Superintendent: Common Core will strengthen education and keep our students at the top

BOSTON – Boston Public Schools (BPS) Superintendent Carol R. Johnson applauds today’s unanimous vote by the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to adopt the Common Core education model. “The decision to adopt Common Core ensures that Massachusetts will remain a leader in education for years to come,” she said. “Many Massachusetts educators worked closely with the national team that developed the Common Core standards and were given the opportunity to provide meaningful feedback,” she said.

“Critics claim that we are watering down our high standards, but in reality, our high standards are suddenly spreading across the entire country. By adopting Common Core and strengthening it with improvements at the local level, we can ensure that children in Massachusetts continue to outperform the rest of the country and the world.”

Among the advantages of the Common Core Standards are:

•    Clearer signals to students about their readiness for success at the next grade, including readiness for college and careers;

•    A renewed focus on reading and writing across all grades and subjects, which will help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in math, science and history;

•    Flexibility to ensure teachers have the tools to engage students at all levels, including special needs students and those with limited command of the English language;

•    Incentives for states to work together to purchase textbooks, lesson plans and teacher training materials that are both high-quality and affordable. This would end the patchwork system that gives large states extra editorial influence in textbook publishers’ decisions;

•    Room for Massachusetts to enhance elements of Common Core with higher state standards. For example: Under Common Core, Massachusetts would be free to develop its own Pre-K curriculum, because Common Core does not include one. BPS already has a highly regarded and nationally-recognized Pre-K program. The state’s adoption of Common Core ensures that Massachusetts will continue to be a national model for early education.

Now that Common Core has been approved in Massachusetts, there is a great deal of work to be done. BPS is identifying areas in which our work already supports these standards, and our academic teams are already exploring resources and strategies to move to full implementation.

BPS is proceeding with a broad review of its entire curriculum to strengthen student learning at every level and at every school. This process is designed to align with Common Core and exceed existing Massachusetts standards whenever appropriate.“Already, more and more of our students are graduating ready for college and career success,” Dr. Johnson said. “Our dropout rate is the lowest it has been in decades, and our graduation rate is the highest it has been since we started measuring it. BPS students are outperforming our urban peers across the country in reading, and this fall we are making big investments in our most challenging schools.”

“We are using the tools that Massachusetts has given us to design individualized lesson plans around every single student in Boston,” Dr. Johnson said. “The Common Core standards will raise the bar for all of us.”