About the ELA Standards

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts are designed to provide a better balance between informational and literary texts and stress the use of text-based evidence to support argumentation in writing and speaking.  The CCSS are not a curriculum (they are not the what or the how to), but rather the outcome.  The standards specify what your child is expected to be able to do by the end of each grade.   The ELA standards are also used to set the requirement in other core areas through literacy in history or social studies, science, and technical subjects.  

The standards were developed to be:

- research and evidence based,

- aligned with college and work expectations,

- rigorous, and

- internationally benchmarked.

The standards are divided into the following strands: Reading: Literature, Reading: Informational Text, Reading: Foundation Skills, Writing, Speaking & Listening, and Language.

This presentation prepared by EngageNY is a comprehensive overview of what parents and students should expect with shift to the Common Core State Standards.  The New York City Department of Education has several resources for parents to learn more about the CCSS and some publications are available in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Creole, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Urdu.

Students are formally assessed, as they were with the Connecticut Mastery Tests, in grades 3, 4, and 5. Assessments are being developed by Smarter Balanced which is a state-led consortium working collaboratively to develop assessments aligned to the CCSS.  For more information on assessments please visit our assessments page.