Common Core

What It Means

Common Core, short for the Common Core State Standards, is a set of K to 12 learning standards in English language arts and literacy and in mathematics. The National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers released them in June 2010, as a state-led effort to spell out the knowledge and skills a student needs to finish high school ready for college or career training. Standards describe goals by grade, and each state decides which standards its schools follow.

How Parents Say It

• "Is this a Common Core math worksheet?"
• "Does our state still use Common Core?"
• "The teacher said it's a Common Core standard for third grade."

The Breakdown

What the rule says

The Common Core is a set of standards, which are goals for what students should know and be able to do in each grade. They aren't a federal law. Federal law speaks to them in one way: the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, as congress.gov's summary of the bill describes it, bars the U.S. Department of Education from trying to influence, incentivize or coerce a state into adopting the Common Core or any other academic standards, and a state doesn't have to send its standards to the Secretary of Education for approval.

Who it applies to

Documents worth having

1. Your state's standards for your child's grade, from the state education department's site.
2. The name of the curriculum the school uses for reading and math, from the teacher or the school's site.
3. Your child's report cardReport card(1) The school's periodic report of a student's grades to parents; (2) the yearly public report on school and district results that ESSA requires states and districts to publish. See more, which may grade against those standards.

The official source, with the year. The standards were released in June 2010 by the NGA Center and CCSSO. The federal limit comes from ESSA, signed in 2015.

Where It Comes From

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was a joint project of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. It released the English language arts and literacy standards and the math standards for kindergarten through grade 12 in June 2010.

Good to Know

Which standards your child's school follows is your state's decision, so the state education department's website is the place to read them for your child's grade. Standards and curriculum are separate things: the standards name the goal, and the books, lessons and worksheets are chosen to teach it, so ask the teacher which curriculum the class uses if a homework method is new to you. The Congressional Research Service's 2014 report "Common Core State Standards: Frequently Asked Questions" gives the background in more detail.

Related Terms and Categories

• Standardized testing

  Tests given and scored the same way for every student; in U.S. public schools, mainly the yearly state tests in reading, math and science that ESSA requires.

• Standards-based grading

  A way of grading that reports how well a student has met each learning standard, usually on a short scale of levels, instead of one averaged letter grade per subject.

• Report card

  (1) The school's periodic report of a student's grades to parents; (2) the yearly public report on school and district results that ESSA requires states and districts to publish.

• Parent-teacher conference

  A short scheduled meeting between a parent and a child's teacher to talk about how the child is doing in school and how to help at home.

• Public school

  A school run by publicly elected or appointed officials and paid for mainly with public money, including district, charter and magnet schools.

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