August 1, 2012
Since its inception, The Hunt Institute has facilitated a critical dialogue about and helped to broaden understanding of the most pressing issues in education – the state of student achievement in this country, the policies and programs needed to improve achievement and the need for strong political leadership to bring about change. Given that history, this blog is a natural extension of the Institute’s work and I hope that it will significantly expand attention and action to improve public education. I welcome in particular increased attention to the implementation of Common Core State Standards through this medium. The adoption of the standards by 46 states plus the District of Columbia has been strongly supported by both of our organizations and the need remains great to draw attention to good work in this area, anticipate challenges to implementation and marshal the support necessary for teachers and students to succeed in this new environment.
In that regard, the Alliance hosted yesterday in partnership with Learning Forward a webinar on “Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students.” The webinar focused on an initiative by Learning Forward, formerly known as the National Staff Development Council, in collaboration with the Kentucky Department of Education to create a framework for a statewide, comprehensive professional learning system that supports deep implementation of the Common Core State Standards. The webinar focused on this work as well as work underway in New Hampshire, one of six states serving as a Critical Friend state to contribute to and learn from the transformation in Kentucky. It is exciting to see the level of interstate collaboration afforded by the Common Core State Standards and to hear about the strategies which are being developed to improve educator practice to correspond to the instructional shift implied in the standards. We look forward to engaging with others around these issues in the years ahead as the promise of the Common Core State Standards is realized in schools, districts and states across the nation.
Governor Bob Wise is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia.
