THE CONTINUED
IMPLEMENTATION OF
COLLEGE AND CAREER
READY STANDARDS
OVERVIEW:
In 2008, the State Board of Education approved the Tennessee
Diploma Project Standards, followed by the approval of Tennessee’s Common Core State Standards in 2010. The overriding goal of these standards was to ensure that all students
in Tennessee would graduate from high school prepared for
college and the workforce. In addition, these new standards
were intended to serve the following purposes:
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To ensure academic standards in Tennessee were better aligned
with expectations for success in college and career.
To create fewer standards that were more rigorous, allowed students to understand concepts in greater depth, and helped students develop critical thinking skills.
To adopt standards that were nationally benchmarked, allowing
Tennessee students and parents to understand their progress
toward college and career readiness as compared to students in
other states around the country.50
These new standards emphasize skills and competencies
students need to compete in the global workforce including
critical thinking skills and greater depth of content knowledge. Tennessee’s State Standards for English Language Arts
and Math create more opportunities for cross-curricular instruction, encouraging students to apply knowledge learned
in one subject area to tasks in other subject areas. They also
set higher expectations for student learning and call for significant instructional shifts to occur in classrooms