A national survey of school districts last fall by the Center on Education Policy found that fewer than half of the districts had planned professional development aligned to the Common Core State Standards this school year. The challenge of getting the nation's 3.2 million K-12 public school teachers ready to teach to the standards is enormous. With new assessments aligned to the standards rapidly coming online by 2014-15, the implementation timeline is compressed. Teachers are wrestling with an absence of truly aligned curricula and lessons. Added to those factors are concerns that the standards are pitched at a level that may require teachers themselves to function on a higher cognitive plane. Evidence from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study suggests that teachers already struggle to help students engage in the higher-order, cognitively demanding tasks emphasized by the standards, such as the ability to synthesize, analyze, and apply information. Supporters of the common standards say the standards encourage a focus on only the most important topics at each grade level and subject, thus allowing teachers to build those skills. For districts, the professional-development challenge is in finding the place to begin. Districts furthest along in the process are integrating the training with successful efforts already in place.