How are Common Core State Standards affecting children’s publishing and school libraries? The Education Town Hall is seeking experience and opinions from those who work most closely with children’s literature.
The Standards, Libraries, and Publishers
The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, have been adopted completely by 45 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Dept. of Defense Education Activity; Minnesota adopted only the English standards, rejecting those for math. (CCSS background and resources.)
The American Association of School Libraries commented on draft standards in 2010 and published a “crosswalk” of CCSS with its own guidelines for school libraries. The District of Columbia’s School Library Task Force referenced CCSS guidelines in its recent recommendations to the DC Public Schools.
The School Library Journal frequently discusses CCSS, including the standards’ dovetailing with the very library-friendly values of inquiry and helping students make connections.
Publishers of children’s literature — like Macmillan and Scholastic — offer resources on CCSS as part of their marketing effort. And Scholastic, to take just one example, sells books in “common core packs”. Publishers Weekly has been considering the effect of CCSS on the publishing industry: see, e.g., this June 2012 overview and November 2012 interview.
Enough Questions?
Some professio
In her resource-rich blog, teacher-librarian Joyce Valenza raises questions about standards, their effect on evaluation, and their monetizing. Education advocate Diane Ravitch asks why Education Week is selling, rather than truly exploring, CCSS:
Why no acknowledgment of the issues and controversies around Common Core? Why no critical thinking? Why is the day devoted to “how,” with no discussion of “why”?
YOUR Literature and Library
The Education Town Hall encourages comments: How are the Common Core standards are influencing your school library and reading lists? If/how are the standards affecting choices for authors, publishers, teachers, and readers of children’s books?
If you are interested in sharing thoughts on this topic during an upcoming radio hour, please contact us.
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