Getting Ready for College, Careers, and the Common Core: What Every Educator Needs to Know

By David T. Conley

Create programs that prepare students for college, careers, and the new and challenging assessments of the Common Core State Standards

Written for all educators but with an emphasis on those at the secondary level, this important resource shows how to develop programs that truly prepare students for both the Common Core assessments and for college and career readiness. Based on multiple research studies conducted by Conley as well as experience he has gained from working with dozens of high schools that succeed with a wide range of students, the book provides specific strategies for teaching the CCSS in ways that improve readiness for college and careers for the full range of students.

• Draws from research-based models for creating programs for high school students that will ensure readiness for tests and for college and beyond
• Includes strategies and practices for teachers to help students develop postsecondary preparedness
• Is the third in a series of books on readiness written by David Conley, including College Knowledge and College and Career Ready

Teachers can use this valuable resource to understand the "big picture" behind the Common Core State Standards, how to teach to them in ways that prepare students for new, challenging assessments being implemented over the next few years and, more importantly, how to help all students be ready for learning beyond high school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781118585009

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Teachers want students to learn. It’s one of the most basic reasons people go into teaching, and it’s certainly one of the basic expectations society has of teachers. However, supporting students to learn requires more than presenting information to them. Learning occurs more often, and more deeply, when students understand, retain, and are able to apply and use what they are taught, not just routinely, but in new and novel ways. Getting students to these deeper levels of learning is a key goal of current educational reforms and one toward which most teachers strive, but the path to achieve that end may not always be clear. When students are motivated to learn, when they know that what they are being taught is important, when they can apply what they are learning to their interests and aspirations so that they value what they are being taught, they do a much better job. Under such circumstances, teaching can be a most rewarding undertaking. Absent these conditions, it can be alienating for students, a battle of wills, or worse.

I raise this issue at the beginning of this book because over the past twenty-five years, states and the federal government have worked to define more clearly and explicitly the expectations teachers should have for students by implementing academic content standards. Such standard-setting activities took place in all states between 1990 and 2002. As of spring 2013, forty-five states and the District of Columbia had signed on to the Common Core State Standards, requiring an overhaul of their standards and assessment systems and related supports for districts and schools. Educators are seeking methods, techniques, tools, and materials—in short, solutions—to get students to meet the higher and deeper expectations of the Common Core State Standards. As I illustrate throughout this book, higher student achievement of the type envisioned by the Common Core State Standards is unlikely to occur without students’ taking greater ownership of their learning. Even if student test scores go up, such improvements alone are not likely to result in significantly more students being ready for college and careers, because readiness is far more multifaceted than what is captured by a few test scores, a point that I explore in depth throughout this book.

Many young people have accepted the idea that they need to do what they are told if they are to succeed in school and beyond in life. Their parents and other supportive adults have emphasized the importance of academic success, perhaps even obsessed over it. These students affiliate with peer groups in which everyone seems willing to do what they are expected to do to succeed. But in the process of complying with the wishes of adults, many of these young people lose their enthusiasm for learning. They produce just enough work at just a high enough quality level to meet the expectations of their teachers and parents. But they do not necessarily do so with enthusiasm or joy.

Others refuse to comply beyond showing up and following directions as literally as possible. They may not create any problems, but they are clearly marking time toward the day they receive a diploma that in the end may not have much meaning, significance, or value to them. They may not be giving much thought, if any, to what they will do with their lives except in the broadest of terms. It is not that they lack ambition or interests; they simply don’t make connections between what they are learning and where they are going beyond high school.

A final group presents its own unique challenges and opportunities. It consists of students who have special needs or face special challenges, particularly those with disabilities and those who are developing their English proficiency. These students are rarely given the chance to show what they can do in the first place and have few, if any, opportunities to shape or own their learning. Interestingly, colleges are witnessing a steady increase in students from these groups, an indication of the latent potential present in these students, as well as a harbinger of the challenges that colleges will face in the future as their numbers grow. Viewing these students as capable of aspiring to postsecondary readiness and success has been the missing first step in getting them to engage more deeply with learning.

