INDIANAPOLIS— Indiana’s proposed alternative to the national Common Core academic standards easily aced its first test vote on Monday.
Members of the Indiana Education Roundtable, including Gov. Mike Pence and Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, voted 21-3 to approve new math standards and 21-2 with one abstention for new English benchmarks.
The proposed guidelines on what students should learn in each grade now move to the Indiana State Board of Education for a final vote April 28 on whether to adopt them for use in Indiana classrooms this fall
“There’s no question that, by far, this has been the most transparent and the most open process for the development of standards since Indiana embarked on developing statewide standards back in 1999,” Pence said.
The process to remove Indiana from Common Core State Standards, which the state adopted in 2010 under former Gov. Mitch Daniels, began last year when state legislators voted to “pause” the implementation of the standards. In March, Pence officially removed the state from Common Core in signing legislation that passed this year’s General Assembly.
The new standards were developed from four sets of mathematics standards and three sets of English/language arts standards, including past Indiana standards, Common Core and other national benchmarks.
Pence said the reason the state chose not to revert to former Indiana standards, used before the adoption of Common Core, was because of the number of students who needed remediation when they enrolled in college. He said the proposed standards are an improvement.
“As we looked at prior Indiana standards that when you have 10,000 students that go to colleges or universities in your state that require remediation before they can begin their college academic careers, your standards are not at the level that they need to be,” Pence said, citing recent statistics. “These new standards address that and improved upon prior Indiana standards.”
At least one State Board of Education member, Andrea Neal, has criticized the proposed standards and asked the Roundtable to not approve them. The proposed standards can’t be further revised before the State Board of Education is expected to vote next week.
Local school districts use the standards to write curriculum, or what is taught in classrooms. Lesson plans aligning to the standards is critical because beginning in Spring 2016 students will take assessments based on the new standards.
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. is waiting until after the standards are officially approved before determining how to implement them, according to the district’s Chief Academic Officer Velinda Stubbs.
“The organization is better than the original draft,” Stubbs said, “and I think it will be easier for teachers to really follow.”
Ritz declined to say how much the proposed standards are alike to Common Core after Monday’s meeting.
An anti-Common Core group held a rally that attracted about 200 people at the Statehouse before the Roundtable’s vote. Leaders of Hoosiers Against Common Core asked the Roundtable to not pass the proposed standards, arguing they were a “step backwards.” Opponents of the Common Core, at times, “booed” during the Roundtable meeting.