Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education (Harvard Education Letter Impact Series)

Something in Common is the first book to provide a detailed look at the groundbreaking Common Core State Standards and their potential to transform American education.

This book tells the story of the unfolding political drama around the making of the Common Core State Standards for math and English language arts, which were adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia over a six-month period in 2010, after decades of similar proposals had gone down in flames.

As a senior fellow at the major organization promoting the Common Core standards, education writer Bob Rothman gives the reader a bird’s eye view of this unfolding drama and brings the major players to life with lively anecdotes and behind-the-scenes details. He describes the developments leading up to the historic agreement and compares them to earlier efforts. He also explains the content of the standards in depth, describes steps being taken to implement them, and examines how the assessment consortia plan to measure student performance against the new standards.

The book is a must-have reference work for researchers, practitioners, school leaders, policy makers, and others interested in contemporary education policy and reform.

Robert Rothman is a senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.–based policy and advocacy organization. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform where he edited the Institute’s quarterly magazine, Voices in Urban Education. He was also a study director at the National Research Council, where he led a committee on testing and assessment in the federal Title I program, which produced the report Testing, Teaching, and Learning (edited with Richard F. Elmore) and a committee on teacher testing. A nationally known education writer and editor, Mr. Rothman has also worked with Achieve and the National Center on Education and the Economy, and was a reporter and editor for Education Week. He has written numerous reports and articles on a wide range of education issues, and he is the editor of City Schools (2007) and author of Measuring Up: Standards, Assessments and School Reform (1995). He is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Education Letter. He has a degree in political science from Yale University.