New Critiques Urge Changes in Common Standards

A draft of grade-by-grade common standards is undergoing significant revisions in response to feedback that the outline of what students should master is confusing and insufficiently user-friendly.

Writing groups convened by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association are at work on what they say will be a leaner, better-organized, and easier-to-understand version than the 200-plus-page set that has been circulating among governors, scholars, education groups, teams of state education officials, and others for review in recent weeks. The first public draft of the standards, which was originally intended for a December release but was postponed until January, is now expected by mid-February.

“Teachers, experts, and states have all said to us, ‘Please pay attention to design so that it’s clear to the end-user what the standards are.’ So we’re trying to both get the standards right and prepare a document that teachers around the country are going to find useful,” said Dane Linn, the director of the education division of the NGA’s...