All students should graduate from high school ready for college, careers, and citizenship.

Advocacy & Communications

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Achieve’s Grade-Band Guides to the CCSS and Parent Questions– Achieve developed these resources, organized by grade band, to explain the shifts occurring in students’ classrooms and illustrate concrete examples of what parents can expect their children to know by the end of each school year. The grade band documents are available for grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. The accompanying questions can be shared with parents to facilitate conversations among teachers and parents about how and why learning might look different and what they can do to help.

Resources for Parents and Families on CCSS - As teachers and students transition to higher, more rigorous standards, parents want and need information about what this means for their children, how and why schoolwork (and homework) may look different, and what resources are available to help them stay informed and able to support their students’ learning. This overview provides a sampling of the resources that state education agencies, school districts, and third-party and national advocacy organizations have developed to empower parents to help their students succeed.

Achieve has developed messaging cards around the Common Core State Standards and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). They are 4" x 8" messaging cards, with key messages on the front and critical facts on the back, to be shared with other advocates of the Common Core State Standards and common assessments. Download the PDF for CCSS and the PDF for PARCC. Contact us for hard copies of these cards, or download the InDesign files (CCSS, PARCC). Please note that the InDesign files will only open if you have CS5.5 InDesign or a version higher installed on your computer.

The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has created grade-by-grade Parent Guides to Student Success on the Common Core State Standards that explore what students should be learning at each grade in mathematics and English Language Arts/Literacy in order to be prepared for college and careers. The Guide is available in English and Spanish.

To inform and rally more advocates within the business community, Achieve and the GE Foundation have developed Business Resources for a College- and Career-Ready America for business leaders interested in supporting college- and career-ready education reform, including the Common Core State Standards and common assessments.

To explore the public's awareness of and support for the new Common Core State Standards and aligned common assessments Achieve commissioned a national poll in August 2011: Strong Support, Low Awareness: Public Perception on the Common Core State Standards. Achieve created an Engaging Educators Tool for state leaders to use in determining how they can engaged educators to ensure seamless and effective implementation of the CCSS. The tool focuses on two key areas: Developing a broad communication plan to reach all educators with basic information about the CCSS and engaging educators in the development and delivery of aligned instructional materials and professional development plans.

The Hunt Institute and CCSSO have created videos on Common Core implementation by target audience and topic, many of which feature remarks by the lead writers of the CCSS.

Achieve reviewed the final CCSS against a number of well-known and well-regarded benchmarks, including international comparisons, high performing states and NAEP and developed CCSS Content Comparison Briefs. These briefs help show how the CCSS compare to, and in many cases, build upon, the best benchmarks in the world.

The Council of Great City Schools has released Parent Roadmaps to support parents' understanding of the Common Core State Standards at the elementary grade levels. CGCS also released three minute videos explaining the Common Core in English and Spanish.

The Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce jointly developed and released a Toolkit for Building Employer Support.

Connecting the Dots includes key questions for states to consider to align K12 and higher education policies, specific examples of activities underway in states, and a call to action to create strong, sustainable change around the CCSS and common assessments.