1/21/2011 6:30:00 AMCleveland schools to pilot new national standards in English, math

Photo: Lisa DeJong l Plain Dealer file

Cleveland students like these second-graders shown in a 2009 photo at the Warner Girls

Leadership Academy will help test new national standards in English and math.

Published: Friday, January 21, 2011, 6:00 AM

 By Thomas Ott, The Plain Dealer
 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland schools will be among the first in the United States to follow national standards for achievement in math and English.

Forty states have adopted "common core" standards that take effect in 2014. The initiative, led by governors and state education chiefs, is designed to provide more consistent and challenging benchmarks for student knowledge and skills, on par with expectations in other countries.

Cleveland, one of six test sites, will begin phasing in the standards in August with kindergarten through second grade.

A symposium on Cleveland's pilot project is expected to draw 300 educators to the Wyndham Cleveland Hotel on Saturday. The crowd will include principals and teachers from the district as well as representatives of the American Federation of Teachers and schools in St. Paul, Minn., and Seattle.

The district agreed to participate in trials that also will take place in St. Paul, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta and Albuquerque, N.M. Cleveland students struggle to meet Ohio's existing standards, but Chief Academic Officer Eric Gordon said the national benchmarks are "coming whether we're proactive or reactive."

"We chose to be as proactive as we can be," he said.

The Council of the Great City Schools, representing urban districts, and the American Federation of Teachers selected the pilot sites.

Michael Casserly, the council's executive director, said they wanted a mix of willing districts where management and labor have demonstrated they can work together. Cleveland was picked despite recent grumbling by its teachers union about a lack of collaboration.

TheBill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave Cleveland $500,000 to plan its pilot. The district and its teachers union jointly wrote the grant and developed training.

"It's exciting to be one of the leaders around this national work," said Mark Baumgartner, a union trustee. "It's the hot-button topic."

States that adopted the common-core standards received points in competition for money from the Obama administration's Race to the Top program. But Gordon disagrees with critics' charges of federal meddling.

"It's not a federal curriculum; it's a national curriculum," he said. "The federal government didn't tell us what we have to teach in schools."