Educators Need Training to Understand Common Standards, Experts Warn

Susan Nolan, center, an English teacher at Mountain Ridge High School, in Frostburg, Md., takes part in a workshop on June 28 aimed at teaching principals and teachers how to implement "common standards" recently adopted by the state. Flanking Nolan are fellow English language arts teachers Matt Marsh, left, and JoAnne Nane, from Washington County Technical High School.

—Matt Roth for Education Week

By Catherine Gewertz

White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

States should take advantage of the ways in which new common standards are different from the state standards already in place, leveraging them to provide better learning for students and a path to better practice for teachers, experts urged recently.

Delegations of top curriculum leaders and board of education members from 13 states gathered here last month to brainstorm about implementing the common-core standards, which have been adopted by all but four states, and to hear advice from experts. The meeting was one in a series of regional convenings organized by the National Association of State Boards of Education .

States are grappling with how to turn the new learning goals into good curricula, train tens of thousands of aspiring and in-service teachers to use them, and transition their accountability...