Massachusetts Department of

Elementary and Secondary Education

75 Pleasant Street, Malden, Massachusetts 02148-4906 Telephone: (781) 338-3000
TTY: N.E.T. Relay 1-800-439-
2370

Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D.

Commissioner

Memorandum

To: Members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

From: Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D., Commissioner
Date: July 16, 2010
Subject: Common Core Standards
_____________________________________________________________________________
_

The purpose of this memorandum is threefold: 1) to provide my recommendation that you adopt
the Common Core State Standards at the July 21 meeting contingent on strengthening specific
components consistent with the Massachusetts Working Draft Standards, 2) to provide you with
additional reports and analyses related to my recommendation, and 3) to describe next steps, if
the Board adopts the Common Core standards at its meeting this month.

As I promised in last week’s memorandum, enclosed are a second set of reports regarding the
Common Core standards. I have included the following reports as background for my
recommendation:

1. Reports from the educator panels in Massachusetts (Attachments 1a and 1b);

2. Comparative analyses of the standards by ESE staff (Attachment 2);
3. Achieve’s report comparing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics with the
mathematics standards of Massachusetts and California (Attachment 3);
4. A report from a public survey on the Common Core and the current Massachusetts standards
that was posted on the ESE website from June 6 through July 2 (Attachment 4).

Next week I also plan to provide you with the alignment report being produced for the
Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE) by WestEd and a report by the
Fordham Foundation comparing the Common Core standards with those of the states. At best,
these will be available a day or two prior to the meeting. One or both of these may not be
available until the day of the meeting.

Common Core Evaluation Reports

By the Massachusetts Educator Panels: These independent analyses are by the panelists of
Massachusetts educators I appointed in June to review and evaluate the Massachusetts Working
Drafts and the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts. The
panelists have expertise in PreK-12 and college/university education and deep knowledge of
their subject matter. Many of them also had helped write Massachusetts standards and had

1
served on MCAS development, standard-setting or MCAS-ALT portfolio review committees.

The panelists were asked to review and evaluate the documents in terms of their content, rigor,
clarity, vertical alignment, relevance to college and career readiness, and measurability. Each
panel had a chair or co-chairs who facilitated discussions and wrote the reports. I met with the
panels to review their findings on Wednesday, July 14.

The English language arts panel, with the exception of one member who wrote a minority report
that is attached to the panel report, concluded that the Common Core is a better choice of
standards than the Massachusetts draft. The mathematics panel concluded that both sets of
standards are excellent options for Massachusetts. Both panels identified areas of the Common
Core Standards that, if adopted, could be strengthened by adding standards that are contained in
the Massachusetts drafts, but not in the Common Core.

You will note in the reports that the relative strength of the two sets of standards is not always a
matter of which establishes a higher bar but which adds value in a particular way. For example,
a relative strength of the Common Core mathematics standards is the extended development of
approaches to arithmetic operations, place value, and proportional reasoning in grades K-8,
which panelists believe will provide strong guidance to elementary and middle school teachers in
preparing all students for more advanced mathematics courses. In English language arts,
panelists cited the grades 6-12 Common Core standards for literacy in history/social studies and
science and technical subjects as a valuable and innovative component. They judged that these
standards both affirmed the pivotal role that the teaching of literature plays in the English
language arts classroom and reinforced the teaching of reading and writing across disciplines.

Comparative Analyses of the Massachusetts Working Drafts and the Common Core
Standards: These analyses by Department staff assess the degree of match between the
Common Core Standards and the standards in the Massachusetts Working Drafts. Overall, the
report finds a high degree of consistency between the two sets of documents. In both
mathematics and English language arts, 90% of the Common Core standards were matched to
Massachusetts standards. The fact that the Common Core standards go into more depth in some
areas mostly accounts for the 10% of Common Core standards that could not be matched by
Massachusetts draft standards.

I want to acknowledge the support we received from the staff at Achieve, Inc. in conducting this
analysis. We used software (the Common Core Comparison Tool) and a process designed by
Achieve based on that organization’s many years of experience in conducting standards
alignment studies. Content experts at Achieve made preliminary matches between the standards
in the 2010 Massachusetts working drafts and the Common Core standards. These matches were
reviewed and either validated or (in many cases) modified by content experts at the
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Achieve’s Report Comparing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and
Leading State Standards: California and Massachusetts
The major findings of this report are that the three sets of standards cover similar bodies of
knowledge but the Common Core State Standards are more rigorous, coherent, and focused than
the California and the Massachusetts standards.

2
Report on the Results of the ESE Public Survey on the Common Core Standards: This report
summarizes the results to the online survey on the Common Core Standards designed by our
Offices of Strategic Planning and Research and Curriculum and Instruction, which was available
on our website from June 6 through July 2, 2010. Principals, superintendents, faculty of higher
education institutions, advisory councils, and professional organizations were notified about the
survey so they could provide comment. In all, 1329 potential reviewers visited the site, and 178
completed surveys. The majority of respondents rated both the Massachusetts and the Common
Core standards as “good” to “excellent” in terms of their content, rigor, clarity, vertical
alignment, relevance to college and career readiness, and measurability.

