Dive Brief:
- Colleges and universities participated in the creation of the Common Core, serving on task forces to review the standards and certifying for their own states that they were high enough to prepare students for college, Politico reports.
- But as K-12 institutions have spent the last five years aligning their curricula and implementing new exams, colleges have continued to wait and see, according to the article.
- Teaching programs seem to be the only ones on campuses so far to incorporate the standards into lessons, and admissions offices aren’t saying yet whether Common Core credentials will mean anything for entering students.
Dive Insight:
The Common Core State Standards were approved by 45 states and the District of Columbia about five years ago, and most have stuck with them through implementation of new curricula and aligned testing. But even while the common standards have held up, common tests have not, and many states have written their own exams. Unlike the SAT and ACT, which are consistent across the nation, the Common Core still leaves colleges with little information about what a student brings to the table. The early promises of the Common Core for higher education were that students wouldn’t need as much remedial instruction because of strong high school teaching and learning. As Politico points out, however, it could be years, if ever, before that promise is fulfilled.