A new analysis finds that nearly one million students have claimed the some requirements of the mathematics and language arts significantly challenge them and these standards often require teachers to continually refine their instruction.

"It's no secret that the new Common Core State Standards are more rigorous," said a report on CurriculumAssociates.com. "But what if you could pinpoint exactly which ones are the most challenging—where students struggle the most—to better focus your instructional time? With data collected from over 750,000 students, we can do just that."

Curriculum Associates is an education company that is "committed to making classrooms better places for teachers and students," according to its website. It's overview of Common Core State Standards also provides math lessons and reading lessons for teachers to use in the classroom.

"In Reading, students struggle with informational vs. literary text as well as increasingly complex texts," the site said. "The most challenging standards are those that require synthesis skills, including those related to:

• Determining central ideas or themes and summarizing details
• Analyzing text structure
• Integrating and evaluating content in diverse media and formats
• Analyzing similar topics and themes across texts

When it comes to Common Core-aligned math standards in the classroom, Curriculum Associates said in math, "students are struggling with the standards that require deeper conceptual understanding, including those related to:

• Geometric measurement
• Modeling problem situations
• Fractions
• Statistics

The organization got their statistics from a resource called "i-Ready."

"i-Ready is an online adaptive diagnostic used by more than 3 million students across the U.S. Independent research demonstrated that i-Ready was found to have strong correlations to the 2013 New York State Assessment [correlations ranged from 0.77–0.85 across grades and subjects]," the site said. "In addition, i-Ready successfully predicted proficiency on the assessment for 85% of students. Further analysis of students' performance by our team of researchers provided data that helped identify which Common Core standards were the most challenging during this transitional period."

With i-Ready, the site said, " schools will be able to focus their time and affect positive change. For example, research shows that in states that have implemented targeted strategies, such as incorporating Ready (a rigorous K–8 Common Core program), students have made measureable gains in mastering the new standards."

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Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor