Educational standards are about to experience a dramatic shift in the next year as Common Core sweeps the nation. The standards were adopted by the California State Board of Education in 2010 and focus on critical thinking and application of reading, writing and math skills to prepare for college and career readiness. “Standardized testing has been a mile wide and an inch thick and now it will be a mile thick and an inch wide,” said Britta Skavdahl, superintendent of Pleasant Ridge School District, which underwent a pilot program using Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to test out the new Common …