The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) offer a unique opportunity to better align academics and Career and Technical Education (CTE) by rethinking the role of literacy and mathematics.

However, most states report they have no CTE representation on their CCSS implementation teams, but not for a lack of interest from CTE instructors. 

“All too often the focus on ‘college readiness’ and ‘career readiness’ remains in two distinct silos,” write Hans Meeder and Thom Suddreth for a report released today from Achieve. “There is little question that reading, writing, communications and mathematical reasoning are all core skills for success in postsecondary education, in the workplace, and for citizenship.”

One way CTE instructors at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels can be more involved in CCSS implementation is by joining their state’s Education Leader Cadre.

PARCC states are in the process of selecting K-16 educators to be part of an Education Leader Cadre (ELC) for their state. These ELC members will share best practices and quality resources for CCSS implementation and then return to their states to train others.

“With the cadre's leadership, each state will be able to expand the number of educators who are involved in their implementation efforts,” explains PARCC. “Please contact the K-12 lead in your state to find out how you can be involved.”

Write these three words down: Education Leader Cadre (ELC). You'll be hearing this term a lot from us in the near future due to an exciting new opportunity that we've received to provide training to education leaders across the country. We'll have a press release for you very soon with all of the details. In the meantime, read through the following list. Do any of these phrases resonate with you?

• Communities of practice

• Prepared to implement

• Engaged in development process

• Empowered to serve as leaders

• Creative partnerships 

• Advocate

• Ambassadors

• Ownership

• Commitment

• Shift expectations for what is possible for student learning

• Facilitating discussions

• Adaptable materials for Common Core State Standards-oriented professional development 

• Develop common understandings

• Pool of resources

• Equipping teachers with tools to effectively communicate with others

• Technology-embedded instructional tools

• Performance-based assessment and learning

• Multi-state consortia

• Peer-to-peer training

• Strategic planning and collective problem solving

• Collaborative efforts to develop highest priority instructional and formative tools

• Multi-state support to engage postsecondary community

LTF Training in Springdale, Arkansas (Summer 2011)

Earlier this month, I blogged about Louisiana's plans to provide state funding for Laying the Foundation Training as part of the state’s new three-initiative educational focus. Now, Arkansas has announced its decision to fund LTF Train ing for its state’s teachers as well.

A recently approved memo from the Arkansas Department of Education includes the following message:

“After consulting with The College Board, The Office of Gifted and Talented & Advanced Placement will allow a one-year exemption for Pre-Advanced Placement for teachers who attend Laying the Foundation Training during the summer of 2012 to satisfy the requirement of Section 4.03 of the Arkansas Department of Education Rules for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Diploma Incentive Program, which requires teachers of a Pre-AP course attend a College Board sponsored or endorsed training institute or workshop in the teacher’s content area no less than once every five (5) years.”

Ten trainings in Arkansas have been scheduled for this summer:

• June 12-15, Harrison Junior High School
• June 12-15, Prairie Grove High School
• June 19-22, Russellville High School
• June 25-28, NAESC (Melbourne)
• June 26-29, Arkadelphia High School
• June 26-29, Russellville High School
• July 17-20, Monticello Middle School
• July 30-Aug. 2, Greenbrier High School
• July 30-Aug. 2, Magnolia High School
• Aug. 8-9, Phillips Community College (Helena)

To register for a 2012 LTF Summer Institute, visit our Training Schedule page to view trainings by date.

It's easy to get overwhelmed when wading through the plethora of online STEM resources available to educators. Here's a great list, compiled by our team at Laying the Foundation, to get you started:

LTF OPEN RESOURCES

LTF YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/LayingTheFoundation?feature=g-all-u

LTF Open Lessons
http://www.ltftraining.org/TrainingPrograms/OpenLessons.aspx

LTF PARTNERS

PhET Interactive Simulations
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html

TI
http://education.ti.com/calculators/products/US/home/
http://education.ti.com/calculators/timathnspired/US/Activities/Subject?sa=1008

WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR MATHEMATICS

MIT Blossoms (Math and Science Video Lessons)
http://blossoms.mit.edu/

National Curve Bank
http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/home/home.htm

National Repository of Online Courses
http://www.montereyinstitute.org/nroc/nrocdemos.html

NCTM Illuminations
http://illuminations.nctm.org/WebLinks.aspx

SAS Curriculum Pathways
http://www.sascurriculumpathways.com/portal/#/home

Power Up (AAAS Science NetLinks—elementary students)
http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/power-up/

Invention at Play (for elementary students)
http://www.inventionatplay.org/playhouse_tinker.html

MATH Applets

Visual Calculus
http://archives.math.utk.edu/visual.calculus/0/index.html

Mathematics Education Applets
http://www.math.hope.edu/swanson/methods/applets.html

Mathlets for Students and Instructors
http://www.flashandmath.com/mathlets/index.html

WolframApha demos
http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/Math.html

Football Physics
http://footballphysics.utk.edu/

Sampling Reese’s Pieces
http://www.rossmanchance.com/applets/Reeses3/ReesesPieces.html

The logic of significance tests
http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v16n3/PValueApplet.html#t1

This applet lets you estimate the regression line and to guess the value of Pearson's correlation
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/reg_by_eye/index.html

This applet the relationship between the mean and the median and illustrates several aspects of these measures of central tendency
http://onlinestatbook.com/stat_sim/descriptive/index.html

WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR SCIENCE

Molecular Workbench – Visual Interactive Simulations for Teaching and Learning Science http://mw.concord.org/modeler/index.html

NSF sponsored - Molecular Level Laboratory Experiments (MoLE) http://genchem1.chem.okstate.edu/CCLI/Startup.html

General Chemistry Interactive Simulation
http://employees.oneonta.edu/viningwj/sims/

Animated Tutorials and Models
http://treefrog.fullerton.edu/chem/at.html

National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
http://nsdl.org/

NASA Home
http://www.nasa.gov/

comPADRE – Physics and Astronomy Education Communities
http://www.compadre.org/
http://www.compadre.org/osp/search/search.cfm?gs=223&SS=234&qc=Compiled%20Simulation&b=1

HippoCampus (teaching physics)
http://www.hippocampus.org/Physics

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Virtual Bacterial ID Lab http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs/bacterial_id/index.html

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Virtual Transgenic Fly Lab http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs/transgenic_fly/index.html

RSC Advancing the Chemical Sciences – Learn Chemistry
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry

Achieve released the first draft of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for public review Friday afternoon. As we predicted last week, the standards are far more rigorous than what most states are currently implementing. Given that the majority of eighth grade students did not demonstrate proficiency on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam, raising the rigor of science standards will require a significant amount of work to implement.

Just as our math and English teams did with the Common Core State Standards, the LTF science team is closely reviewing this first draft. So far they have confirmed our initial hunch. The NGSS support what LTF is all about -- letting students experience rigorous, relevant science and make connections within the bigger picture. 

The standards emphasize how science concepts connect vertically between grade levels but also how seven crosscutting concepts thread through all the science domains. 

When the NGSS are finalized later this year, we anticipate that the tools we have already developed will give teachers classroom-ready tools and strategies for incorporating NGSS into their school’s curriculum. LTF science training itself is a hands-on, minds-on experience that engages teachers to find and examine direct, meaningful, and relevant connections, and the NGSS seek the same experiences for students.