Common Core State Standards

Common Core State Standards and Gifted Learners Education standards generally describe what should be known by students and their capability in every subject in every grade. Various states use state Board of Education to decide what standards should be followed by the entire students starting the kindergarten to high school. From 2010, most of the states have adopted similar standards for Mathematics and English. These came to be known Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

When students have the same standards they get the opportunity to receive good education, regardless of changing schools or relocating to a different state. Educational experts, teachers, and parents took the responsibility of designing the standards in order to prepare students for success when they are in college as well as the workplace. These state's Department of Education assists schools to ensure that the entire students meets the standards.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been based on K-12 content standards, and was developed in English Language Arts and Mathematics, illustrating the required emphasis on the curriculum that can make students develop the skills and concepts needed in this 21st century. CCSS, which have been adopted by about 45 states, have been organized into key content strands and articulated across the entire schooling periods and majorly replace the states' content standards.

This initiative tends to be based on states and is always coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA). Majorly intended to prepare K-12 students for college and the workplace, teachers, administrators, and content experts take part in the process of designing.

The new CCSS tend to be evidence-based, and aligned with expectations for success in college and the workplace, as well as mainly informed by the successes and failures that have been realized from the current standards and international competition demands, (Kathleen Porter-Magee, 2013). This new standards affirms depth, rigor, coherence, and clarity, using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Frameworks as the basis in terms of Reading and Writing and the Mathematical trends in International and Science Study (TIMMS) report.

They have been providing a framework for curriculum development work, although some of the states are by now also engaged in the process. Among the states include Minnesota, Maine, Illinois, and Indiana have been working within and across local districts in order to design relevant curriculum and to align the new standards with current practice. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) adoption has a significant implication for teachers.

Among the needs of CCSS is for general education teachers to always recognize and attend to students learning differences, and include the detailed content and knowledge application using higher-order thinking skills. Connection of CCSS to the field of gifted education has been assumed in its implementation. Despite of its perceived rigorous nature compared to the rest of standards, they have somehow failed to meet the specific needs of gifted learners, and if such goes for long, could limit learning, (Catherine Gewertz, 2013).

One of the solutions is for the gifted educators to create a full range of supports for high-ability learners through differentiated assessment, instruction, and assessments. Moreover, it is more important for gifted teachers, facilitators, and education coordinators to reaffirm and advocate for the need for specialized services for academically advanced as well as gifted students.

Apart from gifted education professionals providing direct student services, they also play a very significant role in translating CCSS to the classroom through collaborating with the rest of the teachers in serving as a valuable resource for implementation of differentiated curriculum and assessment. As gifted education professionals take their role in assisting the gifted students, their role should be more expanded and acts as mentors/peer coaches in providing sustained, developed job-embedded professional to school personnel in order to ease implementation issues.

Also, using the research base done by gifted education in contributing to the professional development that school administrators may be in need of in supporting complex curriculum and deep student learning. Since the gifted student are able to learn quickly compared to other learners, CCSS has provide room for a more rapid instructional pace to make them achieve a depth or breath of understanding required in satisfying a big appetite for knowing.

Usually a greater degree of difficulty is characterized by more skills-more refined skill that is applied at a higher plane of sophistication. Gifted students should be exposed to these in their talent areas. Therefore CCSS has included in the content, products and processes more complex, more open-ended, more abstract, more multifaceted compared to the other students lessons.

How does CCSS differ from other state/content standards? Due to the imposed cost of the program, in addition to fears of setting a national education standards that may result to the first move of dictating curriculum, has made Common Core or CCSS to become an increasingly polarizing issue, (Greg Toppo, 2012). Some of other states have decided to go for assessment component of Common Core, however, they presumably mandated district to comply with curriculum that prepares students for the standards.

Others have renamed the program with their states looking forward to avoid the polarizing title as they implement the program; an example is Arizona, (The Hechinger Report, 2014). Some researches have pointed out that Common Core math standards tend to be more correlated with those of high-performing countries. These countries' Common Core has fewer topics that student are to master in a year. There is also a match in terms of the grade-level for some topics.

Therefore states that embraced Common Core standards use a more convenient different standards from others states; many viewing as better compared to the existed one, (Edward Frenkel, 2013). The Common core standards in these states put greater cognitive demands on students, particularly English language arts, for instance, the Common Core have put more emphasis on analysis of as compared to the standards in other states. Another research found that Common Core focuses more on basic algebra as compared to other states, and it kind of emphasizes more advanced algebra.

There is a large amount of variation from these states, putting it hard to generalize them. The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts have been designed in manner that ensure all the students understands fully what they are reading, and they are able to effectively talk and write about it. Such are always the fundamental reading comprehension skills that are required in succeeding throughout elementary, middle and high school, college and beyond; cutting across all career.