Secondary Transition and Common Core State Standards: Tools You Can Use

I recently attended the South Carolina Council for Exceptional Children’s state conference and learned a lot of great things. Over the next few days, I hope to share with you some of the information that I learned.

This session was presented by Jennifer Cease-Cook from the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center

1. Common Core Standards have been adopted by 45 states and Washington DC.

2. New Territory: large scale formative assessment, “through course assessments,” computer based/adapted assessments, emerging technology available, matching testing accommodations to classroom accommodations, single set of testing policies within a consortium.

3. Are college ready and career ready the same: look at academic skills, test proficiency, job-specific/technical skills, business and industry leaders focus on employability skills (soft skills) – problem solving, communication, teamwork, technology, adaptability, increased national focus on Career Pathways, industry certification, alternative pathways.

4. College readiness: key cognitive strategies, academic knowledge and skills, academic behaviors, contextual skills and awareness.

5. Career Readiness: work based learning experiences, self determination

6. Standards-based education does not equal special education

7. What does this mean for students with disabilities? – increased academic rigor, increased focus on college preparedness in education, increased attention that multiple methods of assessment and instruction critical, increased focus on using date for instructional and program decisions increased recognition of importance of alternative pathways.

8. Designing instruction – address real life topics, make curricular content more meaningful and relevant.

Additional resources:

www.corestandards.org – resources and current info on the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards

http://commoncore.org/ - a curriculum mapping project for resources regarding instruction and curriculum design associated with the Core Standards

www.nsttac.org – 101 documents on secondary special ed issues including college and career readiness

www.ideapartnership.org

www.cast.org

www.careertech.org

www.p21.org

www.ncwd-youth.org

www.parcconline.org

www.k12.wa.us/smarter

My big takeaway from this session was that we need to make education relevant and meaningful to our students. There were great examples for doing this in this session.

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