This fall, as they head back to school, many students face new, higher academic standards for the first time, in the form of the Common Core State Standards or similar ones. While these standards have promise to raise academic achievement, they also pose difficult challenges. If not addressed, these challenges, which will be particularly pronounced in school districts that serve students in areas of concentrated poverty, could cause income- and race-based achievement gaps to grow, rather than narrowing them, as proponents of the Standards hope.
Much of the attention to Common Core has centered around which presidential candidates will defend the standards, and which states will drop them, the aligned assessments, or both. Much more important, however, is how schools meet the challenges associated with their implementation. States and districts must thus do all they can to prepare students for the new standards ahead of time, and to continue supporting students throughout the school year. There are several strategies that schools and communities can take to smooth this transition:
Home visits can boost teachers' effectiveness. Starting the year with a visit to each student's home, as some schools already do, can smooth the transition to the Common Core in several ways. These visits help parents and teachers get to know each other on comfortable ground, and they give teachers an understanding of the environment their students come to class from each morning, and where they will eat, play, sleep, and do their homework. This will help teachers when students act out in class or fail to turn in assignments - knowing about underlying circumstances means teachers know what each student needs to keep from falling behind, from afterschool classroom space for homework to a visit from a social worker.
Home visits are also a chance to ask about health needs, confirm that required vaccinations are up-to-date (and provide referrals if they are not), and see if students have all their school supplies. Helping make sure these needs are met removes an early barrier to success.
Adding time to get everyone up to speed early reduces future problems, and gaps. Extensive research documents the growth in achievement gaps over the summer, when low-income students lose ground in reading and math, while their wealthy peers continue to gain. Given the rigorous nature of the new standards, spending time in getting students up to speed - both through in-class reviews and extra work at home that can be tailored to individual student needs - is an investment at the start of the year that will continue to pay off.
Ensuring strong teacher-parent/school-home communication strengthens learning. Many parents do not understand what the standards are, or how their implementation will play out in their children's schools. Schools can hold regular briefings on the content and how it is being taught throughout the year. This not only helps parents reinforce what their children learn, it provides opportunities to solicit input that can improve implementation and strengthens parent-school ties, which can have broader benefits.
Ensuring strong communication also includes practices like informing parents immediately when students have not arrived at school; reducing absences shrinks gaps.
Leveraging school and community resources takes pressure off teachers. Particularly in middle and high schools, the gap between where students are and what's expected of them is likely to be especially large. Schools should be supported through additional teachers' aides and other school staff, and for students who are furthest behind, one-on-one tutoring.
Unfortunately, schools serving disadvantaged students also tend to have the fewest resources to provide this extra help. Community volunteers, who can be assembled by principals and briefed by teachers, can bridge that gap by helping with homework and tutoring. The school can also collaborate with libraries to arrange for bookmobiles and ask local businesses to provide prizes for students with excellent attendance.
Fully realizing the promise of the Common Core will require major new investments in early childhood education, so that all children arrive at kindergarten ready to reach for these higher benchmarks. It will require high-quality training, induction, and support programs for teachers, so they can effectively use the more challenging material. Communities will need to investigate enrichment opportunities after school and over the summer, to avert summer learning loss. And we will need wrap-around health, nutrition, and mental health supports for disadvantaged students, so that they can focus fully on learning, rather than being held back by poverty-related barriers to success.
We also need a new set of metrics that capture both inputs and a broad range of outcomes in order to use scores from the Common-Core aligned assessments to effect real improvement for students and schools. Indeed, unless we make these investments, Common Core will have only limited potential to narrow stubborn achievement gaps. So we must take the first steps now to help this year's students do the best they can, while continuing to strive for an equitable education system that enables all students to fulfill their potential.