Every superintendent and chief in California, along with 7,000 teachers statewide, received an extensive questionnaire this calendar week asking for their perspectives on how well the rollout of the Mutual Core State Standards has been handled.

The nonprofit research agency WestEd is conducting the survey with the blessing of  Land Board of Teaching President Michael Kirst and state Superintendent of Public Pedagogy Tom Torlakson. Results volition be tabulated in summary form and won't exist identifiable past school, district or county office of education.

"Our goal is to have a better view near implementation from the perspective of teachers, principals and superintendents," Kirst said.‎ "These results volition help inform decision-making, especially well-nigh professional evolution and additional support needed."

The survey, the most comprehensive to appointment, will parallel similar questionnaires in other states, including Florida, Massachusetts and New York, providing cantankerous-state comparisons.

The 17-page questionnaire to teachers, estimated to take 15 minutes to fill out, asks teachers to place and rate the forms in which they've received back up in the Common Cadre – including online materials, training, textbooks, and Smarter Balanced library resources – and to charge per unit the quality and extent of that support from their schoolhouse, district and county.

Among the other questions, the survey asks teachers to identify:

  • Whether specific Mutual Core topics in math and English linguistic communication arts, such equally teaching complex texts using close-reading assay and building academic vocabulary, are being offered in teaching training;
  • What kinds of data, including interim assessments, their districts have used to measure standards implementation;
  • How well prepared their districts and schools are to teach the standards;
  • Whether there take been shifts in practice resulting from their grooming;
  • Whether technology-related topics are used in professional development;
  • Which barriers (funding, time, etc.) are hindering professional person development;
  • To what degree training has helped with the new standards;
  • Whether, and from whom and in what form, they received grooming.

Responses volition remain confidential. Participants are encouraged to complete the survey by early on to mid-November. If they practise, teachers and principals will receive a $ten souvenir card, courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is underwriting the survey.* Joan Talbert, a senior research scholar emerita at Stanford Academy, helped develop the questions.

*EdSource Today's coverage of the Common Core is supported by the Gates Foundation and other foundations. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.

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