Common core taking added time

EdWeek updates the status of the grade-by-grade edition of the language arts and mathematics standards being developed for use in 48 states:

The first public draft of the standards, which was originally intended for a December release but was postponed until January, is now expected by mid-February.
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Once state and expert feedback has been gathered and fully incorporated into the K-12 draft, it is to be posted for public comment as well, before undergoing further changes.

In addition to the grade-level work, changes are still underway on the draft already released to the public that described the end result all those grades should produce:

A set of “college and career-ready” standards, describing the proficiencies needed by the end of high school for good jobs or higher education, was released last fall after expert input, revised after it garnered more than 1,100 public comments on the CCSSO’s Web site, and is still undergoing revision.

On balance, these delays do not read to me as grounds for concern. The original timetable struck me as astonishingly ambitious, so much so that I would have expected it to be further behind that it currently is.

The same article also describes the current work as wrestling two classic challenges: trying to get the balance right between being short enough and being concrete enough to guide instruction, and getting the specifics right on the mathematics all students need as compared to those that need not be universal.