District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Common Core of Learning

What are our Responsibilities to Support the Common Core of Learning?

This Common Core of Learning is key to realizing a new state of excellence in education in Massachusetts. To achieve this excellence, we share a responsibility to take these actions:

1. Our Commonwealth and society must foster a climate that honors education, encourages academic achievement, and rewards hard and thoughtful work.
2. Our Commonwealth, municipalities and citizens must fulfill their joint obligation to support the public schools financially at the level necessary to ensure equal education opportunities so that all students can achieve at high levels.
3. School systems must provide opportunity and support for quality professional development for all educators so that they can reach their full potential in a vital, changing and challenging profession.
4. Our public schools and neighborhoods must become environments in which all children can study, learn and play in safety.
5. Families and other community members must be active participants in the education process by volunteering in school, mentoring students, encouraging studies, and strengthening informal learning through reading and outside learning activities.
6. Schools must have access to the newest technology and sufficient number of computers and other tools so that teachers and students can prepare for the technological society in which they will work and live.
7. The Massachusetts business community must play an active role with the schools in encouraging student mentoring, school-to-work programs, and other innovative ways to make education relevant for students.
8. Our higher education system and public schools must build alliances to enhance their overall quality and foster innovation in teaching.
9. Public policymakers for programs serving families and children must coordinate their resources so that children come to school ready to learn. Children must have the nutrition and health care needed for healthy minds and bodies, and they must have access to high quality preschool programs. Their families must have access to the training and support they need to help their children learn.
10. Our society must expect significant commitment and effort by our children and their families to make the process of learning succeed. Students must recognize that the quality of their lives as adults is dependent on their education. They must give priority to academic studies over television viewing, employment during the school year, and after-school activities.

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