• Response to the Content Specifications with Content Mapping for the Summative Assessment of the CCSS-M



    Thank you for the opportunity to submit a response to the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium August draft. The points below reflect the consensus of the College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM) Educational Program Executive Committee (Directors) and the editors of the CPM curriculum. We particularly support the focus on addressing the needs of language learners. In addition, the emphasis on learning progressions recognizes the fact that not all students learn an idea at the same pace. The sample items in Appendix C reflect this intent and are particularly informative as illustrations of how higher order thinking will be incorporated into assessment. Our only concern, unrelated to the document itself, is that there is still no definitive cluster of content for each of the high school courses.

    For the past 14 months, Achieve's Appendix A has been the only national document to address the distribution of high school content and has become the de facto standard. In the absence of any other outlines, Indiana, for example, conducted an official adoption process for CCSS last November and the review of the high school courses was based on Appendix A. The September 2011 issue of the California Mathematics Council's journal advises teachers to use Appendix A to inform their discussions about what the high school curriculum might entail. Publishers have already created materials to provide "CCSS-aligned" high school courses based on that model, and others, including CPM, have materials in production based on that model. Given the goal of having materials ready sooner rather than later to give students and teachers time to transition to the expanded expectations of the CCSS-M curriculum, the issue of what material will be included in which courses needs to be settled now.

    CPM believes that any content framework for high school needs to be substantially that of Appendix A, since it has been the model in use for more than a year and because it meets the goal of a more rigorous program of study for America's students. Adding or deleting a topic from a curriculum is not a matter of adding or deleting a single section in a chapter. A curriculum that embeds the mathematical practices in each of its lessons takes considerable time and care to develop. "Storylines" for the major concepts must be mapped out, then all of the related ideas threaded through the development of the main ideas. Writing the materials that make explicit connections between and among the ideas takes additional time to do well. Once these materials are developed, time is needed to field test them with teachers and classrooms of students.

    Respectfully submitted by:

    Lori Hamada
    President
    Fresno, CA     		Brian F. Hoey
    Executive Director
    Sacramento, CA
    G. Thomas Sallee, Ph.D.
    Chairman of the Board
    University of California, Davis     		Leslie Dietiker
    Director of Curriculum
    Michigan State University
    Judith Kysh, Ph.D.
    Vice-President
    San Francisco State University     		Michael Kassarjian
    Managing Editor
    Dallas, TX

    Response to the Content Specifications
    with Content Mapping for the Summative Assessment of the CCSS-M PDF