I am increasingly convinced that educators are never going to see the types of improvement in student learning that they desire and that policymakers seek if students are not able to take more ownership of their learning and to connect their schooling to their goals and ambitions. The key to achieving this, in my estimation, is for college and career readiness to become the universal focal point for all students. I present a full definition of what I mean by college and career ready in chapter 2, but the key concept is that all students need to be ready to succeed in a postsecondary setting in which they can be successful as they pursue their aspirations.

Getting students ready to do so begins by encouraging them from an early age not just to think about college, but also to think about what they want to do with their lives and then make connections between what they are being taught and what they need to do to be ready to pursue any of a range of options after high school. Throughout elementary and secondary school, students will need many more opportunities to learn about the possibilities for their futures—the career pathways, the topics, and the interest areas that can excite and motivate them to take on greater academic challenges. They need to make connections between the academic content they are learning and their goals and aspirations.

The Common Core State Standards, Student Ownership of Learning, and College and Career Readiness

The Common Core State Standards and the assessments being developed by two consortia of states, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, pose a new challenge for US students and their teachers. The key question is whether students can reach the deeper levels of learning and demonstrate mastery on these new, potentially more demanding assessments. More important, if more students achieve the fundamental goal of the Common Core State Standards, will they be ready for college and careers? This is the path down which the states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards now venture. The states outside the Common Core have their own demanding expectations, and most of the content of this book is relevant and useful to educators in those states as well.

The Common Core State Standards and the assessments being developed by PARCC and Smarter Balanced are important focal points and organizers, and a substantial portion of the book is devoted to helping educators think about how to enable students to learn the Common Core State Standards in ways the result in high performance on the consortia assessments. But that is not a book about preparing for those assessments. Its larger purpose is to present and explain a framework around which classrooms, schools, and systems can be organized that enables full alignment with the goal of college and career readiness for all students within a Common Core world.

The Role of Elementary and Secondary Schools

This book is not just about secondary schools or students on the verge of attending college or starting a career. The process of being ready to learn begins much earlier—in preschool, ideally. Many of the principles explored in this book apply to elementary school students and teachers as much as or more than they do to students in secondary school. Attending to the needs of younger students is particularly important because they have the advantage of still being programmed to learn, with a drive to understand the world for the simple joy of doing so. As students mature, they demand more reasons to learn. They need more than an explanation; they need an internal force that reaffirms that what they are doing is important and valuable to them.

The Elementary School as Frame Setter

For elementary school students, most of the content they learn is not necessarily specific to college and career readiness, and it shouldn’t be. However, a great deal can be done in the early grades to help students acquire and develop the foundational content knowledge, essential learning skills and strategies, and the frame of mind necessary for success after high school. The following are examples of learning skills and mind-sets that contribute to readiness later on. They are the ability to

Set goals

Manage time

Be aware of personal strengths and weaknesses

Self-monitoring the quality of their work

Recognize when help is needed, and then be able to ask for help

Persist with challenging tasks

Achieve through effort and not rely solely on aptitude

Identify and develop personal interests

Have aspirations that require education beyond high school

In terms of foundational content knowledge, elementary school students can strengthen their literacy skills early so that they can quickly transition from learning to read to reading to learn. They do this in part by mastering academic vocabulary, the language used in the learning process at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Achieving and consolidating fluency in key foundational areas in mathematics is also necessary, along with a deep understanding of scientific principles, the scientific method, and techniques used to collect and analyze information systematically. Grasping the notion of social systems and how they operate, and the general outline and flow of historical events and themes, gives students context for the detailed and specific information to which they will be exposed in their studies of history and social sciences. Cultivating the visual and performing arts encourages creativity, principles of design and expression, the ability to persist with a challenging task, experience with self-assessment, and a greater openness to having one’s work or performance critiqued.

In short, elementary school can and should be a time when students are gaining insight into the structure of academic disciplines and ways of knowing that are important in today’s knowledge economy. Students should also be developing an appreciation of how other cultures experience and interpret the world so that they understand that learning occurs in many different ways. These general understandings are buttressed by solid content in areas specified in the Common Core State Standards and other core knowledge, which creates a solid foundation on which more advanced studies can be undertaken. These understandings also frame and mediate student identification of potential future interests, one of the keys to increased ownership of learning.

