Dive Brief:

• Nonprofit school information site GreatSchools on Wednesday launched "Milestones," a series of online videos that explain new college and career readiness standards for K-5 students, with additional videos for grades 6-12 on the way.
• The videos, developed in close collaboration with lead Common Core writers Student Achievement Partners, demonstrate examples of reading, writing, and math success for each standard at each grade level.
• Targeted at parents, the videos are a great resource for schools to share as they implement the new expectations.

Dive Insight:

Paired with the videos are additional worksheets, book lists, and more that can be used to help students achieve proficiency.

The quick implementation of Common Core in many states has been an issue plaguing the academic benchmarks, breeding everything from confusion to outright misinformation and fear-mongering as they also quickly became a partisan political issue. This confusion, it should be noted, was a point of concern for Bill Gates at last year's Teaching & Learning conference in Washington, D.C. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported the creation of Milestones, along with Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, and others.

The more than 120 videos, it should be noted, are also still largely applicable to college and career readiness benchmarks in states that have dropped the national standards. Additionally, in a phone call with Education Dive, Patti Constantakis, director of content and curriculum for GreatSchools, hinted that videos for the Next Generation Science Standards have also been discussed.