spend money to revise and update standards on its own anymore," she said.
The savings will allow Oregon to spend more of its K-12 budget on vital efforts to support teaching and learning in the classroom, she said.
Already some of the collaborative benefits are shining through.
A group of public school teachers, with money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, designed English curriculum maps including units that use the standards as well as objectives, texts, activities and more. Also a joint task force of math educators will establish a website that includes a variety of tools and resources for K-12 teachers.
Oregon also is a part of one of two consortiums to develop national assessments for core standards in order to compare results throughout the country.
The Salem-Keizer School Board, which urged the state to adopt the standards, hopes the move will help make Oregon more competitive for federal grants to help schools excel.
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