Have you heard about the Common Core State Standards? They are a set of curriculum standards that are designed to provide teachers and parents with a clearly defined, common understanding of what students at every grade level, K-12, are expected to learn. The standards include content that is designed to be rigorous and focused on the application of knowledge through high-order skills.
New York State has adopted these standards and Dobbs Ferry will need to implement them over the next several years, requiring some serious re-evaluation of our curricula. Here is a link to the website for the Common Core State Standards:
http://www.corestandards.org/
And now that you know a little something about the Common Core State Standards, here's a New York Times article about how some schools are using those curriculum requirements as a springboard for introducing innovative teaching methods and more critical analysis by students. If we treat this as an opportunity to re-evaluate our curriculum in a meaningful way, this could be a great step forward for Dobbs Ferry.
New York Times article, April 25, 2011
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