Elementary school can and should be a time when students are gaining insight into the structure of academic disciplines and ways of knowing that are important in today’s knowledge economy.

Secondary School, a Time for Students to Set Aspirations and Define Interests

Secondary school is the time and place where students begin to examine in greater detail areas of interest and where they start to think about their future in more concrete ways. Using the Common Core as a framework, students can conceivably begin to make connections between their interests and aspirations and the specific knowledge and skills they need to be ready for postsecondary programs aligned with their goals. Getting them to make a connection between what they are learning and what they want to do or become is the key to generating greater student ownership of learning and getting them to put in the time, effort, and energy necessary to do the demanding work that the Common Core State Standards require.

Secondary school is also a time when educators can find out a lot more about their students’ postsecondary readiness. Students take tests that gauge their content knowledge. However, a lot more information is needed. To get a better sense of their cognitive development, students need challenging assignments and classroom assessments that require deeper engagement and more sophisticated information processing skills. In addition, students can learn to use a variety of learning strategies and techniques effectively and develop attitudes toward learning that enable them to succeed in difficult situations. Finally, schools can gather information on how well students understand and are prepared for the complex process of applying to college, garnering necessary financial aid, coping with the culture of college, and advocating for themselves within large, complex institutional settings.

All of this information needs to be actionable by school site staff, students, and parents. Students need to be able to change their behaviors, add new skills, and eliminate ineffective ones. They need to be able to influence their own destiny by taking affirmative steps to be better prepared for the future they want to create. They need to use available data to internalize a cause-and-effect view of the world, one in which their efforts lead directly to achievement of their goals. And the adults in their lives must use the information to reinforce this behavior and solidify causal notions for students who would otherwise not invest the time and energy necessary to succeed as learners.

Not many school systems or individual schools teach all of this or develop all of these skills. Neither do they gather information on how well students are doing in most of these areas. Furthermore, few elementary and secondary schools have instructional programs that would enable students to use this type of information to become college and career ready more efficiently. While the Common Core State Standards can be a catalyst for better alignment with postsecondary expectations, the challenge remains for schools to design instructional program that directly address the expectations those standards contain in order to improve college and career readiness for all students. This book is about what it will take to do this.

Overview of the Chapters

Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of why college and career readiness for all is now a goal for education and how challenging this goal is. The US economy continues to reinvent itself at a rapid pace. This process is driving changes in the very nature and organization of work that will require new skills but also a new definition of what it means to be ready to succeed in this dynamic environment. Education has a significant impact on economic opportunity and financial well-being for most people. Being career ready is not the same as having a vocational skill or getting a job right out of high school. Schools need to move beyond job training models that have been in place for the past hundred years. The traditional academic core is also being challenged to change and evolve to better meet the needs of all students, not just those going to the most competitive colleges and universities.

Chapter 2 examines the similarities and differences between college readiness and career readiness. The Common Core State Standards say they address both. Some studies suggest that college readiness and career readiness are one and the same, but others point to a more complicated relationship. Understanding student interests is one of the key factors in determining what readiness means for each student. Profiles that connect student performance to student aspirations offer a strategy for thinking about how college ready and career ready individual students are. Readiness exists along a continuum from work ready to life ready, and chapter 2 presents a model for considering various levels of readiness. Chapter 2 concludes with a comprehensive definition of college and career readiness and suggests how this definition can be used to enable more students to focus their high school studies and continue beyond to the postsecondary level.

Understanding student interests is one of the key factors in determining what readiness means for each student.

Chapter 3 begins with an overview of the four keys to college and career readiness. The four keys offer a larger, more comprehensive framework within which the Common Core’s role in helping students become college and career ready can be better understood. The chapter then presents an in-depth description of the first two, key cognitive strategies and key content knowledge, and explores the role they play in helping students master the Common Core State Standards. Key cognitive strategies are the ways in which students approach complex problems or challenging tasks. They are how students process information to gain greater meaning and value from it. They are critical to postsecondary readiness and, increasingly, to success in the workplace. Key content knowledge explores the importance of the mind-set students bring to learning and the ways in which they explain their successes and failures. Rather than presenting additional content, this key assumes that the Common Core is a useful framework for specifying what students need to know.

