Arlington, VA — The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) applauds the leadership of 49 states and territories in committing to a process to adopt common high academic standards in mathematics and English Language Arts for our nation’s public school students. The development of high-quality, voluntary common standards that are “higher, clearer and fewer” and that can be internationally benchmarked is long overdue.

NASBE strongly supports this reform effort and is proud to work alongside our sister leadership associations and other trusted education partners as those standards are developed, reviewed and refined. We are especially sensitive to the responsibilities state policymakers – including boards of education -- will assume in the adoption process, especially the work to re-align state K-12 education policies and practices that will follow this effort closely.  It will be incumbent upon state boards of education to ensure the support systems of teacher induction and development, curriculum content and instructional materials, as well assessments and accountability are in place to make those policies effective.

“As state boards approve and adopt new standards they must also, consider the infrastructure that will be required to ensure teachers can teach the standards and students have the resources to meet them” said NASBE Executive Director Brenda Welburn. “We understand that the effect of the common standards movement will resonate differently in every state. In being a state-led effort, this process respects the unique nature of every state, while acknowledging our shared national commitment to high standards for all students.”

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The National Association of State Boards of Education represents America's state and territorial boards of education. NASBE exists to strengthen State Boards as the preeminent educational policymaking bodies for citizens and students. For more, visit www.nasbe.org.

Results from NASBE’s State Adolescent Literacy Network

NASBE will host a Congressional briefing June 8 to share the rationale, results, and next steps from the recent NASBE report, State Actions to Improve Adolescent Literacy: Results from NASBE's State Adolescent Literacy Network. Project Director and NASBE Director of Research Dr. Mariana Haynes will be joined by Terry Reale, a member of the NASBE Network from the West Virginia Department of Education, to discuss the Network’s background and accomplishments. Implications of this work will also be covered during a presentation on current congressional efforts on comprehensive literacy legislation. The Monday briefing will be held on Capitol Hill in 2168 Rayburn House Office Building from 8:30-9:30 a.m. RSVPs or questions about the briefing may be directed to Tony Shivers, NASBE Director of Governmental affairs, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 703-740-4824.

This space will highlight current NASBE projects on a rotating basis. [Last updated on 05.27.09]

NASBE is in its third year of a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health to support states' efforts to promote healthy eating across the school campus.   Our project provides capacity-building assistance to education policymakers and state and local education agency staff, to create sustainable policy and programmatic changes that promote healthy eating behaviors in students through education and environmental changes in schools. 

One way we conduct capacity building assistance is to share resources and information from other states.  We provide this information through ongoing direct technical assistance, written publications as well as through our School Health Policy Database.  This year, we have updated our policy database located at http://www.nasbe.org/healthy_schools/hs/index.php with new laws and regulations from every state across the nation. The database covers over 40 school health issues such as asthma, nutrition, physical activity, violence prevention, and indoor air quality, with exemplary policies highlighted.  Policymakers seeking to make policy changes in their own states can visit the site to learn what other states are doing in school health. To help with this we have added new features to make searching and printing policies easier. 

These are remarkable times for American Education. There is a commitment for the largest federal investment in education in the nation’s history and the talk of innovation and collaboration is unprecedented. Forty-nine states and territories have agreed to earnestly participate in a design of common core standards in math and English language arts for all grades. Discussions about what models of common assessments could be used to support and measure the standards follow nearly every conversation about the common core standards themselves. NASBE is exploring what all this means for instructional materials, teacher preparation, evaluation and a bevy of other issues.