4.17.13 John Wood Early Algebra and the Common Core State Standards What is the allure of algebra? Over the last several years both parents and school leaders have pushed more and more students into middle school algebra. I know this is a trend that is so... Read more
3.15.13 John Wood Is Digital Content Too Rich for the Common Core State Standards? Do you know how compelling and information rich digital content can be? I am not sure I really understood the potential of digital content until I read the multimedia feature in the New York Times... Read more
3.6.13 John Wood Common Core State Standards Implementation: Focus on the Process not the Results Recently at the World Match Play Championships, the two best golfers in the world lost in the first round: “Tiger and Rory Ousted.” Two days earlier, Barcelona with Lionel Messi, the most... Read more
2.27.13 John Wood Vocabulary, Digital Content, Snowballs, and the State of the Union Reading the EdWeek article – Students Must Learn More Words, Say Studies – my mind flashed back to a scene from a few weekends ago when I took a walk with my three grandchildren on the Baltimore... Read more
2.19.13 John Wood Digital Content in the Classroom: A Double Edged Sword The EdWeek article – 'Big Three' Publishers Rethink K-12 Strategies – focuses on how publishers are transitioning away from textbooks to digital content. But what got my attention were the... Read more
2.13.13 John Wood Common Core State Standards: Tests Worth Teaching to – Part 2 In a previous post (Part One), I discussed the MSPAP program in Maryland as an example of a “test worth teaching to” and pointed out the ways in which its good intentions were subverted. ... Read more
2.8.13 John Wood The New English War: Marching to the Sound of the Canon As districts begin to implement the Common Core State Standards, the debate over how to incorporate more non-fiction, informational text, literary non-fiction, or texts from the content areas into... Read more
2.4.13 John Wood Five Good Questions about the Common Core State Standards In a blog post on Getting Smart – 7 Teacher Questions About Common Core State Standards – Courtney Hanes describes the beginning steps of transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in... Read more
2.1.13 John Wood Common Core State Standards: Tests Worth Teaching to – Part One In a recent webinar discussing the promise of the assessment consortia, Joan Herman, Director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Learning (CRESST) at UCLA, and Chris... Read more
1.18.13 John Wood The New Common Core Assessments: Will they Hobble the Curriculum? Just before the holidays, Education Sector released a report entitled Let History Not Repeat Itself: Overcoming Obstacles to the Common Core’s Success authored by John Chubb. This is a rich and... Read more
12.12.12 John Wood The Common Core State Standards Are Not Curriculum (Nor Are They a Definition of Readiness) The PARCC assessment consortium has taken an indirect approach to defining career and college readiness (CCR). Rather than offer a definition of CCR, they are correlating educational assessment... Read more
12.4.12 John Wood When to Transition to Common Core? Successful transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), like most things in life, has a lot to do with timing. Every district in the 46 states participating in the Common Core is unique... Read more