Chapter 4 continues the exposition of the four keys by introducing the second two factors, key learning skills and techniques and key transition knowledge and skills. The first explains all the important ways of learning students must master to be college and career ready. The second outlines all the privileged knowledge that some groups of people have and use to help their students go to college but that most students lack. These two keys are complex and multidimensional. The key learning skills and techniques reintroduce the notion of student ownership of learning and explore it in more depth in a section devoted to this topic and to all of the subskills that contribute to student ownership. The key techniques are what students need to know how to do as learners if they are to become college and career ready and if they are to do well with the Common Core State Standards—skills such as note taking, time management, and studying. The second half of the chapter is devoted to the key transition knowledge and skills, and it organizes them into five categories: contextual, procedural, financial, cultural, and personal. These include making the right college choice, applying, financing a postsecondary education, coping with the differences between high school and college, and managing the personal identity issues associated with becoming an independent learner and person.

Chapter 5 introduces the notion of deeper learning. It begins by explaining the knowledge complexity progression continuum, a model of how students use and express the knowledge they are learning. Beginning with declarative knowledge, where students simply state what they know, the continuum proceeds through procedural knowledge, where students apply knowledge in a step-by-step fashion; conditional knowledge, which necessitates students’ making decisions about when and where to use specific knowledge and skills; to conceptual knowledge, which is predicated on a deeper understanding of the organization of a subject area. Next, the chapter explores the history and background of deeper learning and offers a definition and rationale for why it is needed now. Four models of deeper learning developed by leading groups in this area describe the similarities and differences in the way each conceives of deeper learning. The chapter offers a definition, explanation, and examples of what it means to teach for deeper learning and identifies specific standards from among the Common Core State Standards that require deeper learning.

Chapter 6 shifts to considering how deeper learning takes place at the classroom level. The deeper learning instructional approach considers learning progressions across grade levels (vertical progressions) and across courses of varying cognitive challenge level at a grade level (horizontal progression). Key knowledge and skills are learned and then repeated and applied in a variety of settings over time to maximize comprehension and recall. Key cognitive strategies need to be practiced at each grade level and across subject areas, leading to the development of the strategic thinking skills necessary in most postsecondary settings and increasingly in the workplace. The challenges of getting deeper learning to take root in classrooms include ensuring that teachers understand how to teach subject matter for deeper learning, developing and implementing the wider range of instructional strategies necessary to support deeper learning, creating a culture in the school that supports deeper learning, and knowing how to assess it. The chapter presents and discusses an example of a scoring guide that illustrates how to do so, and then concludes with a discussion of the relationship between and among deeper learning, the Common Core State Standards, and college and career readiness.

Chapter 7 offers a closer look at the Common Core State Standards in order to get a deeper understanding of where they came from, how they were developed, and how they are different from previous sets of content standards in math and English language arts. While the chapter explores the rationale for and organization of the standards, it pays particular attention to the college- and career-ready level of the Common Core. The structure and organization of the Common Core State Standards are analyzed to ensure that readers truly understand how these standards seek to represent expectations for student learning. The chapter continues with a consideration of what the Common Core State Standards do not do. While the standards do address many key priority areas, they do not contain everything needed for college and career readiness.

Chapter 8 considers the current state of evidence on how well the Common Core State Standards represent the knowledge and skills for college and career readiness. The chapter summarizes research connecting the Common Core State Standards to college and career readiness to establish the validity of the standards as measures of and markers for college and career readiness. Beyond the research lies a series of issues associated with their implementation, including who is responsible to teach them, how current standards and practices should be mapped onto the standards, the balance of informational texts versus literature, the challenge of more writing that the standards pose, the importance of research skills, the role of the speaking and listening standards, the integration of mathematics skills into other subject areas, and the role elementary school teachers can play.

