College Ready Education: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Fewer, Clearer, Higher:  Moving Forward with Consistent, Rigorous Standards for All Students

The new Common Core State Standards will bring consistency and clarity to American education. These college- and career-ready academic standards will provide a springboard for innovation in education. And, crucially, they will help educators improve student achievement levels, an outcome that will benefit students personally while also fueling our nation’s future economic success.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other philanthropies actively supported the Common Core State Standards Initiative, led by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. But over the past several years, we’ve been thinking independently about the power of such standards, too.

We see these rigorous, clear standards as critical to better student results. But policymakers need to build on that foundation and ensure that teachers have what they need to do their jobs: things like rich assessment systems that yield useful, timely data; tools that help teachers translate such assessments into more-effective instruction; and evaluations and compensation systems that reward teachers for improved student results.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/highschools/Documents/fewer-clearer-higher-standards.pdf