Colleges and the Common Core — InsideHigherEd.com
MINNEAPOLIS — For years, educators and policy makers have been talking about the need to better align K-12 and higher education, so that students coming out of high school have the skills and knowledge they need to do college-level work (and, not unimportantly, to reduce the need for remediation once students are in college).
The establishment of common core standards for high school graduates is of course first and foremost a matter of concern for elementary and secondary school officials, and the creation of the standards is barely on the radar screen of many college administrators and professors. And yet it is clear that the standards will be truly meaningful and useful only if they are fully embraced by higher education.
Only if colleges align their own admissions and placement policies with the common core standards (and agree to use the common assessments that are likely to be developed to gauge mastery of the standards) will high school students and their schools know what to shoot for, Lingenfelter and Wilhoit said. And only if colleges of education begin to reframe their curriculums and practices for training teachers and school administrators and their professional development programs for working teachers in response to the standards will schools have the future work force to carry out the standards.