Top Stories
What If You Could Learn Everything?
Imagine every student has a tireless personal tutor, an artificially intelligent and inexhaustible companion that magically knows everything, knows the student, and helps him/her learn what they need to know. A new technology that figures out just how your mind works is about to make us all a whole lot smarter.
New California Science Curriculum Delayed
Although State Board of Education officials support new science standards, which favor hands-on experiments, they are delaying a decision until later this year. The proposed benchmarks are based on the Next Generation Science Standards, which were unveiled in April by California and 25 others states in the first national effort since 1996 to transform the way science is taught.
New York Assessment Update
Although the Board of Regents has not yet determined if New York State will administer PARCC assessments when they are available beginning in the 2014-15 school year, the PARCC Model Content Frameworks are firmly rooted in the Common Core Learning Standards and college/career readiness. Therefore, all curricular and professional development resources produced by the State Education Department will follow these Frameworks, as will State assessments beginning with the 2013-14 school year.
Understanding The Common Core (With 80 links to various resources)
This guide will help educators break down the Common Core State Standards and find some great inspiration and resources along the way.
Texas STAAR New Graduation Requirements
Assessments in Algebra II, geometry, English III, chemistry, physics, world geography, and world history have been eliminated from the testing requirements. As a result, the July 2013 STAAR administration will not include assessments for these courses. End-of-course assessments will continue to be offered in Algebra I, English I, English II, biology, and U.S. history.
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Staff Highlight
We would like to introduce you to a member of our Mathematics Project Team,
Lynn Peer-Sebring
Lynn Sebring taught high school math for more than five years teaching all upper levels of math from pre-algebra to pre-calculus. As part of the EdGate math team, she has been responsible for completing a variety of projects for numerous publishers. In addition to regular correlation work, Lynn has also written assessment questions for a high school course. She is responsible for maintaining the controlled vocabulary on all of the math standards.
About Us 
Founded in 1997, EdGate Correlation Services (EdGate) is a leader in the field of alignment solutions for educational companies around the world.
The EdGate Standards Repository is the most comprehensive collection of national and international educational standards in all subject areas.
Through the power of our technology and the professional experience of our subject-area specialists, EdGate provides accurate and continually updated correlations, on-demand correlation reporting capabilities, and effective website integration options.
EdGate can also deliver standards licensing, customized taxonomy solutions, correlation to assessment standards, and more.
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Welcome to The EdGate Observer!
Greetings everyone,
In this month's newsletter, we focus on the most recent education news pertaining to Alternate Achievement Standards (Common Core Update), College Board Restructured AP Chemistry (Hot Topic), States Backtracking on Common Core? (Client Solution), Dewey Decimal System and Standards Alignment (EdGate Services) and following up with new additions to the EdGate Standards Repository (Standards Update).
As always, EdGate is your source for staying current with new developments in education and the impact of educational standards.
Regards,
Sandra Schugren, EdGate General Manager
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Client Solution 
STATES BACKTRACKING ON COMMON CORE?
When is Common Core not in the news? Some time ago we touched on the topic of states having second thoughts and possibly not following through with implementing Common Core. Now legislation has been introduced in eleven states to halt, delay, reevaluate or not fund the implementation of Common Core.
Education Week is tracking this legislation and while several state bills have failed to pass, Indiana has signed into law HB 1427 (http://openstates.org/in/bills/2013/HB1427/) that halts implementation and requires a further study and evaluation of the Common Core.
Currently Pennsylvania and Missouri have bills pending while Michigan, Missouri and Ohio have all recently introduced legislation. The news in the world of education is a moving target and we will continue to keep you up to date on the status as we know it!
If you would like to follow along as well, please take a look! http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/anti-cc-bill.html#SB210
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Hot Topic
COLLEGE BOARD IS RESTRUCTURING AP SCIENCE COURSES: AP CHEMISTRY AND UPCOMING AP PHYSICS
AP Chemistry has been updated and released for use this fall, 2013. The expansion and restructuring of the AP Chemistry course descriptions follows a similar path that College Board took last year when it updated the AP Biology Course Descriptions by embracing the Big Idea structure. AP Chemistry now has 6 Big Ideas and the labs have been reduced from 22 to 16 which allows time to include six 'inquiry' investigations. EdGate will have these new AP Chemistry Course Descriptions available for clients this month!
AP Physics B is slated for an update for the 2014-2015 school year; AP Physics B will be replaced with AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based, and AP Physics 2: Algebra-Based, effectively spreading the more in-depth content over a two-year period.
According to The College Board (collegeboard.org), "An in-depth study by the National Research Council (NRC) concluded that AP Physics B is a very broad course that 'encourages cursory treatment of very important topics in physics' rather than cultivating a deeper understanding of key foundational principles and content. The NRC further concluded that students should develop a strong foundation in Newtonian mechanics, including rotational dynamics and angular momentum, topics not covered in AP Physics B. They also emphasized the need for inquiry-based instruction and in-depth exploration of topics."
For more details see: http://advancesinap.collegeboard.org/math-and-science/physics.
For more general information about AP courses, visit:
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/index.html 
As College Board updates its courses, EdGate will stay tuned in for you!
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Common Core Update 
ALTERNATE ACHIEVEMENT STANDARDS: THE COMMON CORE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
The Common Core State Standards articulate rigorous grade-level expectations in the areas of Mathematics and English Language Arts. These standards identify the knowledge and skills students need in order to be successful in college and careers.
Students with disabilities, students eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), must be challenged to excel within the general curriculum and be prepared for success in their post-school lives, including college and/or careers.
In order to address alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities, a group of general educators, special educators, and content specialists from member states in the Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) Consortium gathered to determine the essence of the CCSS. The stakeholder group members were selected by their states to participate in this work. State Education Agency (SEA) representatives and SEA-selected teachers collaborated to develop alternate achievement standards, which are called the Common Core Essential Elements (CCEEs) in English Language Arts and Mathematics.
The DLM Consortium includes the states of Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The CCEEs provide a high-level view of the relationship between the CCSS and the links to performance for students with significant cognitive disabilities. They are intended to provide a beginning structure for the design of a summative alternate assessment and provide a historic opportunity to improve access to rigorous academic content standards for students with disabilities.
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 EdGate Services 
EDGATE OFFERS NEW WAYS TO HELP CLIENTS WORK WITH LIBRARIES
EdGate has performed an analysis on the 1500 most commonly used Dewey Decimal System numbers in school libraries. Our team then analyzed the resulting standards sets and used that information to create an index used for standards alignment. We are now correlating content to those 1500 DDC numbers.
Need more than our Top 1500? Provide us with the DDC Numbers that you are currently using and EdGate will provide standards alignment for each unique DDC. EdGate can also correlate to all DDC cataloging variations which takes into account local cataloging (i.e. Library 1 = 551.4 Library 2 = 551.463). The Dewey Index with each DDC number and all corresponding relevant standards is available in several delivery formats for integration into your system.
For more information please contact Leslie Kolber [email protected] or Tracy Olstad [email protected].
 The "EdGate Advantage is 
YOUR Advantage"
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