Substitute teachers, new textbooks, the cost of time, and training teachers were identified as four Common Core cost culprits in an Education Week article by Peter DeWitt a couple of weeks ago. “Adopting Common Core is the easy part. It’s the heavy lifting that comes with it that causes difficulties within our districts,” he wrote. “Every new initiative, no matter how big or small, comes with unforeseen costs.”

DeWitt’s statement rings true. New initiatives are notorious for being costly, particularly in the implementation stage, which is where many school districts are right now. Although bringing the Common Core State Standards to your states, districts, schools, and classrooms isn’t without a price, the good news is that options for cutting costs—without the expense of cutting quality—are available.

Forego the New Textbooks and Curriculums
Who says that you have to replace your textbooks and curriculums? Teachers can teach in accordance with the standards (and students can rise up to meet them) with CCSS-aligned lessons that can be infused into any existing curriculum. LTF math, science, and English lessons clearly indicate the Common Core State Standards addressed in each lesson. Moreover, our lessons have been created by experienced classroom teachers, many of whom have received top honors in the profession. Sample lessons may be found here.

Train Teachers on Saturdays and during the Summer
Paying substitutes when teachers are at Common Core training and/or other professional development is a cost concern for district administrators. Fortunately, LTF Institutes are held on Saturdays and during the summer so that substitutes to cover absences due to teacher training aren’t necessary.

Choose a Nonprofit Organization to Provide Professional Development
Professional development by its very nature can be quite costly, but choosing a nonprofit to deliver the training and to provide the accompanying materials and resources translates into savings. Many times, grant awards cover the cost of teacher training by nonprofit organizations, and the primary requirements on behalf of the schools and teachers are providing space, setting aside time for the workshop or seminar, and/or filling the session. Even without a grant award, the cost of teacher training by a nonprofit is often considerably lower than the cost of teacher training by a for-profit competitor. Visit the LTF website for a list of upcoming LTF Institutes and corresponding prices.

As we’ve said before, bringing Common Core to your school means stretching all sorts of already limited resources from faculty to time to money. With LTF as your choice for professional development, however, these burdens can be, to some extent, mitigated. Email Jared Brueckner today for more information about how LTF can meet the needs of your district.

The LTF Team would love to help one of our great teachers take the National Stage!!

http://blog.ted.com/2011/11/09/do-you-have-a-lesson-to-teach-seeking-nominations-for-ted2012-the-classroom/

For the upcoming TED conference — TED2012: Full Spectrum — we’re looking for 10 of the world’s best teachers to take the TED stage during a special session we’re calling The Classroom. We’re accepting video nominations to help track these people down. You can nominate yourself or a remarkable educator we should know about — who doesn’t have to be a teacher in the traditional sense.

If you’re interested: Make a video or point us to an existing video, read the details on the website link above - you can nominate yourself or someone else

This is a phenomenal opportunity for an LTF trained teacher so let us know how we can help.

What is TED?  TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

At LTF we believe in opening the Common Core conversation to teachers, administrators, and other education professionals. We offer white papers, blog articles, and sample lessons related to the new standards, but sometimes the best resources for learning about and implementing the Common Core State Standards are simply your very own colleagues.

Online Forums

…That’s why we’ve created a special Common Core category on each of the LTF Online Forums. This is a new addition to our forums, so we invite you to jump in and get the discussion rolling on there. Teachers have been discussing Common Core on the forums for a while now, however. A simple search for the keyword “Common Core” on the top right-hand corner of our new website will identify the standards-related comments that have been posted in the general math, science, and English sections of the forums over the last few months.

Blog

It’s one thing to read a blog post. It’s another to engage with the author and other readers by leaving a comment on there. What did you think of Sarah Jensen’s article “LTF Gives Teachers Tools to Implement Common Core State Standards”? Or my “LTF Training: The List”? Do you agree or disagree? Let us know. Your feedback—both positive and negative—is the gateway to helping us figure out how to better meet your needs as they relate to Common Core.

Facebook and Twitter

Often on our Facebook wall and our Twitter profile, we share important standards-themed news stories directly from the original sources without first writing about them on our blog. We encourage you to like/follow our social media accounts for the latest information about Common Core. Don’t hesitate to join the dialogue there too!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this short blog series on the Common Core State Standards. If you’ve started using the Common Core-aligned LTF lessons, we’d love for you to share your experiences with us in a guest blog post. Please contact Kaci Schack, LTF Marketing Coordinator, at kschack@ltftraining.org for more information.

As funding for education continues to be cut around the country, districts and schools in states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards are faced with the challenge of implementing them with limited resources to do so. A report by the Center on Education Policy explains, “Many states … viewed aligning teacher preparation to the standards, developing curriculum materials tied to the standards, and implementing new assessments aligned with the standards as major implementation challenges.”

Korean War Hero Walter E. Cole once said, “We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of being paralyzed at the thought of the difficulty in every opportunity.” With each challenge, or difficulty, addressed in the Center on Education Policy’s report comes an opportunity to overcome that very obstacle. Where the Common Core State Standards are concerned, Laying the Foundation is here to help.

Developing curriculum materials tied to the standards

On July 8, somebody left this comment on our blog: “I love LTF lessons and find them applicable for all levels of students. I look forward to seeing the alignment with the core standards.” We now can say that we’re nearing completion of the alignment of our full suite of lessons with the Common Core State Standards.
 

Many lessons, including a few open source lessons—available for free—for math, science, and English, are already available on our website. Instead of a simple checkbox claiming to link the lesson to the standards, LTF goes above and beyond to show you explicitly how specific standards are addressed in each lesson. Within the lessons are charts that give you the code, the standard, the level of thinking category, and the depth of knowledge category. And because LTF is not a curriculum, these materials can be integrated into any existing curriculum.

Aligning teacher preparation to the standards

In conjunction with LTF lessons being aligned to the Common Core State Standards, our professional development program ensures teachers have the content knowledge, critical thinking strategies, and pedagogy necessary to effectively implement these college readiness standards in the classroom.

Implementing new assessments aligned with the standards
 

In the future, all of the LTF assessments, including embedded assessments, formative assessments, and online pretests and posttests, will not only be tied to AP exams—they will also be aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
 

Common Core is the opportunity to help your teachers raise the level of rigor and push the boundaries of student achievement in their classes, and we at LTF would like to partner with you to become your Common Core solution.