The federal department of Education just announced the winners of its Race to the Top Assessment grant winners. Two organizations won - PARCC ($170 million) and SMARTER ($160 million). Both consortia contain multiple states and both are working on common assessments that align with the common core standards. What does all this mean? Well, the common core standards were signed onto by 48 states, including Wisconsin. That means Wisconsin will share its standards with 47 other states. This is very close to national standards. But standards are not curriculum so Wisconsin is still free to interpret those standards in many ways. For example, what books students read in a literacy class are still up to the state or local level. On the other hand, Wisconsin has already said it will adopt the SMARTER assessment in 2014/2015. What does that mean? It means the WKCE tests will be out and WI along with 30 other states will use the SMARTER tests to measure student progress in compliance with NCLB. These assessments will drive curriculum at the local level because the way NCLB is structured now, if your school does not do well enough there are consequences, and thus, teachers must align their curriculum with the assessments. It remains to be seen how restricting the assessments will be. Will they expect students to know specific facts? If so, teachers will need to adopt a more traditional approach to instruction that relies more on content coverage and less so on a more progressive or inquiry based pedagogy. These are significant changes in ed policy that will affect all teachers in some way.

See the Common Core standards that Wisconsin is adopting here.