Lorraine Griffith, FIFTH GRADE TEACHER AT WEST BUNCOMBE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in Asheville, NC. Early in her 17-year career, Ms. Griffith realized she wanted to teach more than colors and transportation to kindergarteners. She attended the first Core Knowledge National Conference and was driven to make her school one of the first Core Knowledge (CK) schools in North Carolina. She worked with others to blend the content-specific knowledge in the CK sequence with the broad North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

Enveloped by the excitement of learning, Ms. Griffith became a National Core Knowledge consultant. During her summers away from the classroom, she traveled to schools across the country leading workshops that taught teachers how to write creative units that merge rich content with literature.

Ms. Griffith is a firm believer in providing children with a rich curriculum that helps them associate the words they read with vivid pictures in their minds. Encountering the word “quixotic” should conjure an image of Don Quixote and not just a memorized definition. Reading about a knight in shining armor should bring up the Middle Ages and the legends of King Arthur. Believing that reading scores could increase while at the same time conveying broader knowledge, Ms. Griffith began studying reading fluency. She has written reader’s theater scripts for the Core Knowledge Foundation, taught workshops at CK conventions, and co-created “Toolkit Workshops” for teachers of Core Knowledge in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the co-author (with Dr. Tim Rasinski) of ten books that encourage children to voice the words of famous speeches, song lyrics, and poetry. Ms. Griffith believes that by reading with dramatic interpretation, students will internalize the words of history and better learn to comprehend what they read.

Earlier this year, Common Core's report shows a nation STILL AT RISK. Nearly a quarter of students polled could not identify Adolf Hitler and half had no idea what the Renaissance was. To learn more read the report, press release or stories at ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, and USA TODAY. Or take the test yourself.

FROM THE BENCH: "One unintended effect of the No Child Left Behind Act, …, is that it has effectively squeezed out civics education because there is no testing for that anymore and no funding for that. And at least half of the states no longer make the teaching of civics and government a requirement for high school graduation. This leaves a huge gap, and we can't forget that the primary purpose of public schools in America has always been to help produce citizens who have the knowledge and the skills and the values to sustain our republic as a nation, our democratic form of government," former justice Sandra Day O'Connor said. (cont'd)

CAMPAIGN FILE: Sen. John McCain recalls his English teacher: “There was one friendship that enriched my life at Episcopal High School beyond measure... Mr. Ravenel was head of the English Department... He loved English literature, and taught us to love it as well... He made us appreciate how profound were the emotions that animated the characters in Shakespeare's tragedies. MacBeth and Hamlet in his care were as compelling to boys as they were to the most learned scholar.” (cont'd)

CAMPAIGN FILE: Sen. Barack Obama said “One of the problems with No Child Left Behind is that it has become so reliant on a standardized test model that—first of all—subjects like history and social studies have gotten pushed aside. Arts and music time is no longer there. So the child is not having the well-rounded educational experience I benefited from and most in my generation benefited from.” (cont'd)