Monday, March 25, 2013

The Educated Reporter: Common Core State Standards and STEM: Raising the Bar for Student Learning

The Educated Reporter: Common Core State Standards and STEM: Raising the Bar for Student Learning:


Common Core State Standards and STEM: Raising the Bar for Student Learning

EWA recently held a one-day seminar focused on STEM education at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. We invited some of the journalist attendees to contribute blog posts from the sessions. Today's entry is from education reporter Erica Green of the Baltimore Sun. You can find additional resources from the seminar, including materials from many of the presenters, here.

The new Common Core State Standards are looming over school districts across the country, and educators are gearing up to radically ramp up the level of rigor of classroom curricula. But, according to education experts—even those divided on the quality of the new curricula— the standards hold the most promise for simply getting back to the basics.

“We are not able to fill our top universities with people who can do arithmetic,” said W. Stephen Wilson, a professor of mathematics at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University, where he said students enter the