I don’t know about you, but I’ve still got a student living under my roof, so I see flashcards in use from time to time at my kitchen table. (Yes, even in this tech-heavy age, even at the high school level, some of her teachers suggest that students memorize certain things by making flashcards.)
Those of you following the common standards now have your own set of flashcards to use. (You don’t have to make these yourselves. The Alliance for Excellent Education already did that for you.)
These flashcards are electronic. You can go online and get the lay of the land in each state relative to the common standards. They include stuff like when a state last revised its standards, whether it’s on board with the common-standards movement, what portion of its students graduate from college in four years, and what its teachers think the impact of adopting the common standards might be.
They also draw on the alliance’s earlier work calculating the cost of a poor or incomplete high school education; the flashcards report what each state would save by graduating every student ready for college or career.
Make no mistake: These flashcards don’t purport to be briefs on the pros and cons for each state in adopting common standards and assessments. They’re unabashed statements of support for adoption of both. The alliance is one of the inner core of organizations that have supported this initiative from the get-go (and has Gates funding to help move it along).