Millie Davis of NCTE posted a very nice summary and useful set of links on 7-24-2011 in response to a question from Marilyn Hollman asking questions about the Common Core and Common Core assessments. I'm reposting here. See also, at the bottom, a link to a post by Vicki Spandell about CCSS and 6-traits:

-------------------------------------------

Hi Marilyn,

Here are a few notes on the Common Core State Standards.  They were developed by the Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association with help their standards boards.  Read all about it on their official standards site.  Because these groups were instrumental in the development of the standards, the majority of the states had agreed to adopt them before they were even developed and a few more have signed on since so they are now law in all but six of the states.  When states agreed to adopt the standards, they agreed that the standards as written would comprise the majority of their state's standards (85%, I think) but they could add a small percentage of their own standards.

The recently released Publishers' Criteria are now on the Core Standards website.   Sandra referenced an Ed Week article about the Publishers' Criteria.

Yes, there will be assessments to evaluate how students are doing with these standards.  Currently the assessments that will measure student success with the Common Core Standards are in the process of being developed and are due out in 2014.  Two assessment consortia, PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career: http://www.achieve.org/parcc  ) and Smarter Balance (SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortia: http://www.k12.wa.us/smarter/ ), which together include most of the states that have adopted the standards, are in the process of developing those assessments.  A recent document from Center for K-12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS (the Center)  (http://www.k12center.org/rsc/pdf/Assessments_for_the_Common_Core_Standards.pdf ) talks about the standards and has a long section which outlines the assessments proposed by both these organizations--see a summary of the PARCC assessments on pp. 7-10 and Smarter Balance on pp. 11-14.  The brochure finishes off with a general discussion of the assessments under consideration.  Note that PARRC recently cut the number of annual assessments it's planning back from three to two.

Millie Davis

------------------------

Then...Vicki Spandell blogs about CCSS at 6-Trait Gurus:

The question I used to be asked most often was “How long should I spend teaching a trait?” It’s been surpassed, handily. Nowadays, the BIG question is this: “Do the traits connect to the Common Core Standards for Writing–and if so, how?” The answer in a nutshell is yes they do indeed–in many ways.