Advantages of the Common Core Standards

Having given substantial consideration to the various sources of input and analysis, I have
reached the following conclusions:

(a) The Common Core Standards are at least as strong, if not stronger, than the
Massachusetts draft standards.
(b) Adopting the Common Core Standards, contingent on some Massachusetts-specific
additions, is the course of action that will best serve our students, teachers, and schools.

This is not to say that the Massachusetts revised standards are not also very strong. Nonetheless,
my conclusion is that the advantages of adopting the Common Core Standards outweigh the
disadvantages.

First and foremost, because Massachusetts’s standards and assessments enjoy an outstanding
reputation nationally, the input of our content experts was largely reflected in the Common Core
Standards. That being said, there are strong elements of our revised drafts that are not contained
in the Common Core Standards. The adoption process for the Common Core anticipates that
states may want to augment the Standards to reflect features and elements of state standards that
enhance the Common Core, subject to an 85/15 ratio of Common Core to state-specific features.
The Massachusetts Working Draft Standards overlap with about 90 percent of the Common
Core, meaning that we will not exceed this 15 percent requirement. This means that we can
benefit from adoption while incorporating those Massachusetts features that are not included in
the Common Core Standards.

Among the strengths that distinguish the Common Core Standards are:

• The focus on reading and writing across the curriculum, which are skills that colleges
and employers value;
• The attention to speaking, listening, and vocabulary;
• The treatment of text complexity and approaches to matching with student reading
skills;
• The consideration of emerging, new literacies (digital and print sources) for research
and production and distribution of ideas and messages;
• The treatment of varying student needs and achievement levels in the delivery of the
mathematics curriculum;
• The accessibility of the mathematics standards to grades K-8 teachers; and
• The vertical articulation of the mathematics standards as enhanced by the habits of
mind that are critical to effective mathematics practice.

3
Because Massachusetts has had substantial impact on their development, the gap between the
Common Core Standards and our draft state standards is not large. Nonetheless, whether we
choose to adopt the Massachusetts draft standards or the Common Core Standards, we will be
introducing refinements to our standards that will require adjustments to the enacted curriculum
in many districts. For some schools and districts, the adjustment will validate practices that are
being implemented. Others may find the adjustment more challenging.

Adoption of the Common Core Standards portends a number of benefits. One benefit is the
potential for providing clearer signals to K-12 students about their readiness for success at the
next level, including readiness for college or careers. While there is much debate about the
precise requirements for college and career readiness, I believe that currently we do not do a
good job of providing students with clear signals about their readiness. The Common Core
Standards effort provides strong guidance on this front, including the identification of reading
and writing demands across the curriculum that are foundational to college and employer
expectations.

Other potential benefits derive from the interest of funders in supporting implementation of the
Common Core Standards. For example, the U.S. Department of Education is promoting and
investing in the implementation of the Common Core Standards through federal policy (e.g.,
Title I) and grants (e.g., Race to the Top, common assessments). Major education foundations
are also poised to invest in the development of curriculum resources, instructional tools, and
professional development to support implementation of the Common Core Standards.

With the development of the Common Core Standards, for the first time states have incentives to
pool development costs and programmatic resources rather than approach curricular and
instructional improvement as a state-by-state endeavor. The level of collaboration among states
and the interest in pooling development efforts is unprecedented in the more than 20 years that I
have been involved in state and federal level education policy.

Commissioner’s Recommendation and Next Steps

For the reasons identified above, I am recommending adoption of the Common Core Standards
contingent on strengthening specific components consistent with the strengths of the draft
Massachusetts standards and subject to the 15 percent augmentation allowance. If the Board
adopts the Common Core Standards, I will reconvene the Curriculum Framework review panels
for ELA and mathematics and charge them with identifying unique Massachusetts standards that
will strengthen the Common Core. I will present the recommendations of the panels to the State
Board early this fall and, subject to your approval, solicit public comment on the
recommendations. By late fall I expect to have a full package of Common Core Standards along
with Massachusetts-specific augmentation for your approval. Once approved, the resulting
documents will be the new Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for English Language Arts
and Mathematics.

When the Board has adopted the completed new curriculum frameworks, we will post them on
our website and publicize them statewide. From winter through summer 2011, we will conduct
regional statewide professional development sessions about the new standards at the District and
School Assistance Centers, Readiness Centers, and other venues. Department staff and our
assessment contractor, Measured Progress, will review item banks to evaluate the alignment of
existing items to the Common Core State Standards, and will align any newly developed items
for English language arts and mathematics MCAS tests to these standards. By the end of the
4
2011-2012 school year, we will expect all districts to have aligned their curricula to these new
standards.

Attachments:
Common Core Evaluation Reports by Massachusetts Educators
Side-by-Side Analyses of the Massachusetts Working Drafts and Common Core Standards
Achieve Report on Common Core, California, and Massachusetts mathematics standards
Report on the Results of the ESE Public Survey on the Common Core Standards