Education Week - July 8, 2015 - 12

Common-Core Lessons Sought by Teachers in All States
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

this a good example of what I want
my kids to know and be able to do,"
said Sarah Maffei, who teaches at
kipp Shine Prep in Houston. "So
you're reaching out for resources
anywhere, and there are more [common-core] resources available because it's been so widely adopted."
Some teachers, including those in
Omaha, Neb., are using common-core
materials because that's what their
district provided. And for some educators, it's a matter of advocacy-a way
of getting the standards they'd hoped
their state would adopt in front of
their students.
"When I pull supplementary
materials, most of the times they
are common core," said Cama
Charlet, a 3rd grade teacher in
Omaha. She pushed to bring the
common standards to her state,
though the state did not end up
adopting them. "That critical
thinking has become a core piece
of my instruction."

Lessons Spreading
According to BetterLesson, an
online lesson-sharing site founded
by Teach For America alumnus Alex
Grodd that provides common-core
materials, about 8 percent of its U.S.
traffic is from people in states that
never adopted the common-core
standards. (Those four states make
up about 13 percent of the national
public school enrollment.) About 5
percent of its users overall are from
the non-adoption state of Texas.
Student Achievement Partners,
a professional-development group

in Nebraska began using Go
Math!, a common-core-aligned
curriculum published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the Omaha
World-Herald reported. The district did not return a request for
comment by deadline.
Ms. Charlet said her suburban
Omaha district is also deciding
between two curricula-Go Math!
and another Houghton Mifflin Harcourt curriculum called Math Expressions-that are advertised to
be in alignment with the commoncore standards. A review of those
two curricula and others by the
nonprofit EdReports.org found that

rector of Washington-based Great
Minds, which publishes the commoncore-aligned Eureka Math curriculum, pointed to schools and districts
in all four of the non-adoption states
that have downloaded her company's
free common-core materials.
Several school systems purchased
the Eureka math materials as well,
including Lynchburg City Schools in
Virginia and kipp Houston schools,
which are part of the nationwide
charter network.
Alaska's Bering Strait schools, a
remote 1,700-student district that
serves 15 villages in the northwest
part of the state, also bought pre-K

Ms. Goldschmidt of Student
Achievement Partners agreed that
teachers are more concerned with
quality than they are with which
standards a lesson was written for.
"We've had lots of conversations with
teachers about how they go about
finding resources on the Internet,"
she said. Often, "teachers will go to
Google and type in 'grade 4 fractions
worksheet.' They'll find a grade 4
fractions worksheet and have it be
common-core aligned, and if it's good
they'll use it."
Another lesson-sharing site, ReadWriteThink, a joint project of the International Literacy Association and

KIPP Users
According to Ms. Maffei, working
in a charter network has made it
easier to openly implement commoncore materials in her state. "I think

AT A
GLANCE
Texas, the second-most populous state, is one of the
four states that never adopted the Common Core State
Standards, yet there's evidence that its teachers
are using common-core-aligned instructional
materials. Some numbers on how the
state's educators are turning
to websites that provide
common-core materials:

« The Lone Star State is among the top five states in

terms of the number of users on BetterLesson (making up

5% of all users).
.4% of visits on Student Achievement Partners'
« 1
website were from users in Texas.

« Texans initiated 83,000 curriculum downloads
on EngageNY.

% of the sessions on Illustrative Mathematics
« 1
originated in the state.

SOURCE: Education Week

I think teachers in the common-core or the non-common-core space,
they're reaching out for good resources, whatever that may be."
SARAH MAFFEI
Teacher, KIPP Shine Prep

founded by the lead writers of the
common core, says the states that
never adopted the standards account for about 2 to 3 percent of U.S.
traffic on its website, which offers
common-core resources.
Including Indiana and Oklahoma,
both of which repealed the standards last year, non-common-core
states account for nearly 5 percent
of traffic.
"I don't think people are coming to
[our materials] specifically because
they're common core," said Lisa
Goldschmidt, the digital director
for Student Achievement Partners.
"When they decide to use them, it's
because they offer things that make
sense to teachers."
The publishing companies Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
and McGraw Hill declined to offer
comments or data for this story.
However, there's evidence that commercial publishers are selling common-core materials in non-adoption
states as well.
Last year, Omaha public schools

from states that never adopted the
standards. Half of that traffic is from
Texas.
Both Eureka and BetterLesson
said a significant portion of their
Texas users are coming from Houston. That may be because the kipp
charter network, which has 22
schools in Houston, is encouraging the use of common-core-aligned
curricula. The kipp Houston schools
are using a math curriculum that
is based on Eureka, with some
modifications so that it also aligns
with the Texas state standards.
While charter schools do have some
autonomy, they're still required to
follow state standards and take the
same standardized tests as the public schools.

they were not in alignment with
the common standards. However,
that review process has since faced
criticism. (See Education Week,
March 18, 2015.)
Ms. Charlet sees the use of common-core materials as a good thing.
"Regardless of whether we've adopted or not, the materials being created are for common-core states," she
said. "But that benefits us as a noncommon-core state."
In fact, Nebraska recently
drafted a set of new K-12 mathematics standards that have many
similarities to the common standards, including a list of "mathematical processes" that look a lot
like the common core's "Standards
for Mathematical Practice."
"Politically, we like to label things
common core and non-common core,"
Ms. Charlet said. "But we're elevating our instruction, deepening student learning. I think everybody's
doing that, whether you're common
core or not common core."
Lynne Munson, the executive di-

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 8, 2015 | www.edweek.org

through 8th grade Eureka materials.
And of the 18 professional development institutes the publishing company is holding this summer to help
teachers implement Eureka Math,
two are in non-common-core states-
one in Houston, another in Charleston, S.C. South Carolina repealed
adoption of the standards last year.

Vetted Materials
One of the most widely used online repositories of free materials
that's cropped up with the advent
of the common core is EngageNY.
The website's K-12 resources, developed and housed by New York state,
have been downloaded 20 million
times-and about half of the downloads came from New York. Even so,
83,000 downloads, or 0.4 percent,
originated in Texas.
"I think teachers in the commoncore space or the non-common-core
space, they're reaching out for good
resources whatever that may be," said
Ms. Maffei.

the National Council of Teachers of
English, allows users to view a lesson's alignment to either the common core or to their own state standards-indicating just how much
overlap there can be.
"As long as you can defend that
you're teaching your state's standards-you're just aligning it to
the more in-depth problem-solving approach to thinking-I don't
think there's any downside" to
using common-core materials, said
Ms. Maffei, who is a BetterLesson
master teacher and developed a
year's worth of common-core lessons for that site.
About 2 percent of traffic to another common-core-specific website,
Illustrative Mathematics, which
was developed in part by William
G. McCallum, a lead writer of the
common-core math standards, comes

if I was in a [noncharter] public school, I
absolutely would have pushback," she said. "Because of the environment I teach in, and because
so many schools in our network
are in common-core states, [other
teachers and administrators] are
supportive."
But teachers in all schools are
looking for vetted materials, Ms.
Maffei said. "I think more teachers than are probably publicizing
it are using these resources," she
said.
And considering some curricula and lesson-sharing sites are
more overt with the common-core
branding than others, it's possible
some teachers are unknowingly
downloading and using such resources.
"Everyone kind of uses some,
sometimes without fully realizing
the materials are common core," said
Ms. Charlet. "We just don't use those
words openly [in Nebraska]. ... We're
dancing around it."
The CURRICULUM MATTERS blog tracks
news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/curriculummatters
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Education Week - July 8, 2015

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