The consortia assessments, PARCC and Smarter Balanced, are the focus of chapter 9, which describes how these assessments differ from one another and the strengths and potential limitations of each. Some of the key issues of which educators should be aware include the level of cognitive challenge to which the assessments will be pitched, the types of items that will be used and how these may be different from what students are used to seeing, the mix between formative and summative components and how these relate to each other, and the types of score reports each test will produce for students and for schools. States need to set performance levels properly so that they are not discouraging students from pursuing postsecondary education. This is a choice between a conjunctive approach, where students are expected to meet all standards at the same level, and a compensatory approach, where higher performance on some standards can compensate to a degree for lower performance on others. Teachers need to know how best to use the formative and interim assessment resources available to them.

Chapter 10 contrasts the idea of a dynamic system of assessments with conventional notions of a static assessment system. Although the consortia assessments may be an important step beyond current state tests, they cannot capture all the information that is necessary or useful to determine college and career readiness completely, nor can they sufficiently inform students on where they stand at any given moment in relation to this large and complex goal. What is needed is a variety of types of assessments that can be arrayed along a continuum that extends from short items that are easy and inexpensive to administer and measure basic and discrete knowledge and skills, to tasks that are completed in class and capture information on more complex uses of acquired knowledge but take more time and are potentially more costly to score, to tasks that are really more like projects and may extend over most of an academic term. This continuum is likely to yield greater insight into knowledge acquired and create an opportunity to apply that knowledge in ways that demonstrate in greater depth readiness for college and careers. The ultimate result of a system of assessments is more like a profile of student knowledge, skills, attitudes, and strategies rather than a single score. A profile approach can combine scores from Common Core assessments, grade point average, college admissions tests, and other evidence such as student papers and projects, teacher and student reports on student behavior, and other accomplishments. Such a profile can help students know better what they need to do next because the profile can be linked to the aspirations and futures these students are pursuing. Profiles of this nature hold the key to revolutionizing teaching and learning, particularly when tied to competency-based education.

Chapter 11 offers a glimpse into what may lie ahead for the Common Core State Standards and for college and career readiness, which is likely to look different in the future. Increasing amounts and types of data will transform what is known about readiness, and competency models of learning and assessment will allow more valid and complex demonstrations of readiness. Online learning will offer opportunities and pose challenges to demonstrating competency and will advantage learners who know how to take ownership of their learning. Students will be earning more college credit in high school, which will continue to blur the line between high school and college. The future of the Common Core State Standards and consortia assessments is unclear at present. The amount of support they are able to garner for their implementation and institutionalization over the next few years will be critical and may come from an unlikely combination of people and organizations. Many issues remain unresolved regarding where the Common Core State Standards will reside and how and when the standards will first be revised. A similar but more complex set of issues exists for the consortia assessments as well. Thoughts on these are tendered without necessarily offering complete solutions.

The conclusion of the book lays out some of the challenges of raising standards for all students and setting postsecondary readiness as the goal for more students. The changing demographics of the US student population will become an increasingly significant factor that schools will need to address. This phenomenon will also heighten the need to get more students college and career ready and the challenge in doing so. The book concludes with a reminder of the importance of quality instruction that engages students and how the reforms of the Common Core State Standards can help reinvigorate teaching and teachers.

The appendix outlines a readiness system that schools can use to improve alignment with college and career readiness. Organized into three groupings, the system can help educators collect more and better information about readiness, align instruction to focus on key readiness factors, and improve understanding and communication between secondary and postsecondary faculty. Most of these will already have been referenced in the body of the text and are included here for easy access. More information is available on the website that accompanies the book, found at www.collegecareerready.org.

Using This Book to Support Implementation of the Common Core State Standards

The measure of success for this book is the degree to which readers will be able to act as a result of what they have read. The book suggests actions that educators can take individually in the classroom, collectively at the school level, and systemically at the district, state, and national levels to implement the Common Core State Standards and use the consortia assessments in ways that lead to more students ready for college and careers. Although this is the stated goal of the Common Core State Standards, it will be very easy for schools to become distracted from this goal and end up focused on test scores and whatever accountability measures that states or the federal government enact. The book is designed to be a reminder that there is more to it than just doing well on tests of the Common Core State Standards. College and career readiness is complex and multifaceted and will require schools to go well beyond the Common Core State Standards and consortia assessments to achieve this goal for most students. This book is designed to help educators to achieve this larger goal and to use the Common Core State Standards as an important means to do so.

The book is designed to be a reminder that there is more to it than just doing well on tests of the Common Core State Standards.

Design of the Book

This book is written with elementary and secondary school practitioners in mind, although much of what is covered will be of interest as well to those who shape, make, implement, and critique educational policy, along with a range of postsecondary faculty and administrators. The emphasis is on readability and usability. For that reason, I have chosen not to use in-text citations or footnotes. I will provide on the accompanying website fuller information about research and evidence that is referenced in the book. For the most part, the intent is not for this book to be a review of the literature but to draw on well-established findings, including research my colleagues and I have conducted on this subject over the past fifteen years, along with evidence from practice in order to frame a specific set of issues around college and career readiness and the Common Core State Standards.

Many of the observations I make and conclusions I offer have far-reaching implications for schooling. It is not therefore possible to present and explore recommendations or offer detailed specifications for every aspect of practice that might be affected or in need of change. Some illustrations and examples are included within the body of the text.

I have also avoided listing exemplary school sites, although I did so in my previous book. I do this now for a variety of reasons. The phenomena of Common Core implementation and of college and career readiness are multidimensional and require attention to a wide range of learning variables and numerous educational practices and programs. Few schools have yet reached the point where they are addressing all of these successfully, and it can be misleading to label a school as being a model for achieving college and career readiness for its students when it is doing only some of what is necessary, and doing it for only some of its students. Visitors to such schools often leave with the observation that the school has as many problems as their own school, and they can miss some of the key differences for which lessons can be learned. Just as often, a school that is listed in a book as exemplary sees a change in leadership at the building or district level and soon no longer demonstrates the exemplary characteristics for which it received accolades even very recently. And while it is useful to see an interesting or innovative program in action, this is not a substitute for a deeper understanding of the full set of issues that must be addressed to make the changes necessary for the Common Core State Standards to have a transformative effect in a school. For these reasons and others, I do not identify individual schools or programs. I will, however, list information about exemplary sites and programs on the website while repeating the caveats I note here and encouraging educators to use exemplary sites as resources, not solutions.

I have included at the conclusion of each chapter a section entitled Awareness and Action Steps. These are largely suggested activities and useful resources to help deepen understanding of the issues laid out in this book. They are not intended to substitute for a detailed plan to improve college and career readiness or the Common Core. Some schools may wish to begin with awareness activities before plunging into action steps; others may be ready to move forward to improve college and career readiness by taking action now.

These awareness and action steps are included without a specific recommended sequence of use based on the principle, validated by the research on innovation implementation, that every change occurs within the unique context of a school, and even a classroom, and that some actions will make more sense in some schools than in others. Getting to action often requires passing through awareness, and I include many strategies for thoughtful reflection, understanding, and planning, all necessary prerequisites to action. The suggestions and resources are designed to help schools undertake the manifold actions necessary to help more students become ready for college and careers in the context of the Common Core State Standards and their attendant assessments.

Similarly, when it comes to specific resources for implementing the Common Core State Standards, numerous organizations and vendors have moved to fill the breach. Information on these resources changes rapidly. Therefore, I will offer regularly updated links to key sites on the website that accompanies this book. I am also confident that diligent readers will likely already have begun the process of seeking resources relevant to local efforts to implement the standards and that what I offer here will, I hope, be supplemental.

I do offer some suggestions about specific tools and techniques in the appendix, but I consider these to be illustrative examples more than definitive solutions. I include these materials to demonstrate how a more systems-type approach to college and career readiness in the context of the Common Core State Standards will be more effective than simply adopting new curriculum materials and conducting training on how to implement the standards.

What the Book Is Not About

Although I want this book to inform action at all levels of the educational system, and I include many examples and illustrations throughout