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, originally intended for a December release